When Your Miracle Doesn’t Come

About a year into her marriage to University of Oregon campus pastor Douglas Groothuis, Rebecca was diagnosed with fibromyalgia—a disorder that affects the way pain signals are processed in the nervous system. In what some call “fibro fog,” Rebecca began forgetting things, like how to find her way back home after an appointment at the hair salon. Doug had to file a missing person’s report with the police. Another time, she couldn’t remember how to start her car or how to turn on the windshield wipers. Doctors offered no answers.

Then, in 2014, Doug rushed Rebecca to the hospital. “She couldn’t . . . get out of bed. She couldn’t talk,” Doug told an interviewer. Emergency room doctors found nothing physically wrong, though she exhibited depression-like symptoms, so they called in a psychiatrist, who eventually admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. “They strapped her down and took her away on a stretcher—she looked so forlorn,” Doug said.

She was there for five weeks and was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a rare neurological disorder that attacks portions of the brain that control the ability to speak and write. As Doug explained in a later interview, “It begins in the frontal lobe of the brain and moves backward, which is the opposite of Alzheimer’s. You lose your use of words and then your executive functions—the ability to analyze and perform tasks. The particular cruelty of this disease is that you slowly lose your mind—and you’re aware of it slipping away.”

Doug and Rebecca lived with the slow, creeping diminishment of her cognitive abilities for four years. Through it all, they and others prayed for God to intervene, beseeching Him for healing. The Lord said no.

“I didn’t know a soul could endure so much emotional anguish,” Doug later said. “I’m becoming an expert on suffering.” In 2017, a year before Rebecca’s death, Doug wrote about the emotional and spiritual toll her illness took on both of them and how they wrestled with God’s decision not to heal her. In Walking Through Twilight, Doug concluded:

“Love is as strong as death” (Song of Songs 8:6), and stronger. We know this because of an innocent man nailed to a Roman spike of shame, with a dying criminal on each side. That young man died and was buried. Three days later, his tomb was emptied of death, and he was found more alive than any of us are right now. These matchless and unmatchable events are my only hope in life and death, in Becky’s life and in Becky’s death. Jesus is Lord.”

Jesus is Lord. That is the only hope for those who’ve pleaded with God for a miracle, only to find the answer coming back a resounding no.

Have you needed a miracle, and it didn’t come? Have you poured out your heart to God only to have your request returned empty? 

There’s a danger in unanswered prayer. You can easily conclude God has turned a deaf ear to your pleas or believe He’s too busy to bother with your problems. 

Worse still, you might conclude God no longer loves you—if He ever did. None of this is true, of course, and you probably know that in your head. But your heart struggles to understand why God wouldn’t answer your prayer, especially if it was for a loved one. 

Like a gut punch, your unanswered prayer is a blow to your faith.

The writer to the Hebrews defined faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Oswald Chambers wrote, “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you cannot understand in time.”

Faith is not the assurance that our miracle will come through, but it is the conviction that Jesus is Lord and eventually—not immediately—His good, loving, and perfect plan for your life will be accomplished. 

To strengthen your belief in God’s goodness, power, and sovereignty, I encourage you to put into practice these five principles when your needed miracle doesn’t come.

1. Rest in God’s Grace (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

There are a number of reasons God might not answer your prayers, including those for a miracle. The Bible gives us at least seven:

1. Not praying from a pure heart (Psalm 66:18)
2. Not praying in faith (James 1:5-8)
3. Not praying for an obedient life (1 John 3:22)
4. Not praying to bring glory to God (1 Corinthians 10:31)
5. Not praying with a goal toward sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4:3)
6. Not praying with an attitude of humility (Luke 18:9-14)
7. Not praying in conjunction with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 6:18)

2. Learn to Wait (Exodus 15:22-26)

The Lord sometimes tests your faith before He answers your prayers for a miraculous intervention.

A dramatic illustration of this is found in the book of Exodus. After God delivered the Israelites from Egypt and began guiding them on their journey to the promised land, He led them to a place called Marah—a name that means “bitter.” It was a place where they had to trust God to transform undrinkable water into drinkable water. 

On their way to the promised land, the Lord could have bypassed Marah and led them straight to the oasis of Elim, where there was an abundance of clean, refreshing water (v. 27). But He didn’t.

The Lord does something similar in our lives. Before delivering on a needed divine intervention in your life, He might stretch your faith by causing you to wait or by bringing a challenging circumstance into your life to see whether you’ll grumble in disbelief, as the Israelites did, or continue to pray in faith and rest in His grace.  

God’s tests come to reveal what is really in our hearts—not to God (He already knows) but to us.  Tests are designed to strengthen our faith, not to destroy our faith.

And waiting on God to answer our request for a miracle is one way God strengthens our faith and deepens our dependence on God.

3. Adjust Your Attitude (James 1:12)

In James 1:12, James meant that you should make a conscious and careful decision to maintain an attitude of joy even during times of trouble. The Greek word translated as “consider” (hegeomai) means “to lead” or “to guide.” This verse instructs you to make joy your leading thought whenever you experience some difficulty or disappointment.

What does God use to mold us into the image of Christ? Most times, it is the difficult things, not the easy things, that shape us into the image of God’s son. 

That was true for Jesus as well. Hebrews 5:8 reminds us that “though he was a Son, he learned obedience by the things he suffered—including unanswered prayer. Yes, even Jesus knew what it was like to feel forsaken, abandoned by God. As He hung on the cross, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

If God’s plan for His own Son included suffering and disappointment with God, why should we be surprised when God’s plan for our lives includes the same?

To make “joy” your leading emotion when your miracle doesn’t come, you not only need to see a great eternal purpose in your suffering, but you also need to maintain perspective about your suffering.  

4. Maintain Your Perspective (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

In 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Paul was saying that whatever you’re suffering through right now is “momentary” and “light.” Paul isn’t diminishing the reality of your suffering, but he’s asking you to keep it in perspective when it comes to the length of your trial and the intensity of your trial.

5. Develop a Ministry-Focused Life (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

As a pastor, I talk to a lot of people who are disappointed with God for His failure to answer their prayers in the ways they want. These are folks who didn’t receive a cure for the disease that eventually took the life of their loved one. They didn’t find renewed love with a spouse who eventually divorced them. They didn’t see their prodigal child return to the faith. 

God the Father is characterized by mercy, and He is the source of all the mercy you’ve ever experienced in life. As the Father of mercy, even if God doesn’t grant your specific prayer for a miracle, He shows Himself also to be the Father of comfort. 

This doesn’t simply mean that He feels sympathy for your suffering, but that He actively saddles up alongside you to encourage and support you during your days of difficulty. The word translated “comfort” actually means “to strengthen.”

The Father strengthens you through His Son, Jesus, who serves as your Advocate before the Father (1 John 2:1) and your Helper during times of distress (Hebrews 1:18). The Father also consoles you through His Holy Spirit, who guides and strengthens you.

The Father’s strength not only comes to us through the Son and the Spirit, but it also comes through the saints—fellow believers who come near to minister to you. Often, brothers and sisters in Christ can intervene in your life when you are suffering and help you endure an affliction.

However, the real key to 2 Corinthians 1:3–4 is not that you yourself find comfort in the Son, the Spirit, and the saints, but that you comfort (strengthen) others. 

Every time somebody speaks to me about their troubles, not only do I try to offer biblical advice and encourage them with God’s comfort, but I also tell them that a day will come when they’ll have an opportunity to minister to someone who’s dealing with the same struggle. 

For example, I can offer marriage counseling, but since Amy and I have a strong marriage, I can only empathize so much with a couple on the verge of divorce. But someone who has endured a divorce and come out the other side healthy can. 

I can weep with a couple who’ve lost a child to cancer, but I can’t fully enter their grief and walk them through the emotional and spiritual landmines that lie ahead because I haven’t lost a child. But a couple who have survived the loss of a child and kept their faith intact can.

You can think of a thousand other examples: financial devastation, a prodigal child, drug addiction, pornography addiction, mental illness, depression, anxiety, physical disability—and the list goes on. I may not have experienced these specific hardships. And though I can offer the best I can in biblical counsel and consolation, at some point, I tap out because I’ve not walked those paths. But you might have. And if you have, then reach out to help another person who’s praying for a miracle. Perhaps you are God’s answer to their prayer.

God has not promised a miracle for everyone, every time, to meet your every need. In the list of faithful followers found in Hebrews 11, the writer concludes by describing Old Testament saints (unknown to us, anyway) who didn’t see God’s miraculous intervention in saving them from suffering. 

That “something better” was Jesus Christ and all of His promises that the Old Testament saints longed to experience. God didn’t deny those saints that ultimate Promise, but He just delayed it for a future time.  

And so it is with us.  Miracles delayed don’t. Necessarily mean miracles denied. One day, when we are united with Jesus Christ in heaven, we will experience the fulfillment of every miracle, every desire we have ever longed for.

Swan Quarter, North Carolina, is an area that is prone to flooding, especially when a hurricane blows through. That’s why members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South approached Sam Sadler about purchasing a high-lying lot he owned in the center of town for their new sanctuary. He told them no. Then he added it would take a miracle for him to sell that lot to the church.

Disappointed, the congregation continued to look for a place to build. One day, James Hayes knocked on their door. He had a lot that he would gift to the congregation. It wasn’t a prime location, certainly not compared to Mr. Sadler’s lot, but it was free. The congregation praised God and began construction, starting with brick piers, on which they built a modest wooden sanctuary.

On September 16, 1876, on the eve of dedicating their new church building, a storm blew in off the North Carolina coast. The wind whipped, the rain poured, and the surf crashed on the beaches. As the day wore on, the wind became stronger, the rain became heavier, and the surf became rougher. The storm intensified overnight. By the dawn of September 17, a tidal surge had reached Swan Quarter. Creeks overflowed their banks. And the little Methodist church building became unmoored from its brick pylons and floated away.

The wooden sanctuary drifted down Oyster Creek Road, bumped into George Credle’s general store, took a sharp right turn, and headed down Main Street for two blocks until it reached Church Street, where it turned left, crossed Carawan canal, and came to rest on some high ground—right in the middle of Mr. Sadler’s property. The waters had barely subsided from Swan Quarter when Mr. Sadler sold the lot to the congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which they renamed Providence Methodist Church—the church, as its historical marker says, that was “moved by the hand of God.”

We’ve looked at miracles of power, provision, protection, and health. Through it all, my prayer has been that the Worker of miracles has made a greater impression on your heart and mind than the works of miracles. After all, the purpose of every miracle is to focus our attention on the one true Miracle Worker, not on the miracle worked.

In spite of the disappointment of not getting the property the church thought it needed, in spite of the storm that nearly destroyed the new building the church had constructed, God was at work moving that church to exactly where He wanted it to be.

And He is doing the same in your life as well. If you’re a child of God, you can know that God is using the disappointments, the suffering, the miracles that never come to move you to exactly where He wants you.

Do you want to move from a life of guilt and shame to a life of freedom and joy? Do you want God to move you from an eternity spent in hell to an eternity spent in heaven, united with God forever?

The beginning place to experience God’s divine intervention in your life is to say “yes” to His divine invitation. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”