Praying When You Don't Believe Your Prayers Are Getting Through

For most of her life, Amy Carmichael was almost

impossible to keep still. For 35 years in southern India, she was

the woman who slipped into Hindu temples in disguise and carried

out the children being sold into them. She ran a whole compound

full of rescued kids who called her Amma, Mother. She was always

moving, always on her feet. Then, one night in 1931, walking in

the dark, she fell into an unlit pit. She shattered her leg and

twisted her spine. She never got up again. Between the injuries

and the nerve pain that followed, Amy was confined to her bed,

hurting for what turned out to be the last 20 years of her life.

And she did what she'd always done. She prayed. She prayed

about everything over the decades, and she'd watched God

answer again and again. So she asked him for the one thing she

wanted most now, to be well enough to get back to her

children and her work. And she waited for the answer. We'll

come back to what happened to Amy, but

first, welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm

Bart Leger. I've counseled a lot of people over the years who

felt like their prayers weren't being heard. And sometimes I

know how they feel. A wife praying for a husband's healing

that didn't come. A parent praying for a child who kept

drifting away. They'd ask me, sometimes in tears, whether God

was even hearing them. I never had a quick answer to give them.

What I could tell them, and what I've come to believe, is that

God hears the prayer, even when it feels like it's not being

heard. Maybe you're there right now. You pray, and it feels like

the words come out of your mouth and just vanish into the room.

No sense that anyone's on the other end. You start to wonder

if you're doing it wrong, or whether God is listening at all.

That kind of stretch can make you want to quit praying

altogether, because talking to the starts to feel pointless. If

you felt that, you're in the Bible's own company. There's a

psalm written by a man in that exact place. Listen to Psalm 88,

verses 1 and 2. O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out to you

by day. I come to you at night. Now, hear my prayer. Listen to

my cry. That's the opening of that prayer. And here's what

makes this psalm different from most every other one. It doesn't

turn the corner. Most psalms that start in the dark start to

climb toward hope by the end. This one doesn't. The man cries

out, day and night. He lists everything that's gone wrong,

and the last line leaves him in the dark with no answer in hand.

The psalm just ends there. Now, think about that. The people who

assemble the Bible could have let this one out. A prayer with

no resolution, no lesson, tied up in a nice, neat little bow.

No, they kept it. God kept it because he wanted you to know

that a prayer like that, a prayer like ours, the kind that

seems to go nowhere, belongs in the Scripture, right alongside

the ones that got answered. Your unanswered prayer belongs in the

faith. It's printed right in the middle of it. Here's the truth

Psalm 88 holds open for you. Some prayers don't get answered

in the room where they're prayed. You may hear nothing back, and

still, God heard every word you said. The silence in the room

was never silence in heaven. Now let me tell you what happened to

Amy. It never came. The healing Amy prayed for didn't arrive.

Not that year, and not in any of the 20 years she had left. Her

body never got better. She prayed into what looked, from

the inside, like a closed door, and nothing came back. But

here's what she didn't do. She didn't stop praying, and she

didn't grow bitter. From that bed, in constant pain, she kept

running the ministry, and she wrote some of the most beloved

books of her life, one page at a time. And out of those years

came a line people still repeat, In acceptance lieth peace. Amy

had learned something the psalmist knew. God hears every

prayer you pray, even the ones that seem to disappear into thin

air, even the ones he answers with a no. When she died, she

asked for no gravestone. The children she'd rescued set a

plain birdbath over the place instead, with one word carved

into it. Ama, or mother. In acceptance lieth peace. Amy

prayed for healing every one of those 20 years, and never got it.

She got something else instead, a peace that let her keep

writing and keep mothering from a bed of pain. She's not going

to carry her. She got her back in the bed of pain. The God who

told her no was hearing her all the time. He heard every prayer

that ever came from that bed. Here's today's challenge. If

your prayers feel like they're going nowhere, don't stop. Pray

the Psalm 88 kind of prayer, the one with not necessarily any

tidy ending. Tell God plainly that you feel unheard, and keep

bringing Him the thing you've been asking for. You don't need

better words or more faith to be heard. You already are. Pray it

again today, and leave the answer and the timing with a God

who has heard every word. Father, some of us have been praying

into what feels like an empty sky, and we're worn out from

wondering if you hear us. Thank you that you kept Psalm 88 in

your book, so we'd know our kind of prayer belongs to you. You

hear every word, even the ones that seem to go nowhere. Give us

Amy's peace to keep praying and not grow bitter, and to trust

that you heard us long before we ever see the answer. In Jesus'

name, amen. and a review if your app allows it? It helps more

people find these devotions, and it only takes a moment. I'd be

so grateful. And thanks for joining me on Daily Devotions

for Busy Lives. Remember, God hears every prayer you pray,

even the ones that seem to vanish into the room. And

silence there was never silence in heaven. Come back next time

for more encouragement to help you live grounded in God's truth.

Until then, God bless and have a great day.