1. A prayer is not unanswered because it is not answered as we wished. We can see now, as we look back on that strange scene in the Garden, how it was love for His own Son, as well as love for man, that led the Father to send the answer in His own way; and shall we not some day make similar discoveries about what seem to have been our unanswered prayers? When all the mysteries of life are at last unravelled, and we clearly see how truly goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our life, shall we not discover that our prayers which seemed unanswered, though offered with all the faith and earnestness of which we are capable, have really been the most fully answered of any? And for these, peradventure, rather than for any others, we may find ourselves specially constrained to praise God.
Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name. [Note: William Morris.]
General Gordon, of Atlanta, Ga., told me of how the Confederate troops prayed for victory before the battle of Sharpsburg. The clay before the battle they prayed earnestly that they might be victorious, so earnestly that both officers and men felt that their prayers would be answered. General Gordon said that many felt satisfied that the Confederate forces would sweep the Union lines, and would be on their way to Washington within a week. But the next day the battle came off, and in results it was one of the most crushing blows that the Confederates received during the war. General Gordon, who was shot five times, said that after the battle the men were discouraged. They felt that God was on the side of the largest legions. Some of the officers suggested that it would be better to spend less time in praying and more time in manufacturing powder and bullets. The suggestion seemed to be a good one even to the General. But he told me years after that the prayers of the Confederates on the day before that battle were best answered by defeat; that if the Confederates had captured Washington and defeated the Union our nation would now be far down the scale among the weaker nations of the earth. [Note: R. H. Conwell, How to Live the Christ Life, 38.]
2. God often answers our prayers while we are still knocking, and in a better way than we asked for. We pray for physical good, and God answers with spiritual life. We pray to be freed from the burden, and God answers with patience and strength to endure. We pray to be spared the conflict, and God gives us courage to fight the good fight of faith. The great end of religious effort is a developed soul, a soul with a deep sense of God, a soul in which faith, courage, and resolution are at their highest. That these things be attained is the greatest of blessings; they are God’s best gift to us. The soul that prays for patience, and has patience enough to continue praying when Heaven seems deaf or dead, has been answered, though it knows it not. The soul that prays for energy and resolution, and finds its resolve to get the blessing growing stronger with each new rebuff, has already been answered. While we deem ourselves forsaken and unheard, the answer is going on. Faith has grown stronger, resolve has taken deeper root, the hunger and thirst after righteousness has increased, manhood has been nourished, and if, at last, the direct and visible answer to our prayer should come, the direct blessing would not compare with the benedictions which have come from its delay.
Dr. George M. Baker told once about a prayer which he made when he was a boy, asking God that he might go to a baseball game. His mother did not wish him to go in consequence of the character of the crowd that would be there. But he prayed three times that his mother might change her mind. He could not understand why she still stood to her original position. He went back to his work and began to think. He thought of how his mother loved him much more than any of the boys loved him, and how he loved her more than he loved them. So at last he began to feel that he did not care to go to the game; and he went and told his mother so, and told her that he had given up the idea. He would not go if she gave him permission, for he would prefer to stay at home and help her. His prayer was answered, although not in the way he expected—not by permitting him to go to the ball game, but by reconciling him to stay at home. Dr. Baker’s lovely and potent life was largely shaped by that prayer. [Note: R. H. Conwell, How to Live the Christ Life, 37.]
3. We may be inclined to say that to have a thing in another shape is equivalent to not having it at all. But if we knew God, we would leave that to Him. He is not mocked, and He will not mock. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He will deal with us not as the children of a day, but as children of eternal ages. We shall be satisfied, if we will but let Him have His way with the creature He has made. The question is between our will and the will of God. He is not one of those who give readiest what they prize least. He does not care to give anything but His best, or that which will prepare for it. Not many years may pass before we confess, “Thou art a God who hearest prayer, and givest a better answer”. We may come to see that the deepest desire of our heart would have been frustrated by having what seemed its embodiment then.
That God should as a loving Father listen, hear, consider, and deal with the request after the perfect tenderness of His heart is to me enough; it is little that I should go without what I pray for. If it be granted that any answer which did not come of love, and was not for the final satisfaction of him who prayed, would be unworthy of God; that it is the part of love and knowledge to watch over the wayward, ignorant child; then the trouble of seemingly unanswered prayers begins to abate, and a lovely hope and comfort takes its place in the child-like soul. To hear is not necessarily to grant—God forbid! but to hear is necessarily to attend to—sometimes as necessarily to refuse. [Note: George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, 2: 70.]
4. In intercession for others the same law is observable. Many an anxious mother, as she prays for a difficult and wayward child, and finds that the boon is not yielded exactly in the way by which she had sought it, might remember that it was through a petition, in its exact form, refused in love, that the conversion of St. Augustine was accomplished. His mother’s desire and earnest prayer was that her son might not sail for Italy, so greatly did she dread for him the temptations which would meet him there. With many tears she prayed that he might not sail. “But Thou,” writes Augustine, “in the depth of Thy counsel and hearing the hinge of her desire (that on which all her prayer turned), regardedst not what she then asked, that Thou mightest make me what she ever asked.” It was in Italy that her son found Christ. May we not, in another sphere, discern as plainly that prayer in the name of Christ received a most true answer although the immediate petition was refused?
A father of a family lay on his death-bed. There was only one thought that caused him anxiety. He had a number of sons about whose religious condition he had long been greatly distressed. He could make no impression upon them by anything he could say. His hope and prayer was that by his death he might be allowed to do what he had not been able to do in his life. The prayer was answered, but most strangely. He had supposed that, if only his end might be bright and triumphant, they would be constrained to acknowledge that there was some reality and power in religion. What actually occurred was this. As his close drew near, he fell into the deepest gloom of depression. There seemed to be no gleam of comfort, no ray of light. And under the cloud he died. His sons watched it all, and when it was over, one of them said to the rest: “If our father, who was always a good man, died like that, how must we expect to die when our time comes?” It was the turning-point in their lives. The prayer had been answered, but not in the least in the way that had been expected. [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 64]
Oft when of God we ask
For fuller, happier life,
He sets us some new task
Involving care and strife:
Is this the boon for which we sought?
Has prayer new trouble on us brought?
This is indeed the boon,
Though strange to us it seems;
We pierce the rock, and soon
The blessing on us streams;
For when we are the most athirst,
Then the clear waters on us burst.
We toil as in a field,
Wherein, to us unknown, A treasure lies concealed,
Which may be all our own:
And shall we of the toil complain
That speedily will bring such gain?
We dig the wells of life,
And God the waters gives;
We win our way by strife,
Then He within us lives;
And only war could make us meet
For peace so sacred and so sweet. [Note: T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet.]
