I was praying that a few weeks ago, and felt like I got an
answer to my situation, one that really surprised me. I was having to work with
a difficult person, and became very frustrated. I asked God why He wasn’t
delivering me from the situation. Then all of a sudden, I remembered a prayer I
had prayed several months ago. At that time I had seen some aspects of my
character that God needed to deal with, so I asked Him to change me no matter the
cost, no matter how bad it hurt me. Looking then at the situation I was in, I
realized God had placed me with a person who was slowly and painstakingly causing
me to develop the aspect of my character with which I struggled.
That realization made me excited to see that God was
answering my prayer, but also a bit hesitant to pray another prayer like that. I
was also disappointed in myself for not having faith in God that He had my best
interests at heart. He had been answering my prayer this whole time even though
I had complained every day. I realized that instead of getting frustrated
toward God for allowing me to go through this, I should rather be leaning on
Him and trusting in Him to teach me through it.
I realized that if I had just submitted to His plan in the
first place instead of questioning Him and resisting His plan the whole time, I
could have built up so much more faith and learned so much more.
So often we pray, “God, change me,” but then when He starts
to change us, we realize we didn’t actually want to change, but rather we
wanted the problem to go away. God realizes that taking away our problems isn’t
going to help us grow or change. Because
of this, sometimes He has to allow the problem to become even bigger than it
was so we’ll have to learn how to deal with it, and let Him teach us to lean on
Him.
I also wonder how many prayers God has said no to, because
He knows I don’t really want the answer. I pray for peace, and He gives me a
storm to learn how to have true peace. I pray for joy, and He gives me a
difficult situation so I can find where my true joy is.
Why does God answer no to some of our prayers? Because
perhaps He doesn’t trust us with the answers. Can God trust you? If you ask for
peace, and He uses a storm to teach you, can He trust you to still serve Him in
the middle of the storm? If you ask Him to teach you perseverance, and He
allows you to go through a drawn-out difficult situation, can He trust you to stick
out the lesson?
Whatever you are going through right now, I can assure you
that God has a purpose for it. The Bible says in Romans 8:28 that “All things
work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to His purpose.” Maybe your situation is difficult and you don’t
understand why you have to go through it. Maybe you are having difficulty
trusting God, but I want to tell you that you can always trust in God. He does
have your best interests at heart, even when you can’t see them. If you could
always see what He was doing and always understood, you wouldn’t need His help.
So when you ask Him for help, realize that you’re not always going to
understand the process. You won’t always see how the means gets to the end. However,
even when we can’t see, and can’t understand, we can know that God does see and
does understand, and He has an amazing end in store!
