#2 Trusting Beyond the Silence: Travelling the Road of Unanswered Prayers
- Stewart Bogle
- Feb 22, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 3
Take note: This post deals with difficult topics including death and unanswered prayers. If you or someone you know is navigating difficult emotions, be mindful that this content may be difficult. Seek support from loved ones, faith communities, or professionals. Remember, seeking help is a courageous step on the healing journey.
My daughter has lived a tough life. At 7, I had to sit her down to let her know her mother had cancer. We prayed every day for the next three and a half years that God would heal her mum. This little girl pleaded to a big, all-powerful God for a miracle. She cried at her mother’s funeral.
When I remarried and her step mum faced some complex challenges in life, she prayed again. She was not so little anymore, but her God was still big and all powerful. She gave me a hug as we cried when the marriage was over due to some incredibly difficult emotional health issues. You’d think she might have had enough of turning to God, but not this young woman.
She prayed to her good, all-powerful God once again when I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle and received a traumatic brain injury. That prayer didn’t yield what we all hoped it would. It’s an injury I still battle with today.
She kept turning to God, over and over again. Once again, she went to him in hope and prayer when her long-time boyfriend was diagnosed with a very complicated skin cancer that threatened their future. She cried out to her all knowing, all powerful, unbelievably good God, but she watched on helplessly as he had melanoma after melanoma cut from his body to stop the cancer from spreading.
She’d asked God many times to heal the love of her life so they could get married and live out all their hopes and dreams. That’s what young people do. They’re full of hopes and dreams and feel indestructible. A few months later, they were told the cancer had spread to a major organ, and she wept again at the pain of potential loss. She pleaded with her Almighty God to intervene and help the new treatment to work. It didn’t work.
Only weeks after they were married, she sat next to her husband for hours in a crowded and grotty Emergency Department during their holiday break as symptoms they'd been praying about debilitated him to the point where he needed urgent help.
She prayed to her God as they sent her husband off for brain scans. “Please God, let it not have spread to his brain.” It spread to his brain.
The team said it might be treatable with a new drug they were going to try. She thanked her big, all-powerful God for the hope this offered and then a few days later was told the scans revealed it was more invasive than they thought, and this new drug would not be able to cure him. Shock first and then more tears.
She prayed for more time and cried out to the one who could grant this simple request, but then he died. She’s dealing with grief and pain and sorrow right now, but somehow, she’s still choosing to turn to the God of the Universe.
Prayer is about turning to him even when we feel like he doesn’t care, or he doesn’t hear our cries for help.
Trusting God in the Silence during difficult times: A Journey of Unanswered Prayers
What do you do with a story like this? Maybe you relate to it yourself as prayer after prayer is not getting answered and you’ve had enough. If that’s the case, then we all understand. Of course we do. Life can be incredibly tough, and no matter what you're facing, or what someone you love is facing, it can be scary, debilitating, and incredibly confusing. Many of us have put our faith and hope in a wonderful, all powerful God we call our Father, but when you hear stories like this, you might wonder, what’s the point of prayer? What sort of father is he?
What’s the point of having an all-powerful, all knowing, all loving God if he's not going to respond to the tears of a little 7-year-old girl, or the desperate cries of a newly married young woman?
"Faith is not the absence of doubts. It's the decision to trust God even when we can't make sense of the circumstances." Unknown
Faith in the Face of Grief: When Prayers Seem Unheard
I wonder if that’s at the heart of the issue many of us face when prayers seem to go unanswered. When we're faced with what feels like the deafening silence of a God who can do the miraculous, but doesn’t always. Sometimes, if we’re honest, we can see God as someone who’s supposed to do what we ask, and when he doesn’t do that, we question him—his power, his care, his character.
Prayer has to be more than a transaction we seek to make when we tell him what we want—no matter how good the thing we want is. Prayer is communication between a father and a child where we cry out FOR him to help, and cry out TO him when things hurt or don’t work out the way we want. I’ve encouraged my daughter to cry in his arms even when things are not working out and they feel almost too hard to bear. The other option is to turn from him and blame him for not caring and not acting and not doing what we pleaded for him to do.
She’s decided she needs to learn how to live in the tension of two things happening simultaneously. That God loves her on the one hand, but allows really tough things to happen on the other and that doesn’t mean he is powerless, or uncaring, or cruel.
Understanding Prayer: Beyond Transactions to True Communication
I believe with all my heart that God hears our prayers and does not simply ignore them or randomly answer some but not others. I believe Scripture teaches us that he walks with us through every experience in life. I’m just not sure praying means we’ll always get what we hope for in the way we want.
I wish it wasn’t that way, but for my daughter, and for so many of us, it has been, so prayer might need to be understood differently. Otherwise, we might all turn from God when he doesn’t do what we ask him to do.
"Trust is knowing that God's plan is perfect, even when your life feels like it's falling apart." Unknown
If we go down that path and turn from him, then all it leads to is facing the same challenges, but on our own, without the love and company of a God who promises to always walk with us, even when the path leads through the darkest of valleys. I’ve seen God do amazing things in response to prayer, but I’ve also seen prayers go unanswered (at least in the ways I was asking). I don’t know why that is, but I have come to understand that prayer isn’t quite as straight forward as I thought it once was. It’s more to do with turning to our Father in faith, than demanding of him and then feeling disappointed when he doesn’t do what we asked. Faith continues to trust even when prayers go unanswered in the way we’d hoped.
“Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act.” (Psalm 37:5, ESV)
I want to encourage you to keep committing your ways to God. Keep going to him no matter what things look like around you. He promises in Psalm 37 that if we trust in him, he will act. God is not silent. He's a God who acts. Even if that action is not what we asked and hoped for, he's still at work. Trust is a gift, but it’s also a decision.
"In the silence of unanswered prayers, God is forging the strength of your character and the depth of your trust." Unknown
From Reflection to Action: (These are just suggestions – maybe choose 1 or 2 to try)
Create a Prayer Journal: Create individual or family prayer journals, documenting prayers and reflections on trusting God during challenging times and reflecting on how you processed unanswered prayers without turning away from God.
Host a Reflective Gathering: Arrange a family or friend gathering to discuss the concept of trust in the face of unanswered prayers, encouraging open conversations and learning from each other’s stories.
Plant a Resilience Garden: Symbolize hope and growth by planting a garden, using it as a visual reminder of resilience and trust even when prayers seem unanswered.
Create Vision Boards: Develop a visual representation of hopes and dreams, acknowledging that trusting God involves embracing the journey, even if it deviates from expectations.
Listen to a podcast: Click on the link to the Resilient Souls podcast featuring a conversation with Adrian Blenkinsop and how he kept going despite not having his prayers answered and also to Ashley's story—the young woman whose unanswered prayers were mentioned in this post (see Ashley's podcast .... COMING 7th May)
Bible verses about Trusting God in difficult times:
NB Some of these passages might help you to realise it’s ok to battle with feelings of disappointment when prayers seem to go unanswered.
Psalm 13:1-2 (NIV): "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?"
Psalm 22:1-2 (NIV): "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest."
Job 13:15 (NIV): "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face."
Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV): "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
Psalm 23:4 (NIV): "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT): "Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take."
Isaiah 41:10 (ESV): "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."
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