you press on

even when your prayers aren't answered right away

If only the day you start to pray about something is the day things start to look up. If only, when you bring your burdens to God and acknowledge, “This is too hard. I don’t know if I can do this,” or, “I’ve been straying too far from you lately, and I don’t know how to find my way back,” or, “I don’t have the words right now” – if only it was right then and there that the solution was found. You wake up the morning after a long night of tears, and you feel infinitely better. You are suddenly on fire for God. Everything begins to go right again.

But prayer is not an immediate Band-Aid to whatever sorrow you feel, whatever burden you carry, whatever doubts you face. The prayers you pray sometimes even feel like they are going unheard. The struggle keeps going, day after day. It doesn’t suddenly get easier, like you wish it would.

Sometimes the struggle goes on for days, weeks, after you hand it over to God. Sometimes the ache deepens, the pain is renewed, the conflict intensifies.

But when you wake up the next morning and still feel that tug of sorrow weighing you down, you look out your window and see that God has caused the sun to rise again. And you remember. Remember the God you prayed to, the Scripture you read, the blessings that today will hold. You cling to the promises that are the same and the God that is the same, no matter how you shift and doubt and waver. You rejoice, despite the sorrow, and trust, despite the fear.

The journey up the mountain of the Christian life is a daily, gruelling task. Sometimes you stumble and fall further down the slope. Sometimes, you lose sight of what lies ahead. Sometimes you feel you don’t have the energy to take even one more step.

But you keep going, pressing on in this race, held and spurred on by your Father, the very One whom you are pressing on to.

And so even when the answer to your prayer doesn’t come right away, or come in the way you expected, you hold on. Though you wake in the morning and it’s just as hard as it was yesterday, though the scans still aren’t clear, though doubts and sinful thoughts still swarm your mind, though the sorrow beats down on you just as heavily as before, you hold on.

You lift your eyes to the hills, where your help comes from. You feel that burden lifted, just slightly. You let that peace that passes all understanding wash over you, even when things are not all okay yet. You bow your head and trust that in His perfect way and His perfect timing, God is answering your prayers.

And, in His strength, you press on.

“Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust.”

Psalm 143:8a