Unanswered prayer

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways.— Isaiah 55:9

The apostle Paul had one overriding desire: that fellow Jews would embrace the Messiah he had encountered. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart,” he said. “For I could wish that I myself were . . . cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers” (Rom. 9:2-3 NIV). Yet in city after city his fellow Jews rejected him and the Christ he preached.

In his most elegant letter, Paul set as his centerpiece (Rom. 9–11) a passionate passage in which he struggled openly with this great unanswered prayer of his life. He acknowledged one important side benefit of this distressing development: The Jews’ rejection of Jesus led to His acceptance by the Gentiles. Paul concluded that God hadn’t rejected the Jews; to the contrary, they had the same opportunity as Gentiles. God had widened, not closed, the embrace of humanity.

Paul’s prose began to soar as he stepped back to consider the big picture. And then came this burst of doxology:

Oh, the depth of the riches

both of the wisdom

 and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are

His judgments and His ways

past finding out! (Rom. 11:33).

The unsolved mysteries and unanswered prayers all fade to gray against the panorama of God’s plan for the ages.

In the end, unanswered prayer brings me face to face with the mystery that silenced Paul: the profound difference between my perspective and God’s.

— Philip Yancey

READ: Romans 11:26-36

Prayer imparts the power to walk

and not faint. — Chambers

The Bible in one year:

•Numbers 25-27