Once, long ago, you prayed for a loved one’s salvation earnestly and often. Now, you still pray sometimes, but you can barely bring yourself to hope for the answer.
Or maybe you once pleaded for grace against a stubborn character flaw or besetting sin. Now, you’ve succumbed to a sort of fatalism about yourself. Some things just don’t change.
Or perhaps you once sought God for a relational breakthrough. Now, though the sorrow stays deep, reconciliation seems all but impossible.
Most of us can think of some desire we once brought before God almost without ceasing. As far as we could tell, the request honored him and aligned with his word. So, we prayed and took our stand, our eyes open for the answer.
But then weeks passed, and then months, and then years, maybe many years. And gradually, we stopped asking so often. As hope faded, so too did our prayers.
Dear brother or sister, however many months or years have passed since you last asked — really asked — God to fulfill some godly desire, I invite you to ask again and keep asking. And I want to do so with some help from George Müller (1805–1898), a friend who has given my own prayers fresh hope.
Fifty-Year Prayers
Müller’s life is, from one angle, a story of answered prayer. At the beginning of his orphan ministry in Bristol, England, he resolved to ask no one for money except God. The result was a life of constant prayer — and constant answers to prayer. “I should not go a particle too far,” Müller said in his seventies, “[that] I have had thirty thousand answers to prayer, either in the same hour or the same day that the requests were made.”
Müller offered that miraculous testimony, however, as the backdrop to a much different experience: “One or the other might suppose all my prayers were thus promptly answered. No; not all of them. Sometimes I have had to wait weeks, months or even years; sometimes many years” (Delighted in God, 193).
In 1844, for example, Müller began praying daily for the salvation of five friends. A year and a half later, the first was saved; five years after that, the second was saved; six years more, the third was saved. But then forty years passed, and the final two remained unsaved. Müller, however, kept praying — every day.
“When once I am persuaded that a thing is right and for the glory of God,” he wrote, “I go on praying for it until the answer comes.” Then, turning to Christians like you and me, he offered a gentle correction: “The great fault of the children of God is, they do not continue in prayer; they do not go on praying; they do not persevere. If they desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it” (223–24).
When the years wear on, when the answer delays even for decades, what would Müller counsel us to do? Continue; go on; persevere. Keep praying for a breakthrough.
Ask, Seek, Knock
Maybe we wonder, though, whether Müller was right to keep praying for answers that did not come. After all, Scripture gives us examples of saints who are told to stop asking for something: Moses on the edge of the promised land (Deuteronomy 3:25–26), Paul with his thorn (2 Corinthians 12:8–9). So, we might even wonder if persistent prayer for the same thing displeases God. At some point, shouldn’t we take his delay as his decline?
No doubt, a prayer life can become lopsided. We can so focus on one prayer that we neglect many other good prayers. Or we can desire something good for reasons far different from “hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). But if we are persuaded, as Müller says, “that a thing is right and for the glory of God,” and if God’s glory remains the passion beneath our prayers, then Scripture offers plenty of encouragements to keep praying.
Didn’t Jesus tell his disciples parables “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1)? The widow asked and kept asking till her requests beat down the judge (Luke 18:4–5). The late-night knocker pounded the door till his friend got out of bed and gave him what he wanted (Luke 11:5–8). So, Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9).
As we look at his ministry more broadly, wasn’t it the persistent people who received what they asked for? The crowds shushed the blind man, but he kept shouting for mercy — and got it (Mark 10:46–52). Jesus initially ignored the Canaanite mother, but she kept kneeling before the Master’s table until he gave her a crumb (Matthew 15:21–28).
Teachings and stories like these move us toward the same conclusion the commentator Derek Kidner drew from the Psalms: “God, it seems, prefers an excess of boldness in prayer to an excess of caution” (Psalms 73–150, 319). So, unless you have a compelling reason for why you should no longer pray for some deep, God-honoring desire, keep praying.
Grace in God’s Delays
Maybe you’re persuaded to keep praying. But you wonder, as I do, why God designed prayer to work this way. If God can open any door at any time, why does he sometimes keep us knocking for so long? If God can answer thirty thousand prayers the same day Müller prayed them, why did he wait fifty years before answering others?
Once, Müller and his staff at the orphanage were praying for God to provide money they dearly needed. Finally, when they had no way to pay for the children’s breakfast the next morning, God sent funds through a man who had been staying nearby. Müller reflected,
That the money had been so near the Orphan-Houses for several days without being given is a plain proof that it was in the beginning in the heart of God to help us; but because He delights in the prayers of His children, He had allowed us to pray so long; also to try our faith, and to make the answer so much the sweeter. (Delighted in God, 82)
God surely has many reasons for his delays. But here Müller fastens upon three that help us not lose heart.
DEEPER COMMUNION
First, God sometimes delays because he delights in the prayers of his children. Christian, God loves your humble, sincere prayers. He loves to see your soul knee-bent. He loves to hear you renounce self-reliance and confess that “what is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Earnest, needy, believing prayers are incense before him, a sweet-smelling pleasure (Revelation 8:3–4). And when the months or years go on, and all earthly probabilities pass away, he delights to find you still praying.
Unanswered prayer can feel like God distancing himself from us. But what if his delays are invitations to draw nearer — to love him above all answers and to believe he can still answer?
STRONGER FAITH
Second, God sometimes delays because he wants to try our faith. We need faith, strong faith, to keep praying for something that has not come — to keep waiting for a sun that won’t rise, to keep knocking on a door that won’t budge. The faith of many has withered in the waiting. It can feel easier to believe God doesn’t hear or doesn’t care than to ask and ask again.
But God does hear; he does care — and he is able, with a word, to end the long delay. So, though we have no promise that God will answer our prayers exactly as we expect him to, unanswered prayer can foster in us the trust of Abraham, who “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God” (Romans 4:20), fully convinced that God could fill an old woman’s womb — or rescue a prodigal, or bring personal breakthrough, or rekindle cold love.
SWEETER JOY
Finally, God sometimes delays because he wants to make the answer so much the sweeter. God is devoted to making you as happy in him as you can be. And he knows that sometimes deeper joy lies on the other side of a long delay.
God wants you to look at answered prayers like Abraham and Sarah looked at Isaac, this son named laughter. They could hardly hold him or hear his voice without laughing, astonished at God’s goodness (Genesis 21:3–7). But they would not have laughed as they did if they hadn’t waited as they did. Theirs was a vintage joy, strong and well-aged. And so is ours when we pray and wait, pray and wait, and then finally find the answer.
What We Ask or Better
Alongside these good reasons for God’s delays, Müller rested his soul upon another mighty truth as he persisted in prayer: “Our heavenly Father never takes anything from His children” — or withholds anything from his children — “unless He means to give them something better” (Autobiography, 179). If God should never give you what you ask for, dear saint, he has something better in mind for you.
You may struggle to grasp how his no is better than his yes; you may need to wait till heaven to see clearly. But as surely as God gave up his Son for you, he will not give you worse than what you ask for (Romans 8:28; 32). In the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, he has already done the hardest and given the best. Now, the gospel assures you just how willing your Father is to “give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11).
Persistent prayer dies under the lie that God doesn’t like to give good things. He does like to give good things — the best things, gifts far better than we can ask or imagine. So, take your good desires, your God-honoring longings, and keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Your Father invites you to do so. And if he says no, he will only give you something better.
Desiring God