Unanswered Prayer

I am confident that if you are a devoted and faithful Christian you have experienced an unanswered prayer. In the fall of 2020 my father in law, Garland Hendren, was going to the doctor for some health issues, at the time seemed they seemed insignificant. A mass was found on his pancreas and surgery was scheduled to remove it. We learned he had pancreatic cancer. Garland was a faithful Christian. He had many Christian friends at his church and throughout the community that were praying for him to be healed from the cancer. Everyone in our family was praying for him as well. I know that myself and my wife Joyce, his youngest daughter, were asking God to give us a miracle and heal his body completely. However in May of 2021 the cancer got the best of him and our prayers went unanswered.

Lamentations 3: 31-33 ESV For the Lord will not cast off forever, for, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.

Why do you think some prayers are unanswered despite their heartfelt, sincere, and unselfish motives? I don’t think we can know why God answers some prayers the way we want and not others. Sometimes God reveals his glory by answering our prayers the way we hoped, but sometimes he reveals his glory through our learning to depend on him as we experience his faithfulness and trustworthiness through a difficult trial. He uses our life situations to make himself known to us and to the world, to draw others to himself. No matter how he responds to our prayer, we can be confident he is working to reveal his glory more fully to us.

2 Cor. 1:8–9 ESV For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

Think about it, even your salvation is based on and unanswered prayer. Just before Jesus was arrested. In the garden of Gethsemane He prayed to his Father three times asking, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as my will, but yours be done. The cup to which Jesus refers is the suffering He was about to endure.

Matthew 26:39 ESV And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus is fully God, but He is also fully human. His human nature, though perfect, still struggled with the need to accept the torture and shame that awaited Him. His flesh recoiled from the cross. Jesus knew of what was to come. The agony He faced was going to be more than physical; it would be spiritual and emotional, as well. Our God is a Holy God, so much so, that he can't be in the presence of sin. He is so holy that at the moment Jesus took upon himself all the sins of the world, past, present and future, at that very moment God turned his back on his only Son.

Mark 15:34 ESV And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

If God had listened to his Jesus prayer and responded, you know my son, man is a mess, his thoughts and heart is filled always with sin. Let's just destroy him and start all over. But God didn't answer Jesus prayer and because of that I can place my faith in Jesus and spend eternity in Heaven.