Properly speaking, then, there is no such thing as unanswered prayer, if the conditions of true prayer are fulfilled. No doubt men may utter words which are called prayer, and there may be no response. But real prayer must always be answered—answered in some way, answered at some time. Our prayers cannot lie in God’s presence like letters on the table of a busy or neglectful man. He never said to any son of Jacob, “Seek ye me in vain”. In all labour there is profit, and this labour of prayer must be the most profitable of all toils, when the soil in which we sow is God. We do not read in Scripture of a single unanswered prayer offered up by any of His people. It is true the special petition was sometimes denied, but even then it was granted in some higher form than the suppliant dreamt of. Even though Moses, so habitually successful in his supplications, was denied in his request to go up with his people to the Promised Land, yet how wondrously was his prayer answered. Not only was he permitted to see the inheritance of Israel from the top of Pisgah, but ages afterwards he visited it in the company of Elijah, and stood on the Holy Mount with Jesus Himself. Who then can venture to say that the prayer of Moses, which seemed to be denied, was overlooked or forgotten? Therefore we assert that there is no such thing as unanswered prayer, and that when prayer seems unanswered, the answer is only the more wonderful and glorious.
But God does certainly delay the answer to prayer, and this causes surprise. We know it is God’s will to give us these things, and we may pray without limitation. Why, then, the delay?
1. The difficulty is, without doubt, a serious one. It is not only that, in itself, the delay causes disappointment, but to minds untrained in their thoughts of the attributes and purposes of God, and therefore unable to grasp any larger view of His working in the world, an answer long-deferred seems to be inconsistent with His love. To minimize such a difficulty, either in our own case or in that of others, is not really the way to meet it. But it may be pointed out that we have had full warning of this trial from the Incarnate Lord, whose love is proved by the sacrifice of Himself; in His own human experience He has met the trial, and can therefore sympathize; we have from His lips an assurance that an answer will come: “Shall not God avenge his elect, which cry to him day and night, and he is longsuffering over them? I say unto you, that he will avenge them speedily. Howbeit when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” In that assurance there is a clue to the mystery of those delays in the Divine response to our requests. Other purposes of God besides an answer to the cry of His elect await accomplishment; when those purposes are fulfilled, the accomplishment of their desire will be speedy and complete. And, as His operation in the Church or in the world is very slow to our eyes, we may by analogy argue that His meaning in long delay, as regards ourselves, is that He has in our own lives purposes to fulfil which, from the human point of view, are slowly developed. A test so searching draws ever from the Lord Himself the question whether, at His coming, He would find on the earth faith strong enough to bear it. Patience, toil, and co-operation with the slow processes of God are suggested by St. James’s metaphor of “the husbandman,” who “waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth,” as he bade suffering Christians “stablish their hearts,” and encouraged them to prayer. We see in his words the confidence of such Hebrew teachers as those who wrote the Thirty-seventh or the Seventy-third Psalm, and also the larger thoughts of “the wise men” of Israel, as they pondered the ways of God which, since the Incarnation, have been irradiated with Christian hope.
He prayed, but to his prayer no answer came,
And choked within him sank his ardour’s flame;
No more he prayed, no more the knee he bent,
While round him darkened doubt and discontent;
Till in his room, one eve, there shone a light,
And he beheld an angel-presence bright,
Who said: “O faint heart, why hast thou resigned
Praying, and no more callest God to mind?”
“I prayed,” he said, “but no one heard my prayer,
Long disappointment has induced despair.”
“Fool!” said the angel, “every prayer of thine,
Of God’s immense compassion was a sign;
Each cry of thine, ‘O Lord!’ itself contains
The answer, ‘Here am I’; thy very pains,
Ardour, and love and longing, every tear
Are His attraction, prove Him very near.”
The cloud dispersed; once more the suppliant prayed,
Nor ever failed to find the promised aid. [Jalaluddin Rumi, in A Little Book of Eastern Wisdom, 49.]
2. The answer may be delayed as a means of spiritual discipline. We are here to be educated, and God knows best how to time His good gifts to that end. Humility, patience, and hope; how much we need such virtues as these and a faith that
Knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,
And cries, It shall be done—sometime, somewhere;
and what heavenly graces are today adorning many a soul because of a period of suffering hard to bear and a good deal harder to understand, except for the sweet knowledge that God’s best is being accomplished, and that some glad day “the whole of life’s painful experience will be poured into song before the throne”.
If Jacob’s desire had been given to him in time for him to get a good night’s rest, he might never have become the prince of prayer we know today. If Hannah’s prayer for a son had been answered at the time she set for herself, the nation might never have known the mighty man of God it found in Samuel. Hannah wanted only a son, but God wanted more. He wanted a prophet, a ruler, and a saviour for His people. Some one has said that in this instance “God had to get a woman before He could get a man”. This woman He got in Hannah precisely by delaying the answer to her prayer, for out of the discipline of those weeks and months and years there came a woman with a vision like God’s, with tempered soul and gentle spirit and seasoned will, prepared to be the kind of a mother for the kind of a man God knew the nation needed. [Note: W. E. Biederwolf, How Can God Answer Prayer? 232]
3. The answer may be delayed by the very force of circumstances. You want to know if God cannot overcome these instanter? Yes, He doubtless can, but it is hardly the part of reverent trust to ask Him to do the miraculous if He can do this thing in His own good time in any other way. Impatience with God is the meanest sort of distrust. To pray for the instant healing of a diseased body is to ignore every secondary cause and every law of nature and to ask God to do the same, and to show that we fear not so much for His glory as for our own gratification. May not the same thing be true in some instances when prayer is sent up for the instant conversion of some soul? In fact, of the two is not the former much more reasonable? God can handle the laws of nature as He will, but can He thus handle a human will and still leave the individual a free, moral, and responsible agent? A man’s will must be influenced by motives; the evil of sin must be seen and something of the character of God appreciated. The power of these motives depends a good deal upon their proper presentation by the proper person and at the proper time. We do not need to explain why, but just to recognize what God has shown us to be true, that He has chosen to limit Himself very largely to human instrumentality in saving another man’s soul. God will not coerce a man’s will, but He may remove him from influences that have made it hard for him to be reached and bring him into new surroundings that may lead to the saving of his soul. In all these things the element of time must not be ignored.
God in His dealings with souls will act with the wisdom which is His Divine characteristic, and seize such opportunities of influencing human hearts as He shall best be able to turn to good account. Hence it will not follow that our intercession has failed of its purpose because no special influence has been brought to bear on the person prayed for just at the moment that the prayer was offered. God may be abiding His time, not because He is in no hurry to bless or to save, but because He well knows that He can make His influence all the more felt by deferring its use for a season. [Note: Canon Hay Aitken, The Divine Ordinance of Prayer, 169.]
Here is a story which was told one Sunday in an Arran pulpit by one who knew the persons it concerned. There lived in a quiet village a godly man. And he had a wife and three sons. His wife died, and the burden of bringing up these sons fell on him. He cried to God to help him. Now, it so happened that in that house there was a rush-bottomed chair, the only chair of that sort in the house, and it was at that chair this good man knelt when he prayed for his boys as well as at family prayer. And often when alone he spent long whiles on his knees praying for their conversion. But he saw no change in his sons; they were hard, selfish, and worldly. At last one by one they all left him, and went into business in some great city of the land. They prospered in business, but not in religion. But business prosperity is not joy, and prosperity was making them hard. The father prayed the more earnestly that they might gain their own souls, although they should lose the whole world. But at the end of his days they were not saved. There was an old servant who lived in the house, and to her he said when he was dying, “I will pray now that my death may be used by God to save them”. Then he died. The three young men came home to the funeral. And when all was past, they said: “What shall we do with the house and the old furniture?” One said: “Let them go to the old woman who has taken care of him”. But the eldest son said: “Well, I consent if only you will allow me to get the rush-bottomed chair. I never heard prayers like those I heard there. I hear those prayers still when I am at business. I think if I had the chance I would not live the prayerless life I am living now.” And the other two were softened. And with that the Spirit of the Lord came upon the eldest brother, and he said: “Let us kneel around it once more and pray”. And they did. And with great crying and tears they spent that afternoon together. And the end of all was that the two younger brothers gave up their business and offered themselves to the mission-field. And they are well known as missionaries now. And the eldest brother is one of those whose praise is in all the churches. [Note: Alexander Macleod, The Child Jesus, 98.]
4. There are some prayers which are answered only by the promise. of an answer. The centurion prays for his servant that he may be healed instantaneously; the immediate response is, “I will come”. Have we never experienced this? We have asked something which has not at once been granted, and yet we have been made to feel that there was something more than silence. We have felt in our hearts what seemed the prophecy of an answer, a nameless, unspeakable strength which told us it would one day all be well. The summer did not come immediately, but the swallows came into our spring, and the interpretation of their song was this, “It will come”.
My soul, do not despise thy moments of anticipation. They have no present gifts to bring, but they bring the promise of great gifts to come; they have no immediate answer to thy prayer, but they tell thee of a time when thy prayer will be answered. Thinkest thou it is a light thing to have such moments? Great men have lived on them and died on them. Did not Abraham leave his country and his father’s house with no other food in his heart than the strength of a promise? Was it not that promise that helped him to climb the Mount Moriahs of life, and to meet on their summits the great sacrifices to which life is heir; he was made strong by the power of aspiration, by the voice which each morning said to him, “I will come”. So shalt thou too be strong, O my soul. If thou shalt set out on thy journey with the prophecy of an answered prayer, thou too shalt climb Mount Moriah with unfaltering feet, thou too with unblanched cheek shalt meet the sacrifice on its summit. The glory of tomorrow shall prefigure itself through the tears of today, and the song of the approaching swallows shall be heard amid the snow; all shadows vanish from that heart to which God has said, “I will come”. [Note: G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 147.]
5. If the answer is delayed, we ought to ask ourselves if that which we desire is truly according to the will of God; and if we are satisfied that it is, we ought to continue “instant in prayer”. Bengel gives his judgment that “a Christian should not leave off praying till his Heavenly Father give him leave, by permitting him to obtain something”. And George Muller drew encouragement from the fact that he had been enabled to persevere in prayer daily, during twenty-nine years, for a certain spiritual blessing long withheld: “At home and abroad, in this country and in foreign lands, in health and in sickness, however much occupied, I have been enabled day by day, by God’s help, to bring this matter before Him, and still I have not the full answer yet. Nevertheless, I look for it. I expect it confidently. The very fact that day after day, and year after year, for twenty-nine years, the Lord has enabled me to continue patiently, believingly, to wait on Him for the blessing, still further encourages me to wait on; and so fully am I assured that God hears me about this matter that I have often been enabled to praise Him beforehand for the full answer which I shall ultimately receive to my prayers on this subject.”
Moses desired to pass over Jordan with the tribes; but Jehovah said to him, “Speak no more unto me of this matter”. Paul besought the Lord thrice that the thorn which rankled in his flesh might be withdrawn, but the only response vouchsafed was, “My grace is sufficient for thee”. John, the beloved disciple, encourages us to pray for the salvation of our brethren, but even as we address ourselves to this holy duty he reminds us that “there is a sin unto death,” in the face of which, apparently, prayer will not prevail. [Note: D. M. McIntyre, The Hidden Life of Prayer, 151.]
Unanswered yet, the prayer your lips have pleaded,
In agony of heart these many years?
Does faith begin to fail? Is hope departing,
And think you all in vain those falling tears?
Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer;
You shall have your desire sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet, though when you first presented
This one petition at the Father’s Throne,
It seemed you could not wait the time of asking,
So urgent was your heart to have it known?
Though years have passed since then, do not despair;
The Lord will answer you sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted;
Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done;
The work began when first your prayer was uttered,
