What Did You Expect?

“For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.” — Isaiah 64:3 NIV

My good friend, Mark, asked me a few weeks ago, “Has God ever answered a prayer in the way you thought he would?” I was glad he asked, and a bit relieved, for I had been mulling over the same thing in my own spiritual journey — that while God has faithfully answered my prayers, He has perhaps never done so exactly in the way I had anticipated, dreamed or, most laughably, suggested. “No,” I chuckled, “I cannot recall a time when He did.”

And you know what? I’m glad. For my ways are limited, short-sighted, and self-centered. But God’s ways? He speaks for Himself: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”¹ While we see matters through our own eyes and petition God accordingly, He understands them in infinite context and responds in ultimate wisdom. For instance, when Martha and Mary sent word to Jesus that their brother was sick,² Jesus could have healed Lazarus remotely with merely a word, which was perhaps what the sisters were expecting. Instead, Jesus set out to their house two days later, after Lazarus had died. Said Martha upon Jesus’ arrival, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”³ Her expectation was that Jesus would heal Lazarus, but Jesus’ plan was to raise the man from the dead. Why? Because Jesus saw the matter through the lenses of eternal purpose: “This sickness . . . is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it,”⁴ He said. Indeed, this historic event has resounded to billions throughout two millennia hence. Moreover, it incited the unwitting priests of Jesus’ day to put Him to death, a death that would result in resurrection, both His and ours.

Solomon teaches us, “Just as you do not know the path of the wind, and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes everything.”⁵ When we expect God to answer our prayers a certain way, we can miss His higher, better response entirely and perhaps lose faith in His faithfulness. Instead, we do well to trust He will respond more gloriously than we will know on this side of eternity. So as we petition God in faith, let’s also trust His wisdom in response. Most likely, He will do “awesome things that we did not expect.”⁶

“Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!”⁷ Have Your way, Lord. I trust You. Amen.

¹ Isaiah 55:9 ESV
² John 11:3
³ John 11:21 NIV
⁴ John 11:4 NIV
⁵ Ecclesiastes 11:5 NASB
⁶ Isaiah 64:3 NIV
⁷ Psalm 66:20 NIV