I appreciated the moment of honesty. She said, half with anger and half with deep sadness, “Keep me? It feels more like he’s killing me!” I was talking with a young lady, Lisa, who had been struggling with her singleness for a long time. A number of times, she had a relationship that seemed to be working, but either she said or did something wrong, or the guy she was with just wasn’t the right one. She was beginning to wonder, Is this my lot?
She’d heard it said that it’s better to be left on the shelf than to be locked in the wrong cupboard, but right at that moment, being locked in the wrong cupboard was looking more appealing than life as it was. She was deeply saddened that she couldn’t find somebody to share her life with—someone who would be with her and care for her.
Many of her friends were getting married, but those weddings, where she was supposed to be happy for her friends, were moments of real sadness for her. She came to speak to me, trying to find a way through the struggle, and as you’d expect a pastor to do, I asked, “How is this affecting your spiritual life?” She was honest: “I’ve prayed about this for so many years now, and I can’t understand why God doesn’t hear me. Doesn’t he know what this is doing to me?” Of course, if you try to bring in spiritual wisdom and counsel too early in a conversation with somebody who is struggling, you invariably will say the wrong thing. And I did exactly that! I said, hopefully more gently than this, “The Lord is going to keep you through whatever your future holds, and right now, the Lord is keeping you.”
That’s when I heard her say this: “Keep me? It feels like he’s killing me.”
And there it was, a raw cry of desperation and accusation—a version of which may be the very reason that you have chosen to read this book. She had ridden the roller coaster of prayerful hopefulness and was now facing the chilling reality that our dreams for life do not always come true. It felt like a death. Why won’t God bring his power and potential in line with our solution to our pain—in line with what we want? That’s the kind of keeping power we are so often looking for.
CAN YOU BE KEPT AND KILLED AT THE SAME TIME?
It was plain that Lisa couldn’t see a way that both could be true—being kept and being killed at the same time. It seems unthinkable to consider that the Lord, in his eternal graciousness toward us, might be doing more for us by giving us less of what we want him to give. We find it hard to grapple with the notion that there are worse things that can happen to us than unanswered prayer.
Yet the apostle, as he shares his experience of very urgent, but unanswered, prayer with the Corinthian church, invites them to believe that the very thing he had prayed to be taken out of his life was being used for the greater purpose of keeping him for eternity. In the same way, we are invited not just to trust that he is always keeping us personally but even to pursue hope and comfort in that. Sometimes God, in unanswered prayer, is doing more for us than we can imagine.
Sometimes his refusals keep us from deeper regrets. Sometimes there are worse things that could happen to us than unanswered prayer. God is not rejecting you, though it feels like it at the time. No, he’s not rejecting you; he is protecting you! Not every pain is a punishment. Perhaps we need to consider how the pain from which we want relief is the Lord’s way of keeping you close to himself. This is certainly how Paul begins as he recounts his own experience of that phrase, “I prayed but nothing changed”: “To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassingly great revelations . . .” (2 Corinthians 12:7 ESV).
A large part of our agony when facing unwanted situations is in the uncertainty of the outcome. The key difference between a tragedy and a comedy is, of course, the ending. When we don’t know how the story ends, how are we to find peace? Perhaps that’s why, much to the annoyance of my wife, when I’m watching the latest thriller series, I am often caught doing a quick internet search to find out how the characters make it through. I feel safer when I can see how the confusing details of the narrative contribute to a grander story.
Here lies our problem with Paul’s declaration in verse 7. When he said this, he was right in the middle of a narrative. He wasn’t at a safe distance. He is no armchair theologian, but literally battling at the sharp end of hard times. There’s no indication in Scripture that his thorn ever went away, or that at the time of writing, his problems were in the rearview mirror. On the contrary, he is under attack, with the weapon of choice being character assassination for his apparent weakness from this thorn. Yet he begins his reflection on this encounter with suffering and unanswered prayer by looking to the end of the bigger picture of what God is working out. When he looks, he sees a God who is “keeping me.”
And Paul is not the first in Scripture to see this. Psalm 121 is a beautiful, hope-filled assertion that the Lord will keep your spiritual life: “He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:3–4 ESV)
Though we wish we had steadfast feet of faith, we know we need God’s intervention as we live out our new lives in Christ. The Hebrew word for keep is taken from a shepherding context. Imagine a tender shepherd constructing a fence of protection to guard the sheep from a ruinous end.
Likewise, Jude and Peter set their hope for the end of the story on the keeping power of God.
To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. (Jude 24–25)
Who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:5)
It’s difficult to miss the promised intent and ability of the Lord in these verses to keep his people from something and to something. The same is happening in 2 Corinthians 12:7 for Paul. As he broadens his gaze out from the pain he is facing, he is confident that it is not meant to kill him, but part of the process to keep him.
Not only has he offered you life but also he is keeping you in that same spiritual life. The Christian hope is not about making struggling people slightly more comfortable but about making spiritually dead people alive to God in Christ and keeping them there. This is his grace to us. We need ongoing protection after our conversion to keep us from falling into spiritual ruin.
The difficulty for us, and the disappointment for a Corinthian church fluent in its own awesomeness, is that his keeping power doesn’t always look like a pain-free life. Paul frames his struggle, his battle, his thorn, as a sign that God was dealing with him more personally than ever before. He was being kept for God, and from something ruinous.
A DAILY PRAYER FOR CHRIST’S COMFORT
Jesus, you know how I am made, you know how I think, and you know how quickly the comfort I desire crowds out the true comfort you offer in yourself. Please turn this wayward heart back to you. I know my only hope is in you, but your Spirit must drive that truth deep into my soul. Thank you for the grace of keeping me. Thank you for your comfort. Thank you that you are a Man of Sorrows, well acquainted with suffering. You know my troubles; help me to know you and love you. Amen.
Excerpted from I Prayed and Nothing Changed © 2024 by Stephen Casey. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.
I Prayed and Nothing Changed
I Prayed and Nothing Changed will challenge you to be honest as you talk to God about your struggles in our messed-up world. Casey points readers to see all that God is doing, even when he seems distant, and encourages readers with specific ways we can see God at work in the silence.
