Garth Brooks has an old song called "Unanswered Prayers" where he tells a story of seeing his high school girlfriend years later and being thankful that God didn't give him what he thought he wanted when he was 18, because what God eventually did give him was so much better.
I certainly agree with Garth Brooks that there are times to thank God for unanswered prayers. Goodness knows if I had gotten everything that I thougnt I wanted at sometime in my life, I'd be a miserable disaster----wrong schools, wrong jobs, wrong boys, probably wrong friends----I'm glad that there are times that God says no to my prayers.
But there are sometimes where being thankful for Him not answering prayers just doesn't seem to work. When you pray and pray for a cure or a miracle, but someone you love still dies. When my friend repeatedly prays to be blessed with a child of her own, yet the pregnancy test is never positive. In instances like these, I don't think that we are expected to be grateful for our unanswered prayers.
I think that in these circumstances, faith comes into play. Even when we don't understand what God is doing, we can trust Him. Even though we are not thankful for the situation that we are in, we can believe that He is in control. Maybe in these situations, we are not expected to be thankful for the unanswered request, but we are just expected to have faith and hope and to keep on praying.
2 comments:
Maybe we're supposed to be thankful that we still have a good God even when we don't get the answers we want. I think that part of faith is believing and trusting that even when we're in despair and we're not seeing what we believe God should do, he is still a good God and he is still worthy of our praise and our trust. Much harder to practice that than say it though.
Great point, Mettie! I think the distinction between being thankful for the situation versus being thankful for a God who we know is in charge of the situation is exactly what I was trying to get at! Thanks for adding/clarifying!
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