Omotola has been a bridesmaid nine times. She has the photographs to prove it: nine different colours of aso-ebi, nine different halls, nine brides she loved and prayed for. At most of those weddings, at some point in the evening, an aunty would take her hand, look at her kindly and say, “Your own is next, my dear. God will do it.”
She began praying for a husband when she was twenty-six. She is now thirty-nine. In those thirteen years she has attended more vigils than she can count. She has written the request on prayer cards and dropped them in boxes at the altar. She has fasted. She has stood when the preacher called for “every single sister trusting God for a life partner” to come forward, until the year she found she could no longer make her legs move.
Along the way she has been given many explanations. A visiting prophetess told her that someone in her father’s family had tied her destiny. A deliverance minister told her she had a spirit husband. An elder’s wife took her aside after a meeting and asked, very gently, whether there was an abortion in her past that she had never confessed. There was not. But she went home that night and lay awake wondering whether there was some sin she had forgotten.
She told me all this one Saturday afternoon, after yet another wedding. She had gone into the ladies’ toilets at the reception and cried for twenty minutes with the door locked, then fixed her make-up and gone back out to dance. “Pastor,” she said, “I have stopped praying about it. Not because I stopped believing God can do it. Because hoping hurts too much. Every time I pray, I have to feel it again.”
Then she said something I have heard many times, in different words, from many different people. “I cannot say this in church. In church you are supposed to have a testimony.”
The disappointment nobody testifies about
Many churches have a culture of testimony, and that is a beautiful thing. God answers prayer, and we should say so loudly. When the visa comes through, when the child is born, when the test result is clear, the congregation should rise and rejoice. “Rejoice with them that do rejoice” (Romans 12:15).
But testimony culture can leave very little room for the people whose prayers have not yet been answered, or who have been praying for years without any visible change. They sit through the testimonies clapping, and then go home and wonder what is wrong with them. They feel that their disappointment would be a bad witness, so they hide it. Some, like Omotola, stop praying about the thing that matters most to them, because the gap between the request and the reality has become too painful to look at.
The Bible makes much more room for this experience than many of our services do. It gives us persistent widows, lamenting psalmists, groaning saints and an apostle whose most earnest prayer was answered in a way he did not expect. It allows questions to remain open. And it never once suggests that a believer whose prayer is delayed must therefore have weak faith or hidden sin.
Our foundational teaching on prayer has set out the ground we stand on: we come to the Father with confidence through Christ, and persistence is not the same as bargaining. Here I want to go further into the hard places: the long delay, the disappointment that lingers, the help of the Spirit when words fail, and the danger of inventing explanations that God has not given.
Pray and do not faint
Jesus told a parable precisely for people in Omotola’s position:
And he spake a parable unto them to this end , that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
Look at how Luke introduces it. Jesus spoke this parable “to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” Jesus expected that His disciples would be tempted to faint. The word means to lose heart, to grow weary and give up. He did not tell this story to people who had never been disappointed. He told it because He knew that disappointment in prayer would come, and that it would be strong enough to make people stop.
Notice who the widow is. In that society, a widow often had no one to speak for her. She had no husband to represent her in court and usually no money to influence the judge. Her request is for justice: “Avenge me of mine adversary.” Someone was wronging her and she had no power to stop it. All she had was her voice and her persistence, and she used both.
The judge is the opposite of God in every way. He “feared not God, neither regarded man.” He finally gives way, and only to stop her from wearing him out. Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater. If even a corrupt judge will eventually respond to a powerless woman he does not care about, how much more will God respond to “his own elect, which cry day and night unto him”?
Then comes a difficult phrase: “though he bear long with them.” Scholars have discussed its exact sense for a long time. It may mean that God is patient with His people while they wait, or that He holds back His final judgement for their sake, or that He bears with their cries over a long period. Whatever its precise meaning, the phrase admits that there is a long in the experience of God’s people. They “cry day and night.” The waiting is real.
And yet Jesus says, “he will avenge them speedily.” How can there be both a long waiting and a speedy answer? Part of the answer is that the word can carry the sense of suddenly. When God acts, He acts decisively. But the bigger picture is in the final verse: “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Jesus places this parable in the context of His return. The ultimate answer to the cry of God’s people for justice will come when He comes again. Until then, the church cries day and night: Thy kingdom come. Christians have been praying that prayer for two thousand years. It has not failed. It has not yet been fully answered.
So the closing question turns the spotlight from God’s faithfulness to ours. Will He find faith? Will His people still be praying when He comes? The parable is an invitation to keep the conversation with the Father going through a long delay, in the confidence that He is far better than the unjust judge.
Lament belongs inside the relationship
PunchlinePersistence does not mean pretending you feel fine. Scripture gives us a whole language for honest disappointment in prayer. It is called lament, and it fills roughly a third of the book of Psalms.
Listen to how one of the most famous laments begins:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” David feels abandoned. “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not.” That is about as honest a description of unanswered prayer as you will find anywhere. He has been praying day and night, and he says plainly that God does not seem to be listening.
But notice what David keeps saying. My God. Three times in two verses. He feels forsaken, but he still addresses God as his own. Lament brings your pain right into the middle of the relationship. The person who laments has not stopped believing. He believes enough to complain to the only One who can help.
Then David turns: “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.” He sets his present experience beside what he knows of God’s character and history. He does not resolve the tension immediately. The psalm goes on to describe terrible suffering before it finally breaks into praise. But he holds the two things together: his anguish, and God’s holiness.
On the cross, Jesus took the first line of this psalm on His own lips: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The Son of God prayed a lament. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that “in the days of his flesh,” Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared” (Hebrews 5:7). He was heard. And yet He still went to the cross. The Father’s answer was not to spare Him from death but to raise Him from it. Sometimes the answer comes on the far side of the thing we asked to avoid.
If Jesus could pray with strong crying and tears, you may too. “Put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” (Psalm 56:8). God keeps count of the tears His children shed. None of them is wasted, and none of them is a sign of unbelief.
When you do not know what to pray
There is a stage in long disappointment when words simply run out. You have prayed every prayer you know. You have quoted every promise. You no longer even know what to ask for. Should you keep asking for the same thing? Should you ask God to take the desire away? Should you ask for something else entirely?
Paul speaks directly to that place:
Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities.” The word infirmities means weaknesses, and Paul includes our weakness in prayer. The word translated helpeth is a rich one. It describes someone taking hold of a heavy load together with another person, sharing the weight. It is the same word Martha used when she asked Jesus to tell Mary to help her in the kitchen (Luke 10:40). The Spirit does not stand at a distance watching you struggle to lift your burden into prayer. He takes the other end.
Then Paul makes a confession that should comfort every struggling believer: “for we know not what we should pray for as we ought.” Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, admits that he does not always know what to pray for. If the apostle did not always know, you are not failing when you do not know either.
“But the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” When your words are gone, the Spirit is still praying. His intercession goes deeper than language. The groaning of your heart, the sigh you cannot shape into a sentence, the tears in the car park after another wedding, are taken up by the Spirit and carried before the Father.
Sincere believers understand these groanings in different ways. Many understand them as the Spirit’s own wordless intercession within the believer, deeper than any human language. Pentecostal and charismatic believers, myself among them, also see a close connection with praying in the Spirit, in tongues, where “my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful” (1 Corinthians 14:14). Both views agree on the heart of the matter: when you do not know how to pray, you are not left alone. The Spirit prays in and through you.
“And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” The Father searches your heart and finds the Spirit there, praying perfectly according to His will. Your confused prayers are not the final form in which your needs reach the throne. They are joined to the Spirit’s intercession, which never misses.
And you have a second Intercessor. A few verses later Paul says that Christ, risen and seated at God’s right hand, “also maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:34). Hebrews says that “he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). The Spirit prays within you. The Son prays for you at the Father’s right hand. When you are too weary to pray, prayer for you has not stopped.
NuggetWhen your words run out, prayer has not stopped. The Spirit groans within you, the Son intercedes for you, and the Father who searches your heart hears them both.
The answer that was not removal
Paul knew from experience what it was to ask for something repeatedly and not receive it:
And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
The setting matters. Paul has just described being caught up into paradise and hearing things he was not permitted to speak, an experience fourteen years in the past (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). Then he describes the thorn. We do not know what it was. Some suggest a physical illness, others an eye condition, others persistent opposition from enemies. Paul does not tell us, and that silence is itself a mercy, because it allows believers in every kind of affliction to hear his story as their own.
Look at the complex description. It was “given” to him, which suggests that God allowed it for a purpose. It was also “the messenger of Satan to buffet me.” Both things were true at once. Satan meant it to torment Paul. God used it to keep him from pride. This is a mystery Scripture does not fully explain, and we should not try to flatten it.
“For this thing I besought the Lord thrice.” Three times, like Jesus in Gethsemane. Paul did not pray once and then resign himself. He asked earnestly, repeatedly, for the thing to be removed. That was a legitimate request. There is no hint that he was wrong to make it.
Then came the answer: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” The Lord did answer. It was a different answer from the one Paul asked for, and Paul came to see it as better than the one he wanted. The thorn stayed. The grace came. And something changed in Paul. “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” The word translated rest upon carries the image of pitching a tent over something. Paul’s weakness became the place where Christ’s power came to dwell.
We need to handle this passage carefully. It does not teach that every unanswered prayer is a thorn to be accepted. Paul prayed for the sick and saw them healed. Jesus healed all who came to Him in faith. We should keep praying boldly for healing, provision and breakthrough. But the passage does teach that sometimes the Lord’s answer to an earnest, faithful request is grace to carry the burden instead of the burden’s removal. Such an answer may even be a sign of His nearness.
Do not invent a hidden sin
One of the cruellest things the church can do to a person in prolonged disappointment is to manufacture an explanation for it. Omotola was told about tied destinies, spirit husbands and a forgotten abortion. None of these explanations came from Scripture. All of them added weight to a woman who was already struggling to stand.
The Bible does acknowledge that some prayers are hindered. James says, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:3). The psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psalm 66:18). Peter tells husbands to honour their wives, “that your prayers be not hindered” (1 Peter 3:7). These are real warnings, and honest self-examination is healthy.
There is also spiritual opposition. When Daniel prayed, an angel later told him that his words had been heard from the first day, but “the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days” (Daniel 10:13). The enemy is real, and we should resist him.
But none of these passages gives us licence to assume that every delay has a hidden cause that some prophet must uncover. Jesus refused to blame the man born blind or his parents (John 9:3). God rebuked Job’s friends for their tidy theory that suffering always reveals sin. And Paul’s thorn, by his own account, came to protect him from a pride he had not yet fallen into.
So how should you examine yourself honestly without falling into endless suspicion? Pray the prayer of Psalm 139: “Search me, O God, and know my heart” (Psalm 139:23). Then trust Him to do it. When the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, He tends to be specific. He puts His finger on something real, and He leads you to the cross, where it is forgiven. A vague, endless, accusing sense that there must be something wrong, which no amount of confession ever settles, does not sound like the voice of the One who has said, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
If someone offers to reveal the hidden cause of your delay in exchange for money, a special seed or a series of expensive deliverance sessions, be very careful. Your access to the Father is through Christ. It cannot be sold to you.
Waiting without a timetable
One of the hardest truths in this teaching is that we cannot promise a timetable. Many of us have been told, with great confidence, “By this time next year, you will testify.” Sometimes that happens. Often it does not, and the disappointment is then doubled.
Scripture contains stories of long waiting that ended in joy. Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. Hannah wept for years before Samuel was born. When the angel appeared to the elderly priest Zacharias, he said, “Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard” (Luke 1:13). Many think that prayer for a son had been prayed decades earlier, and that Zacharias had long since stopped expecting an answer. God had not forgotten.
But Scripture is also honest that some longings are not fulfilled in this life:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them , and embraced them , and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country , that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises.” Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and many others lived and died with promises they never saw fulfilled. Were they failures? The writer to the Hebrews says the opposite. They “were persuaded of them, and embraced them.” They died in faith. And “God is not ashamed to be called their God.”
This does not mean you should stop hoping for your desire to be fulfilled in this life. Keep asking. God answers prayer, often in ways that astonish us. But your relationship with the Father does not hang on the timetable. If the answer comes next month, you will rejoice. If it comes in twenty years, you will rejoice. And if some longings are only fully answered in the better country, God will still not be ashamed to be called your God, and you will not be ashamed to have trusted Him.
“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12). The Bible admits it. A long wait can make you heartsick. If that heaviness has deepened into something you cannot carry, if you are struggling to sleep, eat or function, please speak to a pastor you trust and to a doctor. Seeking that help is wise care for a heart that has been carrying a great deal.
And to those of us who walk alongside people who are waiting: be careful with your questions. “When is your own?” may be asked kindly, but it can land like a blow. Invite the waiting into your homes and friendships as well as your prayer lines. Pray with them as well as for them. Let them say “I am disappointed” in your presence without rushing to fix it.
PunchlineA year after that Saturday conversation, Omotola is still single. I want to be honest about that, because she asked me to be.
But she is praying again. Not the long, exhausting vigils she used to attend. Short, honest prayers, often in the morning before work. Sometimes she says, “Father, I still want this.” Sometimes she says, “Father, I do not know what to ask for today.” Sometimes she just sits with her Bible open at Romans 8 and lets the Spirit do the groaning.
She has also found three women in her church, two married and one widowed, who meet with her once a month. They do not promise her a husband by December. They ask how she is, and they listen to the answer. They pray with her. Last month one of them invited her to help plan her daughter’s wedding, and she said yes, and cried, and they cried with her.
At that wedding, an aunty took her hand and asked the familiar question. “My dear, when is your own?” Omotola smiled and gave an answer she had been practising. “I am still praying, Ma. And I am still loved.”
If you have been praying for something for a long time, and the answer has not come, you do not need to hide your disappointment from God or from His people. Keep coming to the Father. Lament if you need to. Let the Spirit pray when your words run out. Refuse the false explanations. And hold on to the One who has said that His grace is sufficient for you, today, in the waiting.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Is there a prayer you have stopped praying because hoping became too painful? What would it look like to bring it back to the Father honestly?
- How does Psalm 22 give you permission to pray about disappointment? What do you notice about how David keeps addressing God?
- Romans 8:26-27 says the Spirit helps our weakness in prayer. How does it change your view of prayer to know that the Spirit and the Son are both interceding for you?
- Have you been given an explanation for an unanswered prayer that did not come from Scripture? How do you respond to it in the light of this teaching?
- How could you support someone in your church who has been waiting a long time for an answer, without adding pressure?
This Week
Each morning this week, before you do anything else, pray one honest sentence to the Father about your long-standing request. It may be “Father, I still want this,” or “Father, I do not know what to ask today,” or even “Father, I am tired of asking.” Then read Romans 8:26-27 slowly and sit quietly for two minutes, trusting that the Spirit is interceding for you. Before the week ends, tell one trusted believer about the disappointment you have been carrying and ask them to pray with you.
A Prayer
Father, You know the prayer I have been carrying for so long. You know how many times I have asked, and how often I have stopped asking because hope hurt too much. I bring it back to You now. Thank You that I can tell You honestly that I am disappointed, and that You do not turn away. Holy Spirit, help me in my weakness. When I do not know what to pray, pray in me with groanings that cannot be uttered. Lord Jesus, thank You that You ever live to intercede for me. Guard me from false explanations and from accusing voices. Give me grace sufficient for today, and keep me praying and not fainting until I see Your goodness. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.