Behind Unheard Prayers
By: Senopati Diinan
Tags: Challenge, Prayer, Hope, Failure, Islam

An explanation why God hasn’t grant your wishes yet

As a human we can’t do everything on our own, we’re not able to control everything as we wanted. That’s why we pray. But sometimes not all prayers are answered. You pray for a longer time, you pray more for the thing you wanted, and as the time goes by, your wish doesn’t come true. You keep praying for years but you don’t see any change and it leads you to frustration. And you feel so upset about it.

When you feel so upset and mad because your prayers feel like unheard and unanswered. Remember, that god doesn’t owe you anything, and when you ask for anything to god you have to be patient. If you can ask politely someone to do the favor, then do the same thing when you ask to god. Actually, God has no obligation to answer your prayers but since god is the most merciful then he will answer all our prayers in 3 ways, he will answer your prayer as soon as possible, your prayer will be answered but not today, or he listened to your prayers but he will give you something better than you asked. Because god knows what the best for you.

You Only Pray for the Best Thing You Know

We have to admit it, sometimes when we pray, we’re not actually praying. We’re demanding something from god, we wish for our wishes to be granted no matter the situation. And if god doesn’t grant our wishes then we stopped praying and taking conclusion that’s no point in praying because it makes no difference. And in the most frustrating times, where faith is weakened, we start doubting about god existence. And quietly whispering if god really exists why he never answer all of our prayers.

Illustration of a man praying (Sc: arabiaweather.com)

In desperation times, when one of our prayers unanswered, when we lost our faith. We like to pretend that God never answers all of our prayers. But take a look at what we have today, all we have today is a manifestation of our granted prayers in the past. We used to pray for the prosperity we have now, we used to pray for the job we have now, we used to pray for the university we already graduated from. And at some point in life, we deserve something better than we asked and we feel unworthy to deserve all of that.

When you deserve something more than your expectation that’s the proof that God will give you something better in the future when he does not grant your wish today. Sometimes when we pray, we feel what we asked is already the best and we don’t want another thing besides that. Actually, you only wish for “the best thing you know”, not “the best thing for you”. And the most importantly, there’s lot of things out there better than what you wished but you just don’t know it yet since what you consider the best thing is only limited to the only thing you know, on the other side there’s a lot of things you don’t know and things you haven’t discovered.

To make it simple, the analogy is like shopping in the mall. When I was kid my parents taught me about a trick to shop at mall. The rule is simple, take a look at the whole mall, don’t buy anything until you see inside the whole mall. Then when you already discover every single store in mall, buy the best thing you saw. And avoid to buy the first nice thing you see because there’s lot of possibilities you will meet better stuff or similar stuff with better price in the next store.

The same thing in life, you might find better-paying job when you just accept a job. And you feel a little regret in your heart why i didn’t wait for a longer time for a better opportunity. That’s the reason why you have to accept it when God doesn’t grant your wish today because tomorrow you might find a better opportunity and it might be yours.

God Talk to You Through Experience

Usually, we pray to get what we want and to avoid the harm. In short, we pray for good things and happiness. But sometimes we don’t get that and we ended up in a horrible situation. And sometimes we grieving if we trapped in a bad situation. We feel so stressed until we can’t see the light. All we see is bad things. And you refuse to see it from another perspective. From positive perspective.

But actually in the practice when your prayers are not answered today, when you have to face a horrible thing, when you fail, the truth is god wants to teach you a lesson. if you can see the situation from a different perspective, if you keep being positive and see it from positive perspective. then you will find the lesson, you will find the reason why this happened, you can take the lesson and you learned something. The lesson that you take from that experience will be crucial for the rest of your life.

Sometimes god teaches you lesson instead of grant your wishes. Because some lesson better understood if we experience it, and we will remember the lesson if we learned it the hard way.

A man told me once that heartbreak, failure, being disappointed is a part of climbing a ladder of life and you will pass it at some point No matter how hard you try to avoid that in the end you will experience that. You can’t appreciate a good thing if you have never been in a hard situation. And somehow all of that helps you grow.

Hardship Shaped You

If you pray to god it means right now you’re working over something, and the output is only two, Is that you’re going to win or lose. When your prayer isn’t granted today you consider it as a loss. But losing is not totally bad for you. Because losing or failure makes you learn, it makes you evaluate, it makes you spot your weakness, it taught you what it takes to earn big things.

Either I win or I learn but I never lose

When God doesn’t grant your wish today, he just wants to put you in a situation that makes you learn. God puts you on this hardship because it’s good for you. Hardship makes you fight until your last breath and it makes you realize your potential. In the end, hardship is going to make you wiser, stronger, and improved as a person. Without you realize, actually Hardships is good for you and someday you’ll be thankful about this hardship because you learned a lot from this, and it gave you experience to handle anything that happens in your life.

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” — C.S. Lewis

In the other side, the nonexistent of hardship is bad for you, it doesnt make you grow, it makes you unprepared for big things. Because big things also come with big problems too. If u get used to overcome the problems then the next time you face another problem life then it’s not a big deal for you. Because you already know how to handle it.

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

A proof of why the nonexistent of threat and easy life is bad for us is let’s take a look at the dodo bird case. Dodo bird is a mauritius endemic flightless bird and it already extinct in 1681. The story about how this bird went extinct is an interesting case because back to million years ago this bird can fly. For that many years those birds living an easy life without a challenge on this island. They live on this island without its predator and source of food is limitless, they can eat fruits fallen from tree easily, they live effortlessly on that island. That’s why they lost its ability to fly and to run because they never use their wings and their legs to run for a million years. Until first man arrives in Mauritius island in 1500’s CE and hunt dodo bird to eat. Dodo can’t escape from its first predator that’s why that bird went extinct for about 100 years since its first interaction with human.

Dodo skeleton cast and model based on modern research, at Oxford University Museum of Natural History (Sc: Wikipedia)

According to a french naturalist, Jean Baptiste Lamarck. When environments changed, every living organisms had to change their behavior to survive. If they began to use an organ more than they had in the past, it would increase in its lifetime. Take an example to a girrafe, back then giraffe’s neck was shorter but a girrafe used to stretch its neck for leaves and it makes the neck longer over time. Meanwhile, organs that organisms stopped using would shrink, that’s why dodo bird has little wings because they never use it.

Giraffe evolution according to Lamarck

It also happens with people, people who often overcome the challenge in life can solve any kind of challenge. But people who never face a problem will never be able to handle a single challenge given to them. And those who able to solve the problem will go far in life while others who are not able to solve the problem are not going anywhere in life.

> Conclusion

In conclusion, God will grant your wishes. when God doesn’t grant your wish today, he will grant your wishes tomorrow or he will give you something better in the future. But today it’s time for you to learn. Because some things are meant to be earned not given. and by the time you already learned, God will let you have it.