Why Prayer is Not Answered
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Dear friend,
With regard to this whole matter of recovery, I assure you of loving interest. All your friends are eager to have you restored to health. I thoroughly sympathize with you and have prayed very much for you all along these months since I have known you, that God would make you strong and well again, if it be his will.
I would like to help you, however, into the sweetest and most perfect faith. The trouble sometimes is that people who are sick pray for health and do not yield up their life to Christ. Health is very important — but the first thing for you, is the entire surrender of your life into the hands of Jesus Christ. Health is only one of the accessories of life — life itself is far more important. This is what Christ wants. He wants your heart. He wants the surrender of yourself to him. He wants you to take him without any question, not only as your Savior, but as your Master.
This means that you will trust all your affairs to him, and think very little about them. Please remember, therefore, it is you, yourself, that Christ wants first of all — that he wants you to yield your heart, your will, your whole life, with all its affairs, its questions, and everything, to him. The promises I have given you, all mean this. For example, "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you: because he trusts in you." This does not refer merely to the healing of the body, to restoration to health — it refers, first of all, to yourself. You are to let yourself down upon the love and power of Christ, staying your mind upon him. Then he will keep you in perfect peace.
I do not know what God's plans for you may be. I hope that he has long life for you, that you may be restored to be a hearty woman, with vigorous health, that you may be for many years a happy wife, building up a home with your husband, a home which will be a blessing to many others. What I am trying to help you to understand, is that you must give yourself to Christ at the same time, even before you ask for health. Then you need not be afraid to entrust everything into the hands of him who knows you and loves you better than any human friend can possibly do.
I know people, for instance, who are not Christians at all, who never think of serving Christ, who have not given themselves to him in any sense, who even are living a worldly and, perhaps, a sinful life, yet when they are sick they pray God to make them well and get very vehement and earnest in their praying.
You see at once, the unreasonableness of this sort of living. Christ makes no promises to answer prayer to us — until we have submitted ourselves to him entirely. You are a Christian woman, I believe — you have united with the Church, I think. Have you surrendered your whole life to Christ? Are you trusting him as your only Saviour? Are you taking his commandments as the rule of your life, living lovingly, purely, unselfishly, honestly, truthfully — doing the things which he commands you? He says, "You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you." Think of these words — they will tell you what it is to be a Christian.
What I want to do is to help you to make an entire surrender of your will, your heart, your conscience, your whole life to Christ — that he may fill your heart with his love and make you a new woman. The most important thing for you is not that you shall get strong physically and live to be sixty or seventy years old. The most important thing is that you shall give up your life to Christ, to be his — and his alone. Then you can pray for the recovery of your health, but always submissively, saying, "Not my will, but yours, be done. "
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