Hope & encouragement · Question

I have prayed about the same thing for years and nothing has changed. Is there any point in still hoping?

Yes, there is a point, but probably not the kind of hope you have been holding. If your hope has been fastened to a specific outcome arriving by a certain date, then what you are feeling now is not weak faith. It is what happens to that sort of hope when time goes on. The Bible is far more familiar with your situation than most of the encouragement you have been given, and it does not deal with it by promising you next month.

Scripture has words for exactly this

Psalm 13 opens by asking God how long, four times over: how long will you forget me, how long will you hide your face, how long must I wrestle with my thoughts. Nothing in the psalm apologises for the question or softens it.

That is a considerable thing. The complaint was preserved, sung publicly, and kept in the collection. Whoever assembled the psalms did not think the people of God needed protecting from a man saying out loud that he felt forgotten.

So if you have been managing your disappointment politely in front of God, you can stop. He is not being spared anything by your discretion, and the language for saying it is already in the book.

How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I wrestle in my soul, with sorrow in my heart each day? How long will my enemy dominate me?
Salmo 13:1-2, BSB

Praying and not losing heart are two different jobs

Luke introduces the story of the persistent widow by saying plainly why Jesus told it: so that they would always pray and not lose heart. The two are named separately, which suggests that keeping on praying and keeping your heart intact are not automatically the same task.

The widow in the story is not admired for her serenity. She is admired for being relentless, for coming back with the same request until it was heard. That is nearer to nagging than to peaceful trust, and Jesus uses it approvingly.

If your prayers have become short, repetitive and a bit worn down, you are in good company. Keeping the request in front of God is the practice. The eloquence was never the point.

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray at all times and not lose heart:
Luke 18:1, BSB

Slow is not the same as never, and it is not a promise either

Habakkuk had put a hard question to God and was told to write down the answer and wait for it, because it would not lie, even if it seemed slow.

Two things have to be said about this together, or it becomes cruel. The first is that God's timing is genuinely not ours, and many things arrive after the point at which the person praying had given up.

The second is that this verse is not a guarantee that the particular thing you are asking for will happen. Some prayers are answered with something other than what was requested. Anyone who tells you otherwise is promising on God's behalf, and you should not trust them with your grief.

For the vision awaits an appointed time; it testifies of the end and does not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it, since it will surely come and will not delay.
Habakkuk 2:3, BSB

Some faithful people died still waiting

Hebrews 11 lists people held up as examples of faith, and then says, without flinching, that they died without receiving what had been promised, having only seen it from a distance and greeted it.

That sentence is one of the most honest in the Bible. It means that not receiving the thing is not proof that you got faith wrong. It also means that faith and unfulfilled longing have lived in the same person before, for a whole lifetime, and that this was still called faith.

If you have been carrying a quiet suspicion that your unanswered prayer is evidence against you, this verse removes it.

All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
Hebrews 11:13, BSB

What to actually do tomorrow morning

Micah, watching his own society come apart, says he will keep looking to God and waiting for him. He does not claim to know what is coming. He states where he is going to keep facing.

That is small enough to be possible. Tomorrow, say the request one more time, briefly, without dressing it up. Then say the second half: and I will keep watching for you either way. Two sentences. That is a whole prayer.

One more thing, plainly. If the waiting has turned into something heavier, if you feel numb, if you have lost interest in everything, or if you have thought about harming yourself, please speak to a doctor or a mental health professional. Nothing on this site is medical advice, and long grief left alone can become an illness that needs treating rather than enduring.

But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.
Micah 7:7, BSB

You are not required to feel hopeful about the outcome. You are only asked to keep addressing someone, and years of doing that is not a wasted prayer life. It is one of the more remarkable ones.

Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible. Public domain (CC0)

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