In the last blog I explained that I was tracking daily prayer requests as an exercise to devote myself to prayer and not lose heart. I reported that most of those requests have not been granted, but I was not discouraged by that because they are often requests that previous experience taught me to give up on praying about. Below is an example of wrestling with a prayer that was not answered. It is a family example, but I think it could speak to work prayers as well.

Today I was praying for Erin to feel well enough to handle a babysitting job. Last year she had to cancel a number of babysitting jobs because she was ill, and I really wanted this year to be different for her. She came down with a bad headache the day before yesterday. She usually does not have a headache lasting several days, so I was expecting her to feel well enough today. But she woke up feeling just as poorly.

Committing to praying for things like this does have it challenges. Since this feels like a bad outcome for Erin, especially in an area of looking to God for help, I need to figure out how to navigate this with God relationally. The more I really pray for something like this, the more I express to God my desire for an outcome, the more difficult it is when He does not grant the prayer request. It is easy and natural to be upset with Him and to adopt bad attitudes. Why tell me to pray if you are not going to care enough to respond? It is less disappointing to act as if God is not really paying attention to my daily life than to engage Him in prayer and then experience life as if He is not really paying attention.

But, as many have pointed out, if God regularly answered our prayers, then prayer would really be like magic, a power source to control our lives. I must allow God to not answer my prayers and still be the good, loving, powerful, and personal God that Jesus and Scripture tell me He is. And I need to continue to relate to Him with that faith in who He is, which means continuing to pray about my life.

Interestingly, this morning I had been reading about Jairus’ daughter, the 12-year-old girl Jesus raised from the dead (Mark 5, Luke 8). So I kept praying for healing up until the time when we would have left for the babysitting job. When I went to check on Erin, she was still ill. However, she had some good news to share. She found out that she was chosen to teach a class she was hoping to teach. When she first applied for this, she did not get it, and this was a signficant prayer request. At that time, my response was to pray that something would shift before the class started so that she would get the assignment, and that is what happened. So while I was finding out that my continued prayers for her healing that day were denied, I also found out that continuing in prayer about another thing was granted. While this does not necessarily speak to the effectiveness of prayer, it did feel relational to me. And that is what I want my prayer life to be about. Not having more prayers answered, but growing in relationship with God.

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.