Have you ever prayed for something or someone and things got worse instead of better? Answers you desperately wanted worked opposite of how you had prayed. Without a doubt, this seriously causes your faith to take a hit.
I can tell you that trying to understand it is very difficult. I have prayed for people to be healed only to see them get them get worse. Now these are the experiences that can really throw you for a loop. They can push you to the point of asking yourself why you even pray in the first place. You have to be a strong person to get through this and realize that your prayers aren’t necessarily any kind of jinx or cause for something getting worse.
When you pray and you get the opposite result doesn’t mean that things are getting worse. That is our perspective but we have to understand that God has a view of things that goes beyond what we can see. This gets a little deep but basically it comes down to the fact that we have to trust what we don’t see to God who can see it all.
Our prayers are embedded with what we want to happen but sometimes God’s will can be something totally different. Honestly, sometimes it simply doesn’t make sense. Try explaining this to someone who doesn’t believe at all. It isn’t a fun position to be in. How can you help someone else believe when it isn’t working for you?
I get annoyed when I see preachers on TV talk about faith and prayer as if faith is some kind of magic spell that if you have enough of it God will do anything you ask. If not, then maybe you need to “sow seed” into their ministry. If you aren’t familiar with that terminology, it means to SEND MONEY to them. If you do that somehow God will be compelled to do what you ask.
God ain’t your personal genie. Sending money to a preacher isn’t going to guarantee you a positive result. In case anyone needs a reminder, God will do what He wants to do when He wants to do it. Our job is to pray according to His will and accept the results.
The Bible even tells us that God’s ways aren’t our ways (Isaiah 55:8) so there will be times that we aren’t praying according to what God wants to do. This can be awfully frustrating. Believe me, I have had my share of these times in my own life.
Once I was praying for a situation and was sure of the direction everything was going to go and never considered any other option. When the door closed on my answer I was devasted and didn’t understand at all why God shut it down. I will be honest and tell you that it knocked the wind out of me. But in time I saw why things happened the way they did. I am very glad how things turned out. It took some time but I learned to appreciate how God answered my prayer even if it wasn’t what I prayed for.
Here are some important things I have hopefully learned when my prayers have made things worse:
- Don’t get mad at God. Yep, that’s the first that happens. It doesn’t work. He’s still God. We have to get over it and understand that He knows what He’s doing.
- Don’t stop praying. We may think it doesn’t matter if we pray or not but praying isn’t always about asking it is also about simply communicating which also involves listening or being quiet.
- Realize that God has a better plan. Clear your mind and get yourself lined up with God’s plan instead of your own.
Timing is everything. When things get worse when you pray, it’s not you. It’s God at work. Trust in God and don’t trust in your understanding about things. (Proverbs 3:5)
