Jesus’ Example of Unanswered Prayer
By Jamie Overholser
Prayer is both simple and complex.
It’s as simple as having a meaningful conversation with a good friend. And it’s as complex as making our will known to God but surrendering it at the same time.
Prayer involves taking the risk of pouring out the desires of our hearts, but concurrently whispering those words of Jesus, “Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39).
Can you feel the tension?
Agony of the Will
Jesus felt that tension in the Garden of Gethsemane as He agonized over His Father’s will concerning the redemption of humankind. Interestingly enough, there’s no record that the Father responded.
Jesus knew in His heart the will of His Father. But He expressed the overwhelming agony of His soul about the reality of the immediate future. He was so overwhelmed that He was compelled to tell His Father exactly how He felt and prayerfully wonder about an alternative.
Over the last decade I often expressed to the Lord exactly how I felt. In a particularly dark season in pastoral ministry, I echoed the words of David many times: “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest” (Ps. 55:6).
Just get me out of here, Lord!
I suggested alternatives to God by sending out my resume to other ministries, escorted by the missionary prayer, “I’ll go anywhere for You, Lord!”
No one responded to my ministry inquiries. Even the Father remained silent for a long time. Then one day I heard these words in my heart: “Jamie, I know you’ll go anywhere for Me, but will you stay here for Me?”
I was not hoping for that answer. The Father’s will is rarely somewhere else. It is most often right where you are—even if that place is painful and full of sorrow. How can this be?
Facing the Tough Reality
My friends, may I introduce to you submission and trust? These are key spiritual disciplines in responding to the story God is writing, especially when we face the tough reality that He doesn’t tell us everything we want to know.
Deuteronomy 29:29 declares, “The Lord our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us. . . ” (NLT). This crucial truth should release the tension and bring an utter sigh of relief.
In His rich mercy and boundless wisdom God doesn’t tell us everything. If He did, we wouldn’t take one step further into the future. In response to what He has not revealed, we humbly submit to His benevolent and gracious reign over our lives. We trust in His good heart toward us amid not knowing.
As Brennan Manning expresses in his book Ruthless Trust, “The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment.”1
The “desert of the present moment” for Jesus in Gethsemane was saturated with submission and trust. Twice in His prayer, Jesus submitted to His Father’s will. He didn’t just say the words; He knelt in submission and then walked the way of trust. He bowed His heart in surrender and became subservient “by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).
Even the apostle Paul did not get the answer to prayer that he hoped for. Three times he pleaded with the Lord to remove, as he described, “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan” (2 Cor. 12:7). Instead of taking something evil away, God gave him a sufficient amount of grace that allowed divine power and strength to shine through and rest upon Paul.
This was a real experience for Paul, not just some flowery way for God to ignore his request. It was so real that Paul went on to say, “I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). You see, Paul may never have been able to say this if his thorn had been removed as requested. Paul grew leaps and bounds by God not giving him what he thought he needed.
I don’t blame Paul for his request. Many times I’ve asked God to remove something or someone from my life that was causing pain. But as we see repeatedly in Scripture, the removal of “a thorn in the flesh” may be our will, but it’s not God’s. His will supersedes pain management. His will concerns our overall growth as a human being and a Kingdom citizen. His will is always bigger than the immediate discomfort we’re experiencing. God desires our maturity and His glory.
God’s in Charge
In the fall of 2019, my wife and I put our 120-year-old farmhouse in Pennsylvania on the market. We were in a financial pickle. Well, to say it more bluntly, we were in a desperate financial place! We had a plan to ease the present pain we were in, but looking back, we acted out of pure desperation. It was a bad plan!
Sure, we talked to God about it, but really didn’t give Him much time to act. He didn’t wave His magic wand quickly enough to solve our problem. So, we threw our best exit plan together and hoped for the best. Looking back, we are extremely thankful now that God did not answer the original request. We would have been even more desperate if He had.
In January 2020 we sensed that we should take our house off the market. We had one low offer in three months and then a strange, full-price cash offer that just did not sit well with us for some reason.
Well, who knew that a global pandemic was waiting just around the corner? God knew.
In His graciousness He delayed and then masterfully reconstructed our desperate plan into His beautiful will. There are many more details to this story but suffice it to say that God sold our house in August 2021 at the height of a seller’s market. He graciously allowed us to move to central Virginia where the weather is splendid most of the time (think less snow!) and where we live much closer to our adult children.
My friends, perhaps we should begin every prayer with submitting ourselves to God’s gracious sovereignty in our lives. I don’t want to figure this out all on my own. I would rather kneel in submission every morning to my King who rules and reigns with great wisdom and kindness. I would rather trust His good heart toward me than question His every move, especially when His answers don’t sync up with my specific requests.
Lord, we submit to You now. We surrender to Your glorious, gracious, and sometimes bewildering ways You choose to write our story and fulfill Your will. We give everyone and everything to You, Father. We trust You through the pain, the ambiguity, and the obscurity of our present situation. We trust You to give us what we need and what will allow Your grace, power, and strength to shine through and rest upon us. And when You give us what we do ask for, thank You! You’re a good, good Father.
Either way, Lord, You’re a good, good Father. Amen.
God is in charge. And to be honest, I don’t want to be.
1Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust (HarperSanFrancisco, 2000).
JAMIE OVERHOLSER serves as a Field Shepherd with Standing Stone, a ministry that shepherds and mentors pastors and ministry leaders. He also works as a Bereavement Counselor with a hospice agency.
