Hurt of unanswered prayer

We've all heard it. You pray, nothing happens. I've been there. And the hurt is unreal. I can remember one time just balling my eyes out with my buddy. We met regularly to chat about life and hold each other accountable to certain things. He knew what I was going through and then he helped me through the pain.

Ironically, a very similar thing happened, unanswered prayers. This time I wasn't as distraught, I was mad. And since then, my life has altered course.

So here is the official word from your pastor... Sometimes God says "No" to your prayer. Sometimes he says "Not yet." Sometimes he says "Yes" and sometimes he says "Grow!"

We see examples of stupid prayers in the Bible when the disciples wanted to destroy a town by calling down fire from heaven, and Jesus says 'No.' can you imagine that? How many times did they have other requests that weren't recorded that were just as crazy? We have the "let me sit at your right hand!" request, which went no where. So - yeah, sometimes the prayers don't make sense. We won't be able to see that until time passes.

"Not Yet." OK - That's an interesting one. I don't recall a not-yet case in my life. If anything, my example above was a not-yet that got changed to a not-ever. Now I say that with sarcasm. But I'm still a bit disappointed with God on this one (and I fully believe he is big enough to take it).

There is a legitimate argument here. For instance, when I sit at a computer, I like my area to be clean. I know what dust and dirt do to the keys and parts. But here comes my dog. He wants for all the world to be scratched. Do I do it? Not yet.

Then, there is the time when my dog comes to me rather withdrawn. In fact, I may just catch him wondering around in the hallway and he starts to get excited to see me, but then he stops and tucks in his tail. "What?" I ask... and yet I know. Somewhere in my house a new object (or a favorite object) has just been christened with the one leg salute. He isn't going to get anything from me until we have reconciled that situation.

Well, that's the GROW part for me. I'm mad. I honestly don't know if God is saying "No. Not Yet. or Grow." And since I don't know, all I can do is run to introspection and self evaluation. I can only hope to grow from this. Perhaps there is something that I've done wrong (peed on the carpet type thing) that I need to correct. That is very likely the case.

But honestly, this is where grace comes in. I know I'm a sinner. So I don't expect to have a clean slate any day of the week. So I'll pray, and I need to pray for grace as well.