How God Tends to Work: More on Unanswered Prayer

I just had a preach on unanswered prayer and there was just so much to say. One thought that I have been wrestling with that just didn’t make the cutting room floor was of how God seems to work in the world.

Sometimes I have heard God work suddenly or through these miracles. Sometimes I seen God work in coincidences that are just too perfect or too timely to be a coincidence. But JI Packer is quick to note on his book on prayer that How God tends to work is within the, “ordinary processes of ordinary life”¹. In other words, Packer notes how God tends to work in the world is by bending the natural flow of human history like it was some great river.

We see this slow moving methodology whenever we read through the pages of the Bible. Between the lines of every miracle birth or burning bush, or silenced lion are  years and even generations of faithful living and persistent prayer. I think that’s one of the reasons the Psalms are so chalk full of songs of lament and unanswered prayer. It also partly why the Bible itself is a compilation of writings that span well over 1,500 years.

As I was wrestling with this thought I just remember thinking why? Why would God choose to work in this way? Maybe it’s because trough prayer and faithful living God wants us as his children to participate with Him in the good and hard work of bringing His kingdom to earth. Maybe it’s because God just doesn’t want to shape human history, but he wants to shape human hearts as well (and shaping the latter takes longer than the former). Maybe he wants to grow in us virtues that need to take time to develop in us and so in His patience He is slow to work. Maybe instead of lifting us out of our trouble he’d rather be present with us in it because he wants a deeper relationship with us than just being our fixer or cosmic vending machine.

Ultimately like I mentioned in the sermon on sunday I don’t know why God works the way he does. But if God does work in the way that Packer mentions, than we need to pray with patience. Of course we should be bold with our asking. Of course we should cry out to him with urgency. But I think it also means we need to pray with surrender and trust even when things aren’t immediately happening. God’s timing is not ours and our prayers could slowly be in the process of blooming in their beauty long after we have expected them to resolve.

1. Packer, JI Praying: Finding our Way Throgh Duty to Delight (233)

Albert Wu is the campus pastor for The Tapestry Richmond
Photo by Tanner Mardis