I was 21 years old and I’d been living in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma for 4 months, attending Bible college and loving life. It was the first time I had been away from home and family, 998 miles away to be exact.
I loved my adventure. I loved what I was learning of God and His Word. I loved the people I was learning with. It was exciting and I didn’t get homesick often.
I didn’t get homesick until my Grandma Broadway’s 70th birthday was coming and the whole family was getting together to celebrate. Everyone but me, that is.
It was the first big family gathering I had ever missed in my life and I was feeling all the feels in the weeks leading up to it. I really wanted to go home for a long weekend, but the 17+ hour car ride meant driving was out of the question. And my struggling college student bank balance and the $200+ airfare meant flying was out of the question.
So about five days before the party, I decided to put into practice what I had been learning in school about faith and prayer. I prayed a bold prayer for a plane ticket.
I prayed and prayed and…nothing. I even went down to the airport on Friday afternoon to see if someone was waiting for me with a ticket. I’d heard how God had done similar things before, so I waited.
But I left the airport in my car that day instead of on a plane, dealing with the heartache of missing my family AND the failure of unanswered prayer, tears streaming down my face. I’d stretched my wings of faith and ended up falling instead of flying.
Two of my friends had me on their heart that night and stopped by my apartment to check on me. I told them my embarrassing tale, and they began to tell me some of their stories of unanswered prayer.
My tears were replaced with laughter. We went for pizza and they went on to tell me stories of when their bold prayers were answered and my heart was encouraged.
So what do you do when your bold prayers go unanswered?
Grieve It
I grieved the loss. The loss of missing my family. The loss of feeling rejected by God with an unanswered prayer. “Where were You? I prayed!”
Kind of like what Mary and Martha did when Jesus let their brother die instead of coming to heal him like they had seen Him do for so many others. (You can read the whole story here.)
They grieved it. But at the end of the day, they still loved Jesus and were still loved by Him.
Don’t stuff your feelings. Grieve the loss, but don’t let it steal your love for God.
Ask the Questions
Oh I had questions. And I asked them. “Why? What did I do wrong? Where were you?”
Rarely does God answer the question why. He didn’t for Job. Or Elijah.
He didn’t answer all the questions for Mary and Martha, but He did draw them close and minister to them. He pointed them in a new direction of hope in His Word. Hope in Him.
They were thinking healing but He was thinking something entirely better, even though they didn’t understand it at the time.
God’s not afraid of your questions. Ask them and be open to what’s next. It could be something completely different than you were thinking.
Dare to Pray Again
I recently met a missionary to Mexico who has personally raised thirty-seven people from the dead. Thirty-seven people! And they’re all documented.
Do you know how many he has prayed for? Hundreds. Obviously not all of his bold prayers came to pass, but some of them did.
He dared to pray again and as a result people were raised from the dead.
Jesus told Martha, “If you believe, you will see the glory of God.” She could have backed away. She could have said, “I tried that once. It didn’t work. My brother died.”
Instead she chose to say, “You are still Lord. I still believe. I still trust You!”
Eighteen months after the whole plane ticket thing, I was preparing to go on a six-week mission trip to Zimbabwe, Africa, and I needed another ticket. But instead of a $200 ticket from Tulsa to Cleveland, I needed an $1800 ticket.
I’m not going to lie. In the back of my mind the whole time was the nagging thought, “What makes you think He’ll do it this time?”
Here’s the thing. My faith isn’t based on experience, positive or negative. Success or failure. My faith is based on the Word of God that says He’ll supply my needs.
Sometimes your bold prayer sounds exactly like the one that went unanswered last time. Pray it again.
I dared to pray the same prayer again and trust Him again only this time it had a very different outcome. Every penny I needed for my ticket and the expenses of my trip came in and then some.
Why? What was different the second time?
I have no idea. It’s too long to write all I learned of God in those days between the two prayers, but I’ll share these two quick things:
- Sometimes you fly and sometimes you fall, but you only fail if you quit.
- Regardless of the outcome, God is always good.
I don’t know why we’ve prayed for one church member and watched them get healed then we prayed the same prayer of healing for another and performed their funeral instead. We won’t always understand.
But this one thing I know: God does not change. Don’t let your faith become collateral damage when your bold prayer goes unanswered. Keep all of your hope an faith and trust and confidence in God’s Word and not anyone’s experience.
Sometimes your bold prayer sounds exactly like the one that didn’t get answered last time. Will you dare to pray it again?
(For my previous blog on the boldest prayer you will ever pray, click here)