Have you ever prayed and felt like God wasn’t hearing you, or wondered if He was EVER going to answer your prayer? Does it seem sometimes that, no matter how deeply you cry out, it doesn’t seem to matter to God – as if He’s brushing you off? That the promises you try so hard to claim just hover out of reach?
If you find yourself there sometimes, as I do, you know that it is very easy to get stuck there. I know. I’ve done it too many times. When that happens, my heart cries out “I don’t understand! You’ve promised ..” whatever it is “and it just isn’t happening in my life. What’s going on?”
In those places of frustration and discouragement it is all to easy that He isn’t hearing or doesn’t want to fulfill those promises in your/my life. A huge battles goes on between faith that wants to believe and claim the promises and expect them to be fulfilled, and doubt that, because it doesn’t seem to be happening, that it never will and He isn’t going to come through, this time, for me. I know that when I get into a place like that I generally can’t get out of it on my own, at least not in the sense of getting to a satisfying resolution of my feelings.
Eventually I have to take hold with my will and simply stop asking the questions and remind myself that I can’t see the whole picture. Something is going on that I don’t see. Maybe something has to happen before the promise is fulfilled, or maybe I don’t correctly understand the promise, or maybe I’m not seeing the answer He is providing because I’m so focused on getting the answer or fulfillment I want. Whatever the reason, I’m not getting an answer, or so it seems. With an act of will I change my focus and turn back to look at shat I do know, from Scripture and experience, about who God is and His faithfulness. I start to simply praise Him for who He is and what He HAS done. I may not get an answer to my anguished questions – often I don’t – but I am able to step back into a place of grace and peace with the knowledge that His ways and thoughts and mine aren’t the same – they can’t be.
It sometimes helps to remember that I’m not the only one who gets into these kinds of funks. Even David, the man after God’s own heart did, as evidenced by the plaints in any number of Psalms. If he could feel that way, with all God did in and through him, it’s surely OK when I get to feeling that way and cry out to God in similar fashion.
Psalm 89:49 “Oh Lord, where is the unfailing love Your showed in times past? And where is the proof of Your faithfulness to David?”
Be at Peace in Him,
Kathy
