Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
What do you do when prayer after prayer seems to go unanswered? Sometimes it seems that the more you pray, the more elusive is the answer you seek. God has foreseen that problem and directs us to His Word, the Bible, to find understanding. That is how the Father spoke to His Son at His baptism in the Jordan River--by quoting two Old Testament texts together, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17; Psalm 2:7; Isa. 42:1). A wise writer has said the words that the Father quoted to Jesus that day are spoken to us as well (The Desire of Ages, p. 113).
Thus, your first step is to believe that you are His "beloved" child in whom He is "well pleased." When you pray, you must believe that (Heb 11:6; James 1:5, 6). Many unanswered prayers are "prayed" in dark unbelief. It's not that the Father is mad at you, no; the problem is that your dark unbelief breaks the connection. You pray "in Jesus' name," don't you? Well, that means that you identify with Him in your praying. You must, no matter how it stretches your faith to believe it, and to say it.
Second, you grasp the truth that Jesus went through the exact experience you have had of seemingly unanswered prayers. It was on His cross--when He cried out, "Why have You forsaken Me?" He said, "The servant is not greater than his lord" (John 13:16). Don't resent tasting of His experience!
Third, you learn as Jesus did, to believe God in total darkness. You may ask, "Why must I learnthat lesson?" The answer: God is preparing you to endure throughout the "time of Jacob's trouble," when the only "light" will be that generated by your own personal faith in God's word, as it was with Christ on His cross. You could never endure that without this special pre-trial training.
Fourth, as you pray for more and more blessings yet to come, you never forget the ones you have already received. The greatest is that He has already saved you from the eternal grave that the second death means. That is an essential part of genuine faith--that constant realization that you are as one "alive from the dead" (Rom. 6:13).
So, you say you feel cold, empty, that your faith is dead? Here is the jump-start cable: thank God He has saved you "in Christ" from the second death. If that doesn't rev you up, nothing under heaven will. You will have new understanding of your seemingly unanswered prayers.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 26, 1999.
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