What Good Does It Do?

"How long, O LORD, must I call for help? But you do not listen?" (Habakkuk 1:2)

On April 27, 2009, Becky, a loving wife and mother of 4, beloved daughter and sister lost her 5 year battle with breast cancer. She was a sister in Christ to me and I will always remember her beauty, strength, gentleness and grace. We prayed her through many hills and valleys and just when we thought she was out of the woods, God took her home to be with Him. What happened?

On July 19, 2012, I had a surgical procedure called Myringotomy and Tympanostomy.  Also known as ‘getting tubes put into the ears.’ I was hopeful that this procedure would cure my 5 year battle with vertigo. This new doctor was the first to give me hope.  I was confident that God would bless, as many prayed and that my problems would be over. No positive results yet. What happened?

In the early morning hours of July 20, 2012. dozens of people were killed or injured in a mass shooting at a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.  The shooting occurred during a screening of the new Batman movie. Good people. Children, parents, newlyweds, all innocent. What happend?

 On August 4, 2012 I received this prayer request: Ashley has her new lungs, but she has a fungal infection. It has spread to her brain and she has had two strokes. She is now in emergency surgery to remove part of her skull to reduce inflammation, swelling of the brain. Please pray for her. I believe in the power of prayer. Our God is an Awesome God.

Ashley is a young woman of around 26 years of age. She is a classmate of one of my sons and has lived with Cystic Fibrosis her entire life. When the call came for her to get a new set of lungs we praised God for answering our many prayers.  We saw post surgery pictures on Face book with her smiling in the hospital days after surgery. What happened?

My health situation pales compare to the life and death of these other families. But how many of us get discouraged and give up on God when even the day to day struggles just don’t make sense? I am convinced that nothing happens to us without it first being filtered through the hands of God. So when prayers aren’t answered the way we hope they’d be answered, does that mean God doesn’t care? Does He take vacation during the times that we need Him the most? Have you ever asked yourself What good does praying do?

Prayer is having a conversation with God about your life. There are many people conversing with God in the Bible and the prophet Habakkuk was one of them. He, like many of us today, could not reconcile his belief in a good and righteous God with the facts of life as he saw them.

It’s the eternal ‘why’ that will keep me up at night. I believe in God’s power and that He is in control. But I get bewildered at His answers.

Like Habakkuk, when I look at my circumstances, I feel perplexed. When I turn my confusion over to God, learning to wait for His answers and listen to the plans He has for His children, I feel order return into my life. I get a new confidence in God.

Maybe this new gained confidence only lasts until the next tragedy or doctor’s visit but I am beginning to understand that God cannot always give us satisfactory answers because our finite minds cannot understand the infinite. And we want to! We want to make sense of the senseless. Bottom-line, God is not human like us. “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)

What Good Does It Do… to pray? The next time God makes you wait for answers, realize that you and I can only see a small part of God’s plan. Like a train passing by us, we only see one car at a time. But God sees the entire train. He is working on a much bigger plan than either of us can fathom.

Even though everything Habakkuk could see lay in ruins, he told God that he would stay alert, expecting God to answer him. We need to do the same.

I expect that God will reveal more of his plan, to each of us, regarding the challenges we are struggling with today. I will be holding you up in prayer because anytime I am in the Throne Room having a conversation with God, I know it pleases Him. He created each of us because He wanted fellowship (or face time) with us. He can’t get enough of us!

Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we love You LORD because You hear and answer our prayers. You bend down and listen. We will pray as long as we have breath! In our anxiety we cry out but once we know You have not left us, we wonder what we can offer our LORD for all He has done for us. We will continue to call upon Your Holy Name. Help us to wait upon You. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Until next time~

Blessings, Nancy