When answers to prayer give more than is bargained for

It came to me in a counselling session recently that when God answers certain prayers, we’re not always ready for what an affirmative answer to those prayers will cost us.

It’s like, pray for patience and God will send opportunities — frustrations where we’ll be required to show patience.  We may say, “God, what are you doing?”  And, we could well imagine God smiling and saying back, “You want to be more patient, don’t you; well, here’s your chance to show it!”

In the particular situation, a person I’m counselling prayed very sincerely that he would get the help he needed to overcome something.  A very worthwhile and necessary prayer.

I’m sure many of us have prayed that kind of prayer.  I know I have many times.

He received an answer in the affirmative, but he got more than he expected.

When such prayers are answered, it’s a miracle.  I say this, because we receive something we didn’t previously have.  We could not have obtained it any other way.  And it changes things for us.  Much of the time it buoys our faith.  We see it in hindsight as we look back.  

But what about when the affirmative answer to that prayer — when God sees the heart behind the prayer and says, “Yes, granted” — involves pain, a fresh realisation of the depth of the journey, more truth to unpack, more burden for the mind and heart to manage?

Sometimes we’re given a particular analytical mindfulness as a means of stewarding the new gift we’re given.  It makes our lives actually more painful, because we’re shown more truth.

Our perception is enhanced, as if to SEE more, to see more truth, its potential impacts; perhaps we’re given a partial gift of prophecy — to be seers in a certain way.

Well, we know that prophets generally have harder lives than most of the rest of us.  They must bear a lot of truth that other people don’t, can’t or won’t see.  There’s frustration at best, and sorrow and grief at worst.  Prophets often live lonely existences.

But God has answered the prayer.  God has given the person what they desperately needed and wished for by prayer.  God looked at the heart, the person’s capacity to bear this gift, and their need, and said, “Yes, this person must get this thing they’re praying in faith for.”

They get it, then they’re shocked, because despite the wonder of the miracle of a prayer granted, there is a significant season of adjustment, including grieving, because there is no choice for this person now but to accept a change that has HAPPENED to them.

What God gives to a believer in faith, God will not remove from them.

It’s a classic irony, and it gives great credence to the phrase, “Be careful what you ask God for in prayer.”

Should we not have prayed for this thing?  No, we NEEDED this new thing or way of being; it was and is vital for us.  God knows this, and, having seen the sincerity in the heart of the person praying, the gift is given.

One extra thing we’re given in the process of receiving the gift of an answered prayer is a deeper knowledge of how God works as well as the depths of life we previously hadn’t contemplated or comprehended.

It certainly shouldn’t stop us from praying for what we need.  But it does mean even in answered prayer, we’ll often need to be brave as we work with what we’re given.

The reality of answered prayer is there are often unanticipated costs, but this isn’t a discouragement.  Answered prayer is always good, it just often takes us on a journey we didn’t expect.

Photo by Iwan Shimko on Unsplash