What if God doesn't answer your prayers?

When your prayer for someone else is as close as a heartbeat

Remember how you carry a tiny baby? Sweet head resting on your chest—snuggled against you, the soft baby body molding its heart against your heart. Gentle stirrings, cozy weight. Some of us carry our prayer concerns for someone we love like this, tight against our chest with tears and fierce love, cradling our prayer for them in our hearts hour by hour.

One of the things that struck me deeply during the days of the Asbury Outpouring was how many parents brought their sick children to the altar, hope written on their faces with tears.

Of course, they would.

Of course, you would.

Of course, desperate parents would drive across the country or fly across the world to bring their children to Jesus. We know that God meets us anywhere--but if you believed that Jesus took up residence in a physical place, and you were desperate for your child, why wouldn't you bring them? Because maybe.

Maybe God would move. Maybe God would heal. Maybe just this once.

I prayed with plenty of families in those days. Prayed for healing, prayed for faith, prayed that God would do a miracle. I prayed with salty tears that dripped down onto a child’s blankets as I held her feet in my hands, kneeling beside the wheelchair. I also prayed without tears, headachy, and dehydrated when there were no more tears to give. I watched the row of stroller-wheelchairs grow as the days passed. I noted the babies on oxygen, and the children carried by their parents who should have been old enough to walk.

Over the hours, a sneaky little whisper wrapped its way around my heart. “I know God is not going to heal all these kids. Are they going to just leave more disappointed and broken than before? How can we keep praying for healing and not see healing again and again?"

Was this whisper doubt, realism or self-protection? Was it from my own spirit or something more nefarious?

Whatever it was, I shared it with my ministry partner, Jeannie. Jeannie’s face clouded, recognizing soberly all we held. Then, her face cleared. Jeannie said gently and fiercely, "We pray for healing, we trust God with the outcome."

From then on, I knew I had received marching orders: "We pray for healing, we trust God with the outcome." [You can read my story of the Asbury Outpouring here—Generation Awakened.]

I know that some of you are praying big, desperate prayers for your children. You may not be carrying a baby, snuggled on your shoulder, but I imagine what you are praying for is as close to your heart as in those days.

What if you had marching orders like I did in the days of the Outpouring?

We pray for healing; we trust God with the outcome.

What if we just keep believing, hoping and praying for big, impossible things for our children and ridiculously trust God with the outcome? God can deal with God's own reputation.

Once I met with a parent of an adult child who lived with a lot of physical pain. The parent told me, “Sarah, my favorite miracle is the story of the man who was crippled and sat each day by the gate called Beautiful.” The father shared with me how he loved this story of healing by Peter and John. He explained how the crippled man sat beside the gate for years. Everyone knew him. This means that no doubt Jesus passed by this man and did not heal him (Acts 3).

The dad looked at me as if I should get his point.

Full of wonderings, I just waited, hanging on his words. Why would this father choose this story?

The father went on. “This means I can trust that even when we have asked for healing before, it doesn’t mean that healing will never happen. I must believe that there was a purpose why Jesus didn’t heal the man when he passed him by and that this was the time for healing in his life when Peter and John showed up. It gives me hope.”

“I can trust that even if”…. Looking back, I could say: “What ridiculous trust!”

Or I could say: “Can I dare to trust God ridiculously?”

What if we ridiculously trust God with the outcome of our prayers?

What if we don’t keep score, don’t worry about the “healing prayer not working”?What if we just trust God with the outcome?

The world is broken. Healing doesn’t always (usually) happen the way we think it should. People are disappointed.

Sometimes we carry our prayers around for our children or others like a newborn baby in our arms, close to our hearts, the heartbeat of the prayer beating with our own pulse.

Do we trust God ridiculously?

Or is it ridiculous to trust God?

You decide.

What thing is for sure, God carries you around, close to His heart.

The softness of your soul curled against God’s heart, your pulse keeping time with God’s heartbeat. Like a newborn baby.

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