You finish praying, open your eyes, and everything is just as it was. The worry is still there. The conversation remains difficult. The answer you hoped for has not arrived.
When nothing changes, it is easy to think, “I must be doing prayer wrong.” Perhaps you needed better words. Perhaps you should have sounded more certain. Before long, you are carrying your original burden and another one: the shame of believing you have failed at faith.
If that sounds familiar, let us pause together.
At school, many of us learnt to look at our marks to find out how well we had done. A disappointing result sent us searching for mistakes. We can carry that habit into prayer, looking at the outcome and giving ourselves a grade. But prayer is not an exam. An unanswered prayer does not, by itself, tell you that your faith is weak.
Psalm 44 gives us words for this. In verse 17, the people say, “All this has happened though we have not forgotten you. We have not violated your covenant.”
They are speaking from a place of suffering and defeat. Earlier, they remembered what God had done for their ancestors. Now their own experience is painfully different. Yet they insist that they have remained faithful to him.
That matters. Scripture makes room for people whose hardship cannot simply be explained by saying they have turned away from God. Their suffering is real. So is their faithfulness.
The psalm does not finish with everything put right. It ends with an appeal: “Ransom us because of your unfailing love.” Their request rests on God’s love, rather than a claim that they have earned rescue.
We are not given a neat explanation for their suffering. We are given a prayer that allows faithful people to speak honestly about it.
You may have heard someone suggest that a stronger believer would already have received an answer. Perhaps nobody said it aloud, but you began saying it to yourself. That can make every prayer feel like another opportunity to disappoint God. It can be exhausting to explain your disappointment while also trying to prove that you still care about God and his ways.
Please hear this today: the outcome of the prayer you are waiting on cannot tell the whole story of your relationship with him. You do not need to pretend that waiting is easy. You do not need to make your pain sound more cheerful before you can speak about it.
There may be things in any of our lives that need attention. But we cannot look at someone’s unanswered prayer and conclude that they must have failed God. This psalm should make us slower to judge, and kinder towards the person still asking for help.
So today, at your corps or church, offer someone the gift of listening without assessing their faith. If they tell you about a struggle, let them finish. Give their words room before reaching for an explanation.
You might simply say, “Thank you for telling me. I’m here to listen.” You do not have to solve the waiting. Your patient attention can help them speak without feeling they must defend their love for God. And if you are the person who is struggling, you deserve that same gentle welcome.
Question for you: What would you want someone at church to understand about a prayer you are still waiting to see answered?
Let us pray. Loving God, you know the prayers we have carried for so long. Help us release the shame that treats every unanswered request as a failure of faith. Receive our honest sorrow. Give us kindness for those whose struggles we do not understand, and help us listen without judgement. Remind us that your love is never something we earn. Amen.
Join me tomorrow as we explore what we can hold on to when we do not feel God near.