AS I WRITE THIS, it was almost two years ago that I got the phone call telling me my dad was being taken into emergency surgery. I drove down to Miami and was able to see him in the recovery room and he seemed to be doing well. He was moved to a private room in the hospital, but a couple of days later, he had to be taken back into surgery. Knowing the first surgery had failed, Dad was sure he was about to die. My mom and my brother were the only ones with him and the doctor encouraged us to gather the family since it didn’t look like Dad would live much longer.
As our family began to arrive and step in to visit with him, Dad got stronger. He rallied. He prayed with his grandkids and was able to tell them what they meant to him. For a while it seemed that he would recover. But good days would be followed by bad days. He was in the hospital and then a nursing home for about two more months before he died. In those two months, he was in pain, he wanted to die, he pleaded with God to let him die to end the suffering, and God didn’t let him die.
I felt so helpless. I wanted him to live, but not like he was. I listened to his prayers asking God to take him, and I started to get angry with God. I asked God, “Why will you not grant his request and let him die? He’s ready. He’s in pain. Why will you not end his suffering?”
There was a time when a man came to Jesus and said, “…if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, “If I can. All things are possible for the one who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:22-24). The man didn’t say, “If you are willing” but “if you can.” “Can” implies ability. He was saying, “Jesus, if you are able to do something, I’d appreciate it.” In his reply, Jesus brings out this man’s doubt about his ability and power to heal.
The reason I felt angry about God not answering my dad’s prayer is that I believed God could do what my dad was asking. God is able to heal. If that’s not what he was going to do, God was certainly capable of letting my dad’s misery end by allowing him to slip peacefully from this life into God’s presence. It felt cruel. God let him suffer day after day, for weeks.
If I believed that God wanted to answer his prayer but was powerless to act, I would have no reason to be angry. But what I believed about God actually made it harder to accept his silence.
In the grand scheme of things, what my dad experienced is inconsequential compared to what other people experience. His suffering did come to an end and he slipped into God’s presence peacefully in the end. But there are many people I know who have experienced the silence of God; people who have prayed and asked God to do something and it never happened.
There is an elderly lady in our church family who has been bed-ridden for six years. She never married, so she has no children to visit and care for her. For several years, every time I visited her she would whisper to me, “If I sign a letter and give my permission, could you have a doctor give me a shot of something that would let me go to sleep and not wake up?” For six years I’ve watched her grow weaker and weaker. She has wanted to be able to die, but her body won’t let go. She has pleaded with God to let her die, but he has not given her what she asked for. She is going to die sooner or later. What would be so bad about letting her go?
I have another friend who has asked God for many years to let her find someone to marry. She doesn’t want to live her entire life single and lonely. But God hasn’t answered her prayer.
I have a friend who lost his job a couple of years ago and has been unable to find another job. He has asked God to allow him to have any job, but no job opening has come to him. Our church family has joined him in asking God to provide a job, but so far, he doesn’t have a job.
A godly woman in our church family is the only Christian in her extended family. One of her deepest desires is that some in her family would come to faith in Christ. She has prayed for years for the conversion of family members, and no one has come to Christ.
I have a close friend who has prayed for years that God would bring change to his marriage; that his wife would show some sign of really wanting to be married to him. But it hasn’t happened.
I have friends who have pleaded with God to give them freedom from a sinful habit that has enslaved them, but they can’t seem to find that freedom.
I have another friend who was diagnosed with cancer. She prayed for healing, and God healed her body as she went through chemotherapy. But I have another friend who was diagnosed with cancer, prayed for healing, suffered through chemo and radiation treatments, and died.
I think of a couple in our church family who would be great parents and who prayed that God would allow them to have children. But they have never been able to conceive a child.
World Religions
If you were a Hindu and believed in Karma, you would feel sad about things like cancer, job loss, inability to have children, and death of loved ones. But you would not think something was wrong or get angry about it. It’s just karma, and nobody can change karma. The Sanskrit word “karma” means “actions” or “deeds.” Specifically, karma is a way of understanding what happens in life when things are difficult. The actions and deeds in view are those done in a previous life that affect what someone experiences in this life. The law of karma says all life is governed by a strict system of cause and effect, action and reaction. What happens to anyone in this world is the direct result of things done in a previous life. It is a way of explaining evil and misfortune in the world, especially when bad things happen to someone who doesn’t seem to deserve it. It must be that they did wrong things in a previous life. And if that’s the case, they have no one to be mad at but themselves.
Muslims who experience suffering or disappointment in life feel sadness like anyone else. But they don’t think something is wrong. They’ve been taught to believe that fate can’t be changed. All people can do when they suffer is to submit to God’s will and accept it. They have to resign themselves to the way things are. It won’t help to be mad at God. God is not going to change his will to suit a human being.
Christian Assumptions
But as Christians, as people who read and believe the Bible, there are a set of assumptions we bring to prayer: God governs this world. He is Almighty. He is able to do what he chooses to do. Nothing can stop God from doing what he wants to do. There is no power higher than God, like fate, that God has to submit to. And he is good, kind, generous, and giving, a Father who is more loving than any human father. God is not far away and unconcerned about what happens in our lives. He is near us. And he invites us to bring our concerns to him and to ask for things that matter to us.
Where did we get the idea that God is like that? From God himself: “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him…” (Psalm 103:13). We get the idea that God is good, compassionate, caring, and eager to hear our requests from Jesus, who is God in flesh: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” (Luke 11:11-13). The parallel passage in Matthew 7 puts it like this: “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.” God is not like the unjust judge in Jesus’ parable who gives in because he’s tired of hearing someone complain. It is not hard to get his attention, like the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel who spent half a day calling out, “O Baal, hear us.” while they cut themselves to show how sincere they were. God isn’t like that. He is aware of our needs before we ask him.
The apostle Paul tells us to think of God as one who is “able to do far more abundantly that all we ask or think…” (Ephesians 3:20). And Jesus added to our expectations for prayer when he said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened…” (Matthew 7:7-8).
As Christians we are not fatalists who just have to submit to whatever happens as the unchangeable will of God. We don’t believe in karma that is unchangeable or that our suffering is somehow deserved by our own behavior in past lives. We know we live in a fallen world. We experience the brokenness of our world just like people who don’t have faith in Christ. We suffer, we get sick, we lose our jobs, and we die, because we share in the fallenness of the human race.
A time of tension
But we also believe God is redeeming us from this brokenness. He saved us in hope (Romans 8) that the world will be set free from its bondage to decay, and that we who are the adopted sons and daughters of God will be set free from all the ways sin affects our world and our lives. But we live in the time of tension, the time between the coming of Jesus and the final restoration of all things when God wipes away every tear from our eyes. And we groan inwardly, Paul says in Romans 8, while we wait for the redemption of our bodies.
Sometimes that groaning is because we don’t understand why God chooses to work in our lives in some particular way that makes no sense to us. It’s because we believe in a personal, caring, loving Heavenly Father that our times of groaning are intensified. We know God could change our circumstances – he’s not bound by fate or karma. We believe he governs in wisdom and that he is good. So we go to God in prayer and cry out, “Why are you so far away from answering my prayers? Can’t you hear my groaning?”
But what happens? In our experience, we often ask and don’t receive. And we don’t understand why that would be. James says in his letter, “You ask but don’t receive because you ask with selfish motives.” Certainly that’s true at times. But not always. Our experience is that we ask, believing God is able to intervene and change a difficult situation, but it feels like God isn’t there. Nothing changes. God doesn’t respond. We ask, but don’t receive. Our experience clashes with God’s revelation in Scripture and we end up wondering, “If God is good, why is he letting this happen?”
In her book, Walking Away From Faith, Ruth Tucker writes:
“…Mom’s death was something I could not easily reconcile with my perception of God. The accident was not a twenty-car pileup in a northern Wisconsin blizzard. It happened on a clear afternoon in early autumn at a remote intersection of a country road. And to add insult to injury (and to death), it occurred a stone’s throw from my mother’s childhood home…and three miles away from the farm on which I grew up. I had crossed that intersection (which had no stop sign) hundreds of times, and never had there been an approaching car. But on this day there were two cars approaching the same intersection, and neither driver saw the other one in time to stop.
“Already struggling with abstract doubts, I now had very personal doubts about the God I worshiped and how this incident, this accident, fit into my faith. ‘All things work together for good’ – I know the verse (Romans 8:28) by heart. But no, no, no. I screamed, all things don’t work together for good. And in this case, if there truly is a God out there who is all powerful, why, O God, why, I asked, did you not prevent this terrible accident…” (p. 21)
That is a question that only makes sense if you believe God could prevent a terrible accident. If you believe God is all-powerful and also good, some of the things you experience in life will not make sense. And if you pray when you face a difficult or painful or life-threatening situation, believing God is able to change your circumstances, but things don’t change, your beliefs will be tested: have you misunderstood the promises in the Bible about prayer? Have you misunderstood the character of God?
Let’s be honest
We are not alone when we ask these questions. You find the same kinds of questions being asked in the psalms:
“Why, O LORD, do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1).
“How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am forsaken” (Psalm 13:1-4).
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest…” (Psalm 22:1-2).
“Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy. Attend to me, and answer me. I am restless in my complaint and I moan, because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked. For they drop trouble on me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me. My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me…” (Psalm 55:1-4).
Asking these kinds of questions make some people very uncomfortable. It’s one thing to read these in the psalms, but to verbalize similar questions can be disturbing for Christians. For some reason we think Christians shouldn’t talk like this. You know from experience that sharing these kinds of thoughts and feelings with Christian friends tend to produce unhelpful, trite sounding advice: “Well, you know, all things work together for good…” “You just need to have more faith.” “Maybe you have some sin in your life that is keeping God from hearing you.” Job’s friends are alive and well in the Christian community.
But let’s be honest. What happens in your heart when you plead with God for something that really matters to you? How do you respond when you are confident God is able to do far more than you are asking but it seems God remains silent? What happens when what you ask of God doesn’t happen or when God seems far away? How have you experienced the silence of God? Have you experienced God feeling distant? And what are we to do with that experience?
As a pastor, I’ve talked to a lot of people who have given up on the whole idea of prayer because they have experienced God as distant and silent. People tell me, “Prayer doesn’t work.” When I ask what they expected to happen, I hear their grief, their disillusionment, their anger at God because of the disappointment they’ve experienced with prayer. They say, “God didn’t come through for me.” “It felt like nobody was there. I prayed but God never responded.”
Learning from the psalms
The first thing we can learn from psalms (like the ones above) is that it is okay to ask God these kinds of questions. It’s okay to give voice to what you’re feeling. God isn’t offended if you ask why he seems so far away, so silent. These psalms are part of Scripture, inspired by God. The psalms teach us how to praise God, how to delight in God, how to thank God, how to confess our sins and come to God in repentance.
And given the number of psalms that contain laments and questions about God’s silence, I suggest the psalms also teach us how to pray when what God does in our lives doesn’t make sense. Part of prayer is telling God about the tension we experience when what we believe to be true about God doesn’t seem to fit what we experience in life.
These psalms don’t offer us techniques for getting God to do what we want him to do. They do not suggest you need to wake him up, point out where he’s failing, so that he’ll hop to it and do what you think should be done. Part of our problem with prayer is that our expectations are shaped by our own definitions. Jesus tells us to ask. He tells us our Father in heaven is not distant or uncaring and that he will respond quickly to his children who cry out to him. So we think God answering our prayer means granting what we request by doing exactly what we ask of him.
The psalms teach us that it is good and fitting to pour out our confusion to God in prayer. Like the psalmists, you can tell God what doesn’t make sense and ask him to give you perspective. You need to know why you can trust God and believe what he says in Scripture even when your experience of God’s providence is confusing. As you read these psalms of lament, these cries for understanding, many of these psalms resolve into expressions of confidence in God. Even though they don’t receive and answer to all their questions, the psalmists still express trust in the character of God: he is wise and good, he is full of steadfast love for his people.
It may be that in time, you will come to understand why God did not do what you asked of him. His silence at some point in your life may make sense as time goes by. But it also may be that you will not know in this life why God chose to work in your life the way he did. Can you still trust him? Can you rest in his love? Can you rejoice in his goodness?
Ultimately, the questions you have to ask are these: who is going to decide what is best for your life – you or God? What criteria will you use for deciding what is true about God – your experience or God’s revelation of himself in Scripture?
It helps me to find expressions of confusion about God’s providence in the psalms. It helps me to know I am not alone in the experience of crying out to God and feeling like he is distant and silent. And it helps me to see those expressing these feelings to God still clinging to God in faith. There is something about being honest with God, about telling him what we are feeling and pleading with him for understanding that helps us regain perspective.
Our feeble sense
“God Moves In Mysterious Ways” is a hymn written in 1774 by William Cowper. I hear people use that phrase as a figure of speech to say “We’ll never be able to make sense out of what God does.” They shrug their shoulders and resign themselves to the fact that what God does is mystifying. But that’s not what Cowper meant. He was expressing confidence in God. When you go through a tragedy or a difficult experience of some kind, the words of the hymn give this counsel: “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense but trust him for his grace.”
“Feeble sense” describes our senses that are limited and weak. We know so little of what God is doing. Yet we make judgments about God based on our limited understanding: “He’s not acting like a good God.” “He isn’t doing what is wise or best in this situation.” But those conclusions come from our small understanding, our limited, feeble sense of reality.
Instead, Cowper urges us to trust God for his grace. Our confidence, he says, is this: “Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.” A “frowning providence” means those times when it seems like God is mad at you or like he has removed his smile or approval because you don’t feel like he is blessing you. In those times, what you need to know is that God’s smile has not been removed from you. It’s hidden for you behind the “frowning providence.” But God’s smile of approval for you as his adopted child has not changed. His love for you has not changed. You may not see it, but he is always acting in love toward you.
Cowper didn’t look at life through a pair of rose-colored glasses. He knew the reality of suffering and evil. But he did deny the idea that evil and suffering are the final word – that they win in the end. It takes gospel courage to hold on to God in the face of “a frowning providence.”
Here are the words of his hymn:
God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs, and works His sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan his work in vain; God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain.
Can you trust him?
What if God doesn’t make it plain in your lifetime? What if you never in this life come to an understanding of why God chose to allow whatever it was or why God didn’t choose to do what you thought would be good? Can you trust him?
The value of voicing your complaints, your confusion, your anger or frustration over what feels like God being distant and silent is that it helps to put things in perspective. It deepens your understanding of God.
“How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say, ‘I have prevailed over him,’ lest my foes rejoice because I am forsaken. But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me” (Psalm 13:1-6).
You may not understand what God is up to in your life, but this is what you can know about God: He is good, compassionate, kind, patient, long-suffering, abounding in steadfast love. He is wise – he knows what is best in every situation. He is competent – omni-competent. There is nothing that happens in our world that God is not able to handle.
We focus on how the world impacts us. God is governing a world with billions of lives that intersect and impact each other. And he is weaving all these stories together perfectly, to accomplish the greatest glory in the end.
God has an inviting heart. He is not offended when we tell him what’s in our hearts. He invites us to come and ask, and he promises to give us the Holy Spirit to comfort and counsel and guide us.
Few people consider that maybe their disillusionment is the result of mistaken views of God, or mistaken assumptions about life. Maybe the problem isn’t God, but what you expect God should be and what you expect life should be.
When you are young, people ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In your mind, you begin to write a script for your life: “I’m going to go to college, get a good education, find a good job, get married, have a few children, enjoy life, eventually retire and enjoy the fruit of my life’s work.” But life rarely follows the scripts we write for ourselves. We do the same thing in terms of life as a Christian: “If I do these things right, God will bless me. And being blessed by God looks like this…” We have a mental script for how life should go as a follower of Jesus. But God rarely follows our scripts. When you feel discouraged or disappointed, ask yourself, “What did I want? What did I expect was supposed to happen?” That’s where you’ll begin to see your expectations (your script).
Somewhere along the line we need to realize that God is writing us into his story, not coming alongside to help us write our own stories. He pulls us into the grand story of redemption that he is writing. And his plans and purposes for us are far greater than the plans and purposes we have for ourselves.
The grace to trust him
There’s another old hymn that says, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” It’s very likely, if you grew up singing that hymn, that you took those words to mean if you just prayed about things, peace wouldn’t be disrupted and pain wouldn’t come into your life. But what happens when you pray and peace is shattered? What do you think when you pray, but pain doesn’t go away? There is no promise in the Bible that assures us we will never experience pain or loss of peace if we just pray enough.
What the hymn writer says is helpful if you understand what he means: You aren’t big enough to carry the pains life sends your way, but God is. Take those pains to him. Ask him to give you the grace to trust him when he doesn’t do what you thought would be best. Ask him to give you the ability to trust him. You don’t have to bear “needless pain” if you will learn to take everything to God in prayer. You may not understand what God is up to, but you can know why God is worthy of your trust. And as you tell him what is confusing and hard to bear, God will renew perspective. You are not alone. God isn’t silent. He is not distant. He has put his Spirit inside you. It is God’s Spirit who leads you to cry out, “Abba, Father,” and assures you that God’s smile or approval has not been removed.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
– William Cowper