When God doesn’t answer…

by Blessing Odebisi

There is a particular kind of silence that only a believer understands. It is the silence that comes after prayer. Not the silence of having nothing to say to God.

Yes, you have said everything. You have prayed carefully; you have cried. You have waited. And then… nothing.

You pray again—still nothing.

After a while, the question changes. You stop asking, “When will God answer me?” and begin wondering, “Is God even listening?”

Perhaps that is one of the hardest places faith can take us—not into suffering, but into the silence that sometimes follows it.

Because it is easier to trust God when we can see what He is doing. When the door opens. When the money comes. When the relationship is restored. When the prayer becomes a testimony. But what happens when you pray for the testimony and receive only time?

Maybe that is where faith becomes something deeper than an answer. Faith is not only believing that God can do something. Sometimes, it is believing that He remains God when He does not do it the way we hoped.

We often ask God for answers. But perhaps there are seasons when what we are being asked to give is something else entirely — surrender. We ask Him to change the situation, while He may be changing the person standing in the middle of it. And perhaps the hardest prayer is not, “Lord, give me what I want,” but, “Lord, teach me to trust You if I don’t get it.”

Scripture is filled with people who waited. Abraham waited. David waited. Joseph waited. Their stories remind us that waiting does not automatically mean abandonment. Sometimes, the space between a prayer and its answer becomes the place where faith is tested, deepened and quietly transformed.

Maybe the miracle is not always that the situation changes. Maybe sometimes the miracle is that you do. You become less desperate for certainty. Less afraid of the unknown. More willing to trust without having every detail explained.

Perhaps God is not as silent as we think. Perhaps we have simply become so accustomed to answers that we have forgotten how to remain faithful in the absence of them.

So this Sunday, perhaps the question is not, “What is God going to do for me?” Maybe it is, “Who am I becoming while I wait for Him?”

Because one day, the answer may come. The door may open. The prayer may become a testimony. But until then, there is still a person being formed in the waiting.

And that might be the part of the prayer we never knew God was answering.

Odebisi writes from Ibadan