"Prayers That God Will Not Answer"

I get tired of my own updates, especially these last eighteen months that have been so hard from a GI/Oto/Pulm perspective. Job's heart is doing wonderfully! But everything else has been really, really hard. So I stopped posting publicly because who wants to hear me say the same thing over and over?

But we're in a new season of hard and I've realized anew how much I do need the prayers of the saints surrounding us. So here's my little toe in the water update.

Job got a new diagnosis today that helps explain why his recent surgery on his vocal cords didn't fix all of his problems. It's so overwhelming and I'm just grieving hard today. 

In an effort to distract myself from wallowing I decided to catch up with my blog feed reader and came across another Tim Challies article that convicts me and encourages me.

From his post, "Prayers That God Will Not Answer," he writes:

Our confidence, then, is not in God answering every one of our prayers just as we have prayed them, but in God hearing those prayers and determining if, when, and how to best respond. If God is truly who he says he is, if he is truly our good Father and we the children he loves, we can be certain that if he does not answer, it is only because this is better for us. He is not cruel, nor arbitrary, nor apathetic. Hence his inaction must be for our good, not for our harm. (emphasis added)

I always think I've already learned this lesson but I really haven't. I struggle deeply with trusting that God is working for His glory and my good. I know it's true at the same time that it doesn't *feel* true because Job's body keeps breaking down more and more.

He continues:

Where we so often go wrong is in failing to believe that God truly means to bless us, failing to believe that his motives are only and always love, failing to wait for his timing to be right and his answer to be perfect. Our task is to trust him—to trust him in what he will give and what he will refuse, in what he will grant in a moment and what he will grant only in time. Our task is to pray and wait, pray and trust, pray and watch for him to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all we can ask or even imagine.

I haven't really forgotten this. I'd probably say I haven't ever doubted that this is my task. I just hate it. I want a break.

But I don't get a break. I get to do this tonight as I cry myself to sleep. I get to do this tomorrow as I lay out all his new meds and figure them out.