How God Answers Prayer

I, along with everyone I know, have often felt the confusion and frustration that comes when heartfelt prayers do not lead to the desired result. The problem lies not with the outcome but with the prayer itself. There is a common misconception that God will give us everything we ask for.

I moved to Sacramento four years ago to finish college. I had played on my previous college's volleyball team, and I had decided to start training to play at a more competitive level. I found the local tournament circuit, joined a gym, and I was playing five times a week. It was important to me. I had found something in life I was passionate about, and I was working very hard to achieve my goals. I knew I could do nothing apart from God, so I made sure to pray for my training everyday and I looked for ways to shine His light while I was out there. Competitive sports is a snooty world, so it took me a while to garner attention from other good players in order to get quality teammates. It all started to come together about a year ago. I had broken my way into the upper division of the tournament circuit, and I had some great athletes ready to play with me. God was answering my prayers.

One Tuesday night in February, one of those players asked me to substitute on his league team. I always took any opportunity to play, so I readily agreed to be there. That night, about ten minutes into the second game, they set me the ball, just as they had been throughout the night. I took my four step approach as usual, jumped, swung, and landed, a succession of motions I've completed thousands of times before. But this time was different. There was the perfect combination of fatigue and previous joint stress for my landing to tear the anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee, an injury with nearly a year's recovery time after surgery. How could God let this happen?

Psalm 37 tells us, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." We commonly misinterpret this to be something equivalent to "Worship God and you'll get anything and everything you want." It's not that easy. The truth is that if we are truly delighted in the Lord, then the desires of our heart will be the same as His good, pleasing and perfect will.

Prayer is not like filing a purchasing requisition for what we want. It is an intimate conversation with our Creator, much like our most intimate conversations with the people we love. Prayer is to bring us and God closer together, not to persuade Him into doing things our way. We align our will with His, not His with ours. We forget that He has already determined what is best for us. Will a prayer from us change His benevolent plan?

What we would consider "unanswered" prayers are really an instance when we were looking for something from God that was not part of His plan. "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jer. 29:11). We ask God for things He knows are not in our own best interest, like a child asking to have a meal of chocolate cake because he understands tastiness but not nutrition. So what about my knee?

I'm writing this two weeks after my surgery, one day after starting to walk without crutches. I have nine months of recovery ahead before I can return to the sport I love, and only God knows how much time to get back to my previous ability level. I never asked for this. In fact, what I asked for is much the opposite. How do I sit here writing that God always answers prayer? It's simple: God is smarter than I am. He knows my past, my present, and my future. He saw the need to pull me away from this part of my life. And I praise Him for it. I may never fully understand why He deemed such a thing necessary, but I know He is all-knowing and all-loving and that is enough for me.