What if God doesn’t give you, your “breakthrough”?
What if He doesn’t remove the pain or heal the sickness?
What if He does in fact, take away?
I read a story the other day about a worship leader whose young daughter passed away suddenly, asking for prayer for her immediate resurrection stating “her time is not done” and because of the authority we have in Christ, “it’s time for her to come to life”.
The loss of a child is a grief that is beyond comprehension. It is unnatural for the younger to die before the older and when we see it, it leaves us reeling and with a deeply broken heart. To be honest, it is something we never get over. Sure, we can cope with our grief and find a way to navigate the rest of our life in light of the overwhelming loss but the grief will always be there.
As a parent, I can’t sit in judgment against this mother who had lost her daughter. However, in my experience, I have observed people “claim” a resurrection or a breakthrough and it doesn’t happen. When those declarations of health don’t pan out, or when those prayers for an immediate blessing of life and vitality seemingly go unanswered, the disappointment on top of the already heavy feeling of grief is unbearable. I have seen many people disillusioned with God or even worse reject Him all because they tried to “name it and claim it” and it didn’t work.
The character of God never changes. Even though our circumstances and situations in this fallen world are in constant tumult, God’s virtue remains the same. That is why God is not in the wrong when things don’t go the way that we want or had hoped. As the saying goes, “God is good all the time and all the time, God is good.”
It is precisely the goodness of God that we have to lean on in times of intense heartache. If I was close to this mother or she was attending our church, I would counsel her to grieve the loss of her daughter but also grieve as one who has hope (1 Thess. 4:13). According to the very promise of Scripture, there will be a reunion but it will happen according to the Lord’s timetable not our own. God knows what he is doing in this world and we have to recognize that.
We also have to trust God in those seasons of suffering because, as hard as it is to believe, there is a purpose for it.
The Bible says, “God works all things for the good” (Romans 8:28) and one might ask, “what good will come out of my affliction?”
I don’t know the exact answer but I know God does. We are called not to lean on our own understanding (Prov. 3:5) because it is finite and woefully small in perspective. God could raise this little girl from the dead and answer this grieving mother’s prayers but if He does not, there must be a bigger story at work--one which we will see in its fulfillment at the very close of the age.
To those praying for a “breakthrough” and it hasn’t occurred yet or to those afflicted with a number of griefs, let not your faith rest in the answer to the prayers but in the God of whom, you are praying to. When we trust God and leave our situations in his hands, we can say like Job, “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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