Psalm 130:5 (NIV)
“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.”
When we are suffering — or watching someone we love suffer — and we go to God in prayer, waiting is one of the hardest things we are asked to do. We can be terrified of “no” or stricken with anxiety, wondering if we have said the right words or taken the right actions to unlock the Lord’s “yes.” Waiting can feel like being asked to carry a crushing weight with no end in sight.
Scripture does not minimize this struggle. Jesus himself sweat drops of blood in Gethsemane, waiting in anguish for an answer to his most desperate prayer — and the answer he received was “no.” If the Son of God was not spared that experience, we should not be surprised when we face it ourselves; it comes naturally in every loving relationship with God.
And yet false teachers and prosperity gospel preachers all over the world heap guilt on desperate people, tell them they have not yet spoken the magic words or made the right sacrifice to earn the answer they long for. This is a cruel deception — and it is not the gospel.
When Jesus teaches us to pray, he grounds our asking not in our performance but in our relationship to God as Father and in His character: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” (Matthew 7:9). We ask, and we wait, because we trust God’s words about Himself. Our Father’s deepest desire is for our good— even when the battle is real, the cost of standing with Jesus is hard to bear, and the answer we receive is not the one we longed for.
It is hard to keep on praying when we have been receiving “no” or “not yet” for so long. I grew up in Nigeria, and I have been praying since I was fifteen for peace in Jos. Yet I believe I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, and I will live to see peace in the home that has suffered so much. And if one day this hope is in vain, I trust that the waiting, the love, the prayers have all been seen and cherished more than I know and that my Father’s good heart will bring about more than I could ask or imagine.
This trust is not always easy to hold. We live in a very real spiritual battle, where tragedies and cruelties happen every day and the good we pray for does not always come quickly or in the form we expect. And yet we press on together, because he counts every tear that falls and does not look away.
As his Spirit flows through us, we are drawn to count the tears of our brothers and sisters too — to feel the weight of their burdens and stand with them through dark times.
A Prayer
Lord, may we wait on You together, bearing the strain of the time that passes as one Body, trusting in Your love for us, and the infinite value You place on each brother and sister. Thank you for your infinite love.
May God bless each of us as we wait together for his answer to the prayers of our brothers and sisters in Nigeria.
In His Grace,
Dara Searcy-Gardner
VP, Firm Foundation in Christ Ministries