What happens when prayer’s unanswered?
Sometimes it feels like God is on mute! But what does it mean for our faith? What does it say about God’s will? 24/7 Prayer founder Pete Greig tackled some of these tough questions in a recent Limitless podcast
Pete Greig experienced the painful reality of unanswered prayer when his wife Sammy nearly died. “I went from thinking my prayers could save the planet to questioning whether they could save my own wife,” he said in a Limitless podcast with Tim Alford.
“How many times do you watch the woman you love more than anyone in the world slip into an epileptic fit, crying out to God to make it stop and it not working? “How many times do you do that before you think that either there isn’t a God or there’s some issue here?”
We all experience unanswered prayer and we need to get real about it, Pete says. That’s why, in his book ‘God on Mute’, he explores 15 reasons why prayers sometimes remain unanswered. Here are some things he had to say about three big topics in the Limitless podcast.
God’s world
One of the reasons our prayers go unanswered is because God’s world has been built to work for the benefit of the majority – with unbelievable laws of nature, science and gravity, says Pete.
“God doesn’t constantly micromanage and break his own rules and laws just because someone somewhere has asked for it.”
A simple example is when Pete and Sammy prayed for a dry wedding day – and it rained. “This isn’t what Sammy had dreamed of since she was a little girl… but the truth is there could have been a farmer in the next field praying for rain.
“If every Bible-believing Christian had their prayers for sunshine on their wedding day answered the world would be in drought.”
In God’s world, as CS Lewis pointed out, miracles by definition have to be rare. “If we’re not careful… we create a culture where we expect miracles to be continual,” Pete warns.
Our response should be honesty about unanswered prayer; celebrating the miracles that do happen, lamenting those that don’t and understanding that these two sides of the prayer coin are not in conflict.
We also need to guard against creating our own definitions of miracles. “The miracle isn’t just when the cancer gets inexplicably healed. It’s also when the chemo works, because God is in the science,” says Pete.
God’s will
People often add “If it’s your will” as a get-out clause in their prayers, says Pete. While Jesus did promise to do miracles when we pray in his name, doing this somewhat misses the point.
“In prayer, we’re not trying to get God to say amen to the things we want, but to bring our own hearts to a position where we’re willing to say amen to what God wants in that situation,” he says. When he prayed for Sammy as she faced brain surgery, he had to wrestle with the possibility that God might not heal her.
“I was like, maybe I need to pause and ask, ‘God, what do you want to do? Because people do die. How am I supposed to pray here?’”
Paul experienced the pain of unanswered prayer when his wife, Sammy, almost died
The great biblical example is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. While Adam and Eve had told God, “Not your will, but ours be done,” Jesus prayed the reverse, bringing his own will into alignment with God’s.
Jesus’ death and resurrection show how sometimes the things we think are our greatest unanswered prayers turn into the greatest miracles of our lives, says Pete.
With the benefit of hindsight, he and Sammy now feel grateful that God on Mute, written after suffering and unanswered prayer, has helped millions of people.
Unanswered prayer can also help draw us closer to God, he adds.
“God’s heart is not for us to suffer. It’s just that sometimes he withdraws his hand of blessing in order to draw us back to the greatest blessing of all – his presence.”
God’s war
Pete says one of the most controversial lines in God on Mute is where he writes that God doesn’t always get his will, even though he’s God.
“When a woman is raped or a child is trafficked, that is not the will of God. And yet it happens. What’s going on? There is a satanic evil force at work in our world,” he says.
“We can’t just blame God for everything that goes wrong in the world.”
Ultimately, Satan will be destroyed, but at present we are living in a gap between two kingdoms.
“One of the reasons we must pray is that it’s the way we wage war. God is saying we have this turf war going on – the turf is your heart and mind.
“Our choice is, am I going to say ‘Amen’ to God’s will and allow his purposes to come into my life?
“The implication, when I say no to God’s will, is I’m effectively saying yes to Satan.”
This is why Jesus’ choice to say “not my will, but yours be done,” was so powerful.
“Saying that to God is the antithesis of the idea that prayer is about my will getting done. It’s a posture that says it’s about God’s will, not mine.
“It’s a posture that sees miracles but is also able to live faithfully when those miracles don’t happen the way we think they should.”
God is working in even the smallest things
Pete encouraged anyone grappling with unanswered prayer.
“Jesus is close to the broken-hearted and there are aspects of his presence that you can come to know in these horrible seasons. There’s hope in the fact that he loves you, that he is with you and that he said, ‘I’ll never leave you or forsake you.’ Over the years I’ve developed a discipline that, when I can’t answer the big questions or even see God in the big picture, I just work out what the little things are that I can see of God in this situation. It’s that, and not allowing my questions around the big things to rob me of seeing him in the small things.
“Also, lean into your friends. There are times you just can’t find the hope of glory in the ways you used to, but you can find it in the hug of a friend.”
This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.
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