Trust: When He Did Not Do What You Asked
The hardest kind of trust to talk about is the kind that comes after disappointment.
You prayed. You believed. You waited. And it did not happen. The healing did not come. The relationship did not restore. The job did not open up. The person did not come back to faith. Whatever it was, you handed it to God with everything you had, and God did not give you what you asked for.
Some of you know exactly what I am talking about.
This week's theme: Trust.
Today, the hardest truth of the week. How to keep trusting a God who has already said no to something that mattered to you.
Let me start by saying that most Christian teaching handles this poorly.
The common answer is "God had a better plan you could not see." Sometimes that is true. Sometimes, when you look back after ten years, you can see it. But often it is not true, or it does not feel true, and telling someone in fresh grief that their unanswered prayer was actually a better plan can be pastoral malpractice.
The Bible does not handle it that way. The Bible handles it more honestly.
Habakkuk wrote a book that opens with a raw complaint against God. He is watching injustice everywhere and God appears to be doing nothing. He shouts at God. He asks how long. He demands answers.
God answers, eventually, but the answer is not "you were wrong to be upset." The answer is a longer view of what God is doing that Habakkuk cannot see, followed by an invitation to trust anyway.
Then Habakkuk writes one of the most quietly heroic verses in scripture.
"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour." - Habakkuk 3:17-18
Read it slowly. Notice the word "yet."
Habakkuk is not saying "God will fix it." He is not saying "everything will work out." He is naming, one by one, the losses. The failed harvest. The empty stalls. The absent provision. And then he says yet.
Yet I will rejoice. Yet I will trust. Even though the answer never came the way I wanted.
That is the kind of trust nobody wants to talk about. Because it is not triumphant. It does not have a neat bow on it. It is the trust of someone who has grieved a prayer God did not answer, and who has decided, honestly, to keep leaning on him anyway.
Not because they understand. Not because they have made peace with the no. Because they have run out of anywhere else to lean.
If you are in that season, you are not weak. You are actually one of the more spiritually mature Christians in this newsletter today. Because Habakkuk trust is the hardest kind, and it is the kind God treats most tenderly.
He is not asking you to pretend the no did not hurt. He is not asking you to say it was for the best. He is only asking you, at the end of the grief, when you have nothing else, to say yet.
Yet I will trust him.
He is with you in the yet.
YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY
If you are carrying an unanswered prayer, do not try to explain it away today. Just say Habakkuk's word. Out loud. "Yet." That is enough for today.
A PRAYER FOR TODAY
Father, I have been holding an unanswered prayer, and I do not know what to do with it. I do not need to understand today. I only need to say yet. Yet I will trust you. Meet me in the yet. Amen.
OVER TO YOU
What "yet" are you sitting with today? A word or a line. Every reply held with care.
God bless you, my friend.
The LowKey Christian
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