November 2, 2008 12:25 PM
Elisabeth Elliot on "unanswered" prayers
I called them "unanswered" because I believe all prayers are answered - it's just that sometimes the answer is no, or not yet.
The Rupture of Self
Sometimes our prayers are for deliverance from conditions which are morally indispensable--that is, conditions which are absolutely necessary to our redemption. God does not grant us those requests. He will not because He loves us with a pure and implacable purpose: that Christ be formed in us. If Christ is to live in my heart, if his life is to be lived in me, I will not be able to contain Him. The self, small and hard and resisting as a nut, will have to be ruptured. My own purposes and desires and hopes will have to at times be exploded. The rupture of the self is death, but out of death comes life. The acorn must rupture if an oak tree is to grow.
It will help us to remember, when we do not receive the answer we hoped for, that it is morally necessary, morally indispensable, that some of our prayers be denied, "that the life of Jesus may be plainly seen in these bodies of ours" (2 Cor 4:11 JBP). Then think of this: the agonized prayer of Jesus in the garden went unanswered, too. Why? In order that life--our life--might spring forth from death--his death.
As always, I'd like to encourage you to include Elisabeth Elliot in your morning reading. She gives you a lot to think about during the day. Subscribe to her daily devotions here. You can also see a bunch of my favorites here.
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Comments
Thanks for this, Barbara. We struggled alot with the "why" after our second miscarriage. We finally have peace about it, but it has taken a long time to get to this point. We finally had to surrentder and see that for some reason our children were destined for only a short time on this earth and rejoy in the fact that they existed here on earth, and exist still in heaven where they will be for eternity.
It definitely helped us to think of things in terms of God's infinite plan, not just our Earthly one.
Posted by: lauren | November 2, 2008 2:05 PM
