Praying is hard! That’s right you heard me, “praying is hard”, or it can be hard. Especially when you feel like your prayers are falling on deaf ears. (side note: God’s not deaf.) This is a lesson my wife and I learned over the past year or so. There are things in our lives we want and ask for; healing, better financial situations, freedom from (fill in the blank) and sometimes the answers to those prayers seem instantaneous while other prayers seem to go unresolved, but take heart! You’re not alone. Look at Daniel for example; he prayed for answers from God and each day, as his prayers would go unanswered, what did he do? He kept praying. Finally, after three weeks of unceasing prayer, God answered him.

Daniel 10:10-14

¹⁰ A hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. ¹¹ He said, “Daniel, you who are highly esteemed, consider carefully the words I am about to speak to you, and stand up, for I have now been sent to you.” And when he said this to me, I stood up trembling. ¹² Then he continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. ¹³ But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.¹⁴ Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”

You see, God answered Daniel right away, but the messenger God had sent to Daniel got held up by King Xerxes and it took him three weeks to get away from Xerxes and Persia. Now, ask yourself this. If Daniel had given up praying because his prayer wasn’t getting answered as soon as he wanted, would the messenger God sent ever had gotten away from Xerxes? Would he have completed his journey?

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

I’ll leave you with this; My wife and I moved across the country 10 months ago because we felt that God was calling us to move. Leading up to us moving it seemed like everything was falling into place for us. We sold our house in four days, I had a job lined up, we had a house to move into and purchase, we even knew what church we would like to attend. Everything was great and taken care of, right? Well, not a single one of those things panned out. Not a one! On top of that we got pregnant (which we were definitely not in a place to support a third child nor did we plan on having any more children) but it was ok because my wife felt like God told her it would be a girl and we always said that if by chance we had another kid we would hope for a girl. You see, my wife always wanted a baby girl she could name Esther Lynn and now we will get that chance. Until the doctor told us it was going to be a boy, that is. Now, not only did God not answer our prayers but now we’re not hearing God either! One night while laying in our bed, dwelling in our anguish and despair, on the verge of falling asleep, my wife spoke under her breath, “Well, I guess we need to come up with a boy name now.” And as I lay there, trying to fall asleep to forget the events of that day, it was like someone yield in my ear, “Jadon!”, I immediately opened my eyes and I said to my wife, “what about Jadon?” My wife, being super curious about names and their meanings, decided to look it up and sure enough, in all of Gods faithfulness, the Hebrew meaning for Jadon is, “Jehovah has heard”. You better believe that a brick of humility landed right on our heads that night. God showed us that He is always faithful and He always hears our prayers. Always! So if you take away anything from our experience take away this: Faith brings hope, which brings peace, which gives us confidence through prayer and that God’s timing and ways are far better then ours. So keep praying because God is faithful and as you pray don’t forget to keep worshiping!

P.S. Jadon is amazing!!! My wife and I couldn’t be more happy to have him in our lives. He has been such a blessing, more then he will ever know.