Sometimes God's Will Doesn't Match Up With Our Prayers, and it Doesn't Make Him Any Less Good

Seven years ago, I was crying out to God to save my marriage. I was losing my husband a little bit every day, and I was regularly in prayer begging God to save us, to turn things around. When our story hit its climax and my husband revealed to me that he was in love with another woman and wanted to leave me, I sobbed and prayed the entire night that God would fix it. His answer came back as clear as a voice in my ears. He told me that I needed to let my husband leave. So I did. I let my prayers for a healthy marriage and intact family walk right out my door and into the arms of another woman. For two months, my prayers for reconciliation went unanswered. I begged God to bring my husband back. I begged Him to fix me and fix my husband and put our family back together. My prayers all along had been that we would not have to walk the road we were traveling, but God's plans were different. He saw much further into the future of His plans for us to make His decisions based on what I wanted in the moment. Finally, in God's perfect timing, He moved and brought my husband home. And in the years since, we have seen countless blessings that have come from us going through the very trial I never wanted to walk through. 

A few years ago, we decided that we wanted to sell our house. We lived in town and wanted to move to a house closer to my husband's work and outside of town where we could have a little bit of land to stretch out on. We renovated and painted and cleaned our house so well that you would never have known that a homeschooling family of 5 lived there. Finally, last Spring, the big, exciting day came and we listed our house on the market. We were full to the brim of hope and promise and complete belief that God would give us our hearts' desires. And on the market it sat...and sat... and sat. In fact, we are still here. I prayed, fully believing that God would sell our house, that He had an amazing and perfect place ready for us to move into. Neither we nor our realtor understood why the house didn't sell. By earthly standards, it was an incredible house at an incredible price. My only answer for our realtor was that our house didn't sell because it was not God's will for it to sell. Plain and simple. Yet the day we took the house off the market was a day where I questioned what God's plans for us really were.  

There have been other times like this where I have prayed hard, sharing my heart's strongest and biggest desires with my God who I knew, and still know, without a doubt could grant them. I've even held up my Bible, as high as my 5 foot 2 frame can hold, and reminded God of John 15:7. I've reminded Him that Jesus said, "If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want and it will be granted." And in those moments, He listens to me and waits, quietly, patiently, until I stop talking long enough to finally listen. And then He speaks and opens my eyes so that I finally see that I've been focusing SO hard on what I want that I've lost my focus on Him. Oh, I always think my focus is on Him, but my prayers sound kind of like, "God, I want Your will to be done in my life, but I also really want this thing. So please let Your will include this thing, and if it doesn't, please change my heart." Parts of it may sound ok, but my heart is really saying, "please don't change my heart because I really just really want this thing". 

The real truth is that if we are deep in the Word daily, deep in relationship with God, filled with the Holy Spirit and honestly seeking Him first before any. other. thing, our prayers will be less about what we want, and more about wanting Him. Sometimes we will beg God with prayers that will have a "no" answer. We pray for a job or a sick family member or someone who is battling cancer. We always want to see our prayers answered based on what WE think is the best thing. But God sees the full picture, the today and tomorrow and the 10 years from now. And He knows what really is the best thing. And even in the "no" answers, He never ceases to be good.

Trust in a good God whose "no" for you today is far better than any "yes" that you can think of.