When God is Able, But He Won’t

“God doesn’t always answer my prayers how or when I want Him to. But I do live my life with this fundamental conviction: God is able.” —Mark Batterson, Wild Goose Chase, Chapter 4: Page 85

Have you ever seen a miracle?

I am not talking about the television preacher who smacks someone upside the head and proclaims him “healed.” I am asking if you, personally, have ever witnessed a miracle?

Maybe you had a friend who was diagnosed with cancer, but when the surgeon went in to operate, it was gone.

Maybe an unexpected check arrived in the mail at just the right time.

Maybe you were told that you couldn’t have children, but then you got pregnant.

In fact, reports indicate that the majority of Americans do believe in miracles. However, the belief in miracles begs another question. If God has the ability to “fix” something, how come He doesn’t always do it? Because I am sure that you are like me. I am sure that there has been a time (or two or maybe more) when you have cried out to God for a miracle, and He hasn’t complied.

When I was a young mother, expecting my second son, we had some dear friends who had just given birth to a little boy. Within an hour of being home from the hospital, the infant started having seizures. By the time the parents got him to a children’s hospital, his tiny body was in a constant state of seizure. The doctors put him into an induced coma. A week or two later, the doctors eventually showed the parents brain scans and told them that they needed to remove the machines and let him die. I remember talking to the mom the day she and her husband bought three burial plots—one for each of them and one for their son.

The day they were to remove the machines, I was on the road, going to see my family in Tennessee. I remember crying out to the Lord in prayer for our friends and for their son. I remember praying, “God, you tell us that the prayers of a righteous man avail much. Lord, I don’t really consider myself righteous, but I believe in You, and I know that you have the power to save this baby. God, if you wish, you can perform a miracle, regardless of what the doctors say. Lord, please be merciful.”

This was a time before cell phones; so, I waited all day, wondering if that little baby had died, dreading the call I would need to make, not wanting to ask. Eventually, well into the evening, I spoke with my friend, and she told me that not only was her son still breathing, but they had moved him out of the ICU and into a room. The last time I saw him, he was a tall, lanky teenager eating at Zaxby’s with his parents and sister.

God performed a miracle and saved my friends’ son.

But, twenty years later, when I prayed for a miracle for my own son, my own family, God said “no.”

Could he have saved my son? Yes.

Was he able to make it all a bad dream and bring Brandon back to life? Absolutely.

Did he do it? No.

Why not? Why did prayers for one child get answered but prayers for my own child did not?

That’s something I will never know or understand, at least not this side of Heaven.

However, I am reminded of the Bible story in Daniel 3. Three young men refused a king’s order to bow down and worship a statue. When the king told them to bow down or be thrown into a fiery furnace, they replied, “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.”

I recently discovered a prayer journal entry that I had written on February 22, 2014. More than four years before Brandon died, I struggled with this question about why God allows bad things to happen, especially to people who love and follow Him.

In part of my entry that day, I wrote, “I want to question, argue, explain, understand, but, ultimately, I can’t because I am not God, and who am I to question Him?... God is God. God can do what He wants, when He wants, how He wants. I may not like it. I may not understand it. I may not be able to explain it, but that doesn’t matter… I choose to serve and worship God because He is God. In that one simple decision, I have given up the necessity to understand everything.”

Sometimes God answers our prayers with a miracle.

Sometimes He doesn’t.

The only choice I have is how I will respond.  Will I continue to love and worship and serve Him even when God says “no,” even when circumstances don’t make sense?

I will, because, after all, that is the very definition of faith—believing that God is God, and, regardless of the circumstances, He is able.