Although we are only halfway through the book of Isaiah, this will be the last in the Insights from Isaiah series. I intend to go back to my usual pattern of selecting passages or topics that the Holy Spirit illuminates or that are of current interest or concern. For instance, my next article will probably be on the practical relevance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to you and me at this critical time.

Isaiah 30: 15, 18, 19(b)

I am selecting verses from a larger context, so let me sketch that out. This verse is part of the passage where God rebukes Judah and their king, Hezekiah, for turning to the Egyptian Pharaoh rather than to him. The Assyrians were threatening to invade Judah, and this made the king and his people very fearful.

“Oh Lord, please guard my heart from becoming so immersed in the ways of this world system that I, even inadvertently, stop depending on you and rather rush to my own solutions to my problems.”

The NIV version of the bible phrases the first part of Isaiah 15 as, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength,” So clear. So simple. Yet so hard to consistently apply!

We are all familiar with the story of the Prodigal Son. Every day, the father sits looking out at the horizon, hoping to see his lost son returning to him. Luke 15:20 is the record of what happens when the father catches sight of his son: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him”. The application to us is clear and obvious – when we repent and return to God, he rises up, runs to us, and throws his arms around us.

Isaiah continues this theme of grace and compassion in vs 19,

“How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer …”

Although these are wonderful words of encouragement, they present us with some real problems, for instance, “If God hears me, then why has he not answered me? Is it because I am so sinful that he has given up on me and blocked his ears to my cry?” The second part of that question is easy to answer. We may give up on God, but he never gives up on us. Nobody who cries out to God is irredeemable, no matter what sins they have committed. However, the first part of this question is real for all of us at one time or another. We have all experienced praying earnestly in times of confusion, pain or indecision, and it seems that God does not hear us. This is a confusing, painful life experience, so we need to find a satisfactory answer. The ‘wait is also an answer’ response is only of help to us if we have ‘heard’ the Lord saying this to us. “‘God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts, our thoughts'” (Isaiah 55:9) is true, but not really helpful.

When we think God doesn’t answer our prayers

• Sometimes we get prescriptive with God, and try to tell him exactly what we need and how and when he should satisfy our need. Some Faith teachers encourage us to do this (e.g. ask for a red bicycle, not just any bicycle), but to me, this speaks of magic and manipulation rather than trust in God.
• If we ask God to do something that violates someone else’s freedom to choose, or we ask for something that is contrary to God’s nature, character, or declared will, then we should not expect a favourable response.
• I think that one of our biggest problems could be that we just don’t understand the difference between time in the heavenly realm and time in our physical realm. In our dimension, time is linear, chronological, and forms part of the space-time construct underpinning the creation. In the heavenly dimension, time does not exist as we know it. I call Earth-time Chronos-time and Heaven-time Kiaros-time. Kiaros-time is when the moment is right, when all things come together as they should.

• I might sound a little unfair here, but I think it is also true for many of us. When we pray, we mostly ask God to do something and seldom ask him to speak to us. Perhaps he wants to explain the reasons, timing or other considerations, but we are so focused on what we expect the results to be that we do not wait and listen. We pray and then immediately get reinvolved in the distractions and demands of our lives. Perhaps if we took time to wait expectantly on him, the Lord would lead us to a scripture or ‘speak’ in some other way into the situation that engages us.

For me, the starting point for dealing with disappointments and unmet expectations is to reaffirm that God is good and truly cares for us. We cannot foresee tomorrow, let alone the longer term, but God can. We are limited in our understanding, but God isn’t. If he doesn’t seem to be answering us or providing for us then we can be sure that there is a good and godly reason for that, and so all is well.

I want to conclude this article with two biblical examples of people who must have experienced just what we do when our prayers do not seem to be answered, only on a scale few of us ever do. One is from the Old Testament and one from the New.

An Old Testament Example:

Joseph, son of Jacob, was sold by his brothers into slavery. I think that he must have prayed earnestly when that happened. The response he got was that the Arab traders sold him as a slave to an official in the Egyptian government. He surely continued praying! Then the man’s wife accused him of sexually molesting her, and Joseph was thrown into prison, where he remained for thirteen years! Was he still praying? The last two years of his prison term were after he had interpreted the royal wine taster’s dreams, and the man had promised to ask Pharaoh to set him free (famous last words). Then, at last, he was hauled before the Pharaoh to interpret his dream, and as a result was freed from prison and then appointed as the second-highest official in all Egypt! Did God love and care for him? Yes, he did, although there must have been times when Joseph thought he had been abandoned.

From the New Testament:

The other man was the Apostle Paul. He had a blinding encounter with the ascended Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. Once he was divinely healed of his blindness, he sought out the disciples in Jerusalem and was rejected. So he went off to Arabia and Damascus for three years (I am sure he was praying). Then he tried to connect with the Apostles, but his life was threatened by others, and he fled to Tarsus, where he remained for another seven years. Did he pray during those years? Absolutely! In fact, it was during that time that the Holy Spirit transported his spirit to the Heavenly realm, where he learned everything he needed to become the replacement twelfth Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the years that followed, Paul planted churches, raised leaders, worked wonders, and wrote 70% of the letters that make up the doctrinal part of what became the New Testament. Did God love and care for him? Yes, he did, although there must have been times when Paul thought he had been abandoned.

Take heart, dear friend. God is good, and he cares. He hears you when you pray, and one day when you look back, you will say, “Lord, you made a way for me that I never could have foreseen and a result I could not have anticipated. Thank you, Jesus!”