Thank you for sharing!

What if God doesn’t give you your miracle? Is He still a good God?

As I currently write this, my husband and I are still legally married. And I actively ask God every day for a miracle of reconciliation. But I often wonder how my attitude will be towards God if we get to that dreaded date and the judge says those few words that make my heart stop for a second when I think of them. Those words that bring tears to my eyes at the thought of them being stated. Words I never imagined would ever be said to me. “I declare you divorced.”

What if God doesn’t come through with the miracle I’ve been so fervently praying for? Will I be mad at him? Will it ruin my faith and trust in His goodness?

 

I’m not sure what you’re going through. But I’m sure you’ve been in a situation where you prayed for a certain outcome and felt so utterly crushed and maybe even betrayed by God that the outcome you had prayed for with much dedication didn’t go the way you’d hoped it would. You start to question things and look for answers as to why. Why is God being cruel? Did you do something wrong? Maybe you didn’t pray hard enough. Why are you being punished? How could God do this to me?

Some of those thoughts and unanswered questions we can hold on to and not process well. We keep them in the forefront of our minds and use them as weapons to answer why this situation is so unfair. And when that happens bitterness seems to make her sour appearance. Unfortunately, undealt with bitterness can turn into anger, confusion, grief, and grudges. Which can then turn into a hardened relationship with God.

I know I don’t want to find myself there. And I don’t want you to find yourself there either. So I’ve been seeking to find God’s goodness and love in the really tough situations. And the best place you can find examples of that is in His Word. One example in His Word where we can see His love for us even in the hard situations is in the story of Leah. A story I’ve clung to during my hard days.

Leah was deceitfully given to be the wife of a man named Jacob. Jacob wanted to marry Leah’s younger sister, Rachel. But on the night he was supposed to receive Rachel as his wife, their father brought Leah instead. Jacob eventually ends up marrying Rachel as well and prizing her over Leah.

Let’s look more intently at Leah’s situation. First of all, the Bible describes Leah as having delicate eyes, but describes her younger sister Rachel as beautiful in form and appearance. I can imagine this detail alone is a challenge for Leah. Her younger sister was the desirable one. Every woman wants to be desired and I’m sure Leah longed for that trait and knew she came up short in comparison to her sister. It’s a struggle she had to carry her whole life. And to top it off, she is forced to marry the same man as her sister. So she can’t even escape from living in the shadow of her sister’s beauty and feeling like she’s less than.

In those times, typically the oldest has to get married before the younger ones can. So Leah was deceitfully forced to marry a man she knew didn’t want to marry her. Then her new husband is upset that he actually received her and not her younger sister. She already felt like she came up short and here is a situation that sort of just slaps that wound of insecurity in such a huge way. Talk about a woman so familiar with the stinging pain that rejection can bring. I’m sure she had many tear-filled prayers where she begged God to have her husband love her.

My heart breaks for what Leah went through I resonate with it so much. But my favorite part of the story is found in Genesis 29:31. It says,

When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb; but Rachel was barren.

The Lord saw. He looked down on Leah. He saw her. He saw her pain and blessed her.

 

During those times and in that culture, a woman who could bear many children, specifically boys, was placed at a high value. It was one of the biggest blessings, if not the biggest, that a woman could receive from the Lord during that time. And Leah bore more sons than Rachel. I’m not saying that it was a blessing that she finally beat Rachel at something. Rachel dealt with her own struggles and the Lord found ways to bless her from that pain as well. But I want to highlight how the Lord still showed up for Leah in her distress. He still cared.

I think this is so significant that we have a story in the Bible where God saw a pain of rejection that many women have had to walk through and sought to still bring blessings to her life. He didn’t find the pain insignificant. In fact, He validated the pain by having it be mentioned in the Bible.

But something I want to point out in Leah’s story is that the Bible never says that Jacob started loving her. He may have valued her more because she bore him many sons, but it never states that his love for her changed. It still mentioned the ways he adored Rachel and how he favored Rachel’s children. So while Leah was blessed by the Lord in other ways, I would say she didn’t receive her miracle.

God didn’t deliver her a new husband who cherished her or turn Jacob’s heart towards her. But Leah’s sons help make up the tribes of Israel. Had God changed her story, things wouldn’t have worked out the way they did throughout the history of Israel.

We won’t always get our miracle, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t there for you and finding other ways to bless you. Maybe we’ll never know why God doesn’t give us what we ask for. But we have to trust that He has a plan that we don’t see. We’re also living in a sin-soaked world. Which means injustice happens in our lives because of sin. That was never God’s plan or desire for us.

So while sin interrupts God’s amazing original design for our lives, He still looks for ways to bless our lives. He still sees you and your pain. And your pain is not insignificant. It’s so real and God sees it and cares about it.

 

Leah may not have received her miracle and God may not have answered her pleads to have her husband love her, but He still restored her life and gave her something of huge value.

He can restore your life too. You may be in the middle of a challenging season and you can’t see how life could ever be good again. But I’m here to tell you, don’t lose hope. Redemption is coming. It may not look how you want it to look and it may not be quite the way you expect or come as tidily as you’d like it. But God sees you and will bless you in time. He wants good things for you. And while He might not give you what you think you want, He will still show up for you in some way.

God is still there. He is still good even if life doesn’t feel good. The evidence of His goodness is not what He hasn’t done for us, but what He does do for us and how He shows up for us in the midst of our pain.

 

Focus on the blessings you receive from God rather than focusing on the pain you receive from the world and blaming God for not fixing your pain. Because in His perfect plan, you never would’ve experienced this pain in the first place.

So maybe my tear-soaked prayers won’t be answered in the way I’m asking them to. Maybe my miracle won’t come. But I can still stand strong in the Lord and His goodness and put my hope in that He will see me in the way He saw Leah and bless me.

In Genesis 30:13 Leah is quoted saying, “I am happy, for the daughters will call me blessed.” I admire Leah’s attitude toward what she received. Even though her life wasn’t the picture-perfect life I’m sure she imagined, she still found ways to be happy in what she did have.

The Lord saw Leah. He sees you too.

 

 

Thank you for sharing!