Unanswered Prayer is Favor

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One day, I read somewhere in the bible. "Will he keep putting them off?"

The phrase caught my attention years ago while in meditation. It was a powerful revelation. God sometimes intentionally "keeps putting off" the prayers of his "righteous (or chosen) ones." He deliberately delays or ignores our prayers, keeping them unanswered "day and night," not because of sin in our lives, but because he chooses to.

Why does he choose to? I'll reveal it to you later.

Here's the complete passage:

And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? [Luke 18.7]

I then understood God's point in Job. Job's prayers remained unanswered because God favored him, as God's earlier conversation with Satan revealed. Job's friends insisted that it was due to sin, or disfavor, because they didn't understand what was going on, though they seemed super spiritual---more spiritual the Job. Their human theology prevented them from getting God's revelation.

Mind you, sin prevents your prayers from being answered. But this is something else. You have unanswered prayers because God favors you.

If you stick to your human theology---putting God in the box of your human, earthly hermeneutics---you will keep missing God and see only man and his religious ideas. I know hermeneutics but I prefer the supernatural revelation of the Holy Spirit who follows no limit or format or formula or pattern. "The wind blows wherever it wills.." I just open my heart to God and receive. Period.

More about simply receiving from God. Click here.

Anyway, lots of folks misunderstand unanswered prayer. And we think answered prayers alone are favors from God. What we don't see is it's other, more important, side---that angels in heaven, for instance, marvel at people who get their prayers unanswered and yet keep praying "day and night." Heaven delights in these believers more than it does those who get their prayers answered.

Answered prayer is good (it glorifies God), but unanswered prayer is the ultimate in the Kingdom. It delights God and demolishes the enemy. When you want nothing and no one but God, Satan falls like lightning again from heaven.

When Jesus asked the Father to take away (cancel) his cup of suffering, his prayer was unanswered. In fact, we can say he got a "no" for it. The cross was never canceled. As he went through the cross, he kept praying to God, nonetheless. People who didn't understand mocked him (as Job's friends also did him). "He saved others, let him come down from the cross if he is God's Messiah!" they taunted.

They were hinting that, if God really favored Jesus, why didn't he ask him for rescue? In fact, when Jesus shouted, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" they waited to see if Elijah would come down from heaven and rescue him. Nothing like that happened. Yet, these were Jesus' finest hours, the moment when God favored him most---the same moment he got "no" for an answer. God, in his delight, exalted him to the highest heaven:

...by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [Philippians 2]

Get this revelation---Jesus called for help ("let this cup pass from me") but got none. His prayer remained unanswered. Yet he kept on talking or praying to God. And finally, even if his prayer remained unanswered, he entrusted his spirit to God in the end. His prayer was unanswered because he had God's favor.

Unanswered prayer is favor.

Here's the Why

Why? Why does God sometimes "keep putting off" the prayers of his chosen ones? Because God delights so much in those who keep praying to him even without getting anything in return. It's not so much what they would get from him as it is their delight in simply being with him---basking or frolicking in His Presence, though in agony. In him there's happiness in agony. 

On earth (as long as you remain earthly), we marvel at people who enjoy answered prayers. And I love seeing prayers answered because it glorifies God. But that's just scratching the surface. Answered prayers are good but we should pursue after the communion---the intimacy. After a long while deeper in his presence, you understand that it's not the answer to prayer (though it counts a lot) but the familiarity with God that satisfies you, and you develop this during extreme intimacy. Such familiarity is only developed in unanswered prayers.

It's like, you have concerns, and you bring it up to him, but the answers sometimes no longer matter. Answers only connect you more to the earthly, and you lose interest in them. It's his touch or his "tap" on your shoulder that counts. That "tap" makes the big difference. It's leaning on him and both of you looking afar quietly that brings meaning to prayer, not the answers anymore. And in this light I know what went on between Enoch and God in the 300 years they did nothing but walk together until Enoch "was no more."

When you spend time with God like that and he takes you to eternity a moment, you become "no more." You get translated to his dimension and "cease existing on earth," as it were. Yeah, the problems remain and your prayers are still unanswered---after all that glorious experience you "return" to earth still with your problems intact---yup, you still don't have money and the bills still need to be paid---but God's tap or touch made the huge difference. You're never the same once more, on a higher level.

The problem with answered prayers is that they never stimulate you to go higher with God and keep going higher, even without material rewards. You only go so far as long as you get what you want. Rewards often content us to the rewards themselves. The four friends of Daniel didn't mind getting "no" for an answer in case God never rescued them from death if they didn't bow down to the image of gold. They went far beyond answered prayer. They became God's flesh.

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