Audio Transcript
Psalm 37:4 makes us a very sweet promise: If you “delight yourself in the Lord, . . . he will give you the desires of your heart.” But what happens when you’re doing that — you’re seeking him, praying to him, following him, trusting him, even delighting in him by faith — and those deep desires for good things in this life go unmet? That’s where we find ourselves often. That’s where creation finds itself always, groaning in an unfulfilled desire (Romans 8:22). So, how do we live by faith when we have to live with life’s disappointments? That’s where we’re headed today in this email from an anonymous woman:
“Pastor John, thank you for the ways you’ve encouraged my heart over the years. I rediscovered your ministry five years ago, but my journey with suffering began long before that. Twenty years ago, I was in a severe car wreck that left me in a four-month non-drug-induced coma. I spent the next decade in therapy — relearning how to walk, talk, and even swallow — three times a week, across three states, for ten years. Now, at 52, I walk with a cane but ‘look normal.’ No visible scars except for a trach scar.
“For years, I believed I was being refined for someone — that this suffering would lead to a godly marriage. But I’ve never even been kissed. I’ve prayed for years to be seen as a woman, not just my mother’s daughter, yet it feels like God has not answered. Does this mean I’ve been refined only for him? How do I trust ‘ask, and it will be given’ when my deepest longing remains unmet? Am I misunderstanding God’s promises? My faith is wavering, and I don’t know how to keep believing.”
I think it will be helpful to say that this woman’s experience is a deep intensification of a very common experience. What makes it such a deep intensification is the accident, the coma, the ten years of rebuilding a whole life, the arrival of some sense of normalcy now in her fifties. And what makes it so very common is that millions of younger and older women are finding a way for themselves in life as unmarried persons when they have a deep longing for a good man to find them attractive and to want to build a life together. She asks, “Does this mean I’ve been refined only for [God]? How do I trust [the promise] ‘ask, and it will be given’ when my deepest longing remains unmet? Am I misunderstanding God’s promises? My faith is wavering, and I don’t know how to keep believing.”
Perspective on Our Prayers
Now, I have in my mind women in our church who have been heroes of mine over the years, for the past forty years or so that I’ve known women like this. I think of two. For example, Char Ransom and Ruth Rabenhorst, both of whom are in heaven now and were single all their lives, into their seventies and eighties. I knew them for the last thirty-plus years of their lives. They were known in our church as two of the most sacrificial, loving, giving, happy, fruitful servants of Christ — one, a public school teacher; the other, a nurse midwife. Their lifelong singleness was not because they did not desire to be married. Char used to joke, “No man deserves to be as happy as I could make him.” Everybody laughed, and they knew there was way more to it than that.
We all know the promises that make us ache. “Ask, and you shall receive” (see Matthew 7:7). “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11). There’s not one Christian man or woman, single or married, who does not have a deep desire that God has not yet fulfilled — some health issue, some marital pain, some unbelieving child, some unfulfilled dream. Everybody has one of these, or ten.
“Father, I roll the burden of this desire onto you again this morning. Now help me, show me, how to walk in freedom.”
And this does not mean that our experience contradicts the Bible, because the Bible itself portrays Paul, for example, with the thorn in the flesh as he pleads three times with Christ that he would take it away, and Christ says no because his glory is going to be magnified through it (2 Corinthians 12:8–9). And so, Paul is content. That’s his word (2 Corinthians 12:10). He’s content with his unfulfilled desire because he loves the glory of Christ more than he loves the absence of the thorn. And so, paradoxically, there’s a sense in which he got what he most wanted: a life that magnifies the worth of Jesus.
That’s really worth thinking about a long time. I think that’s the answer to most of what we call unfulfilled promises or unanswered prayers. Christ is saying, “If you’ll trust me, you’ll experience my ‘No’ or my ‘Not yet’ as a deeper soul satisfaction than if I had said yes to your way and your timing.”
Now, at this point, I suppose I could pull out from the Bible and from church history lots of beautiful examples of fruitful single women: Isaiah 56:3–5 and 1 Corinthians 7:7–8, and Amy Carmichael and Mary Slessor, Gladys Aylward and Lottie Moon and Betsey Stockton. But instead, I think it will be more helpful to ponder for just a moment what it’s like to actually live with unfulfilled desires, because that’s where we all live, some more painfully than others. There are millions of unmarried women, younger and older, who deep down feel, I would love for a good and worthy man to find me attractive and get to know me and say to me, “I would like to build a life with you till death do us part.”
How to Go On
How, then, do we live year after year, prayer after prayer, while those kinds of desires are not met?
First, I would say that we all must learn to cast our burden on the Lord every day — every day, not just once — and let him carry the weight of our unfulfilled desires. He said, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you” (Psalm 55:22). Unfulfilled desires are a burden. They are a heavy burden. If we try to carry them alone, they will crush us. That’s the point of that text. Don’t do that. Roll it onto the Lord. That’s an act of faith every morning.
So, every day, we must get up in the morning and say to God, “You know, Father, how my heart aches for this” — you fill in the blank. We’re talking about marriage, but you fill in the blank. “My heart aches for this. I do not see it on the horizon, but you are good. You are wise. You love me. You sent Christ to die for me. You do not withhold from me what is best for me. I roll the burden of this desire onto you again this morning. Now help me, show me, how to walk in freedom.” That’s first.
The second thing I would say is that we must get rid of the idea that we need to communicate the sadness of our longing to others so that people will realize our pain. That’s a terrible temptation. It is so immature. I have tasted this immaturity in my life, right into adulthood. I intensely repudiate it, and I plead with you to do the same. Don’t fall into the immature pattern of believing that pouting is the best way to let people know you have not gotten what you want. That’s a deeply immature and counterproductive way to live: to carry your sorrows on your sleeve and to try to somehow communicate to others how hard life is because you have not gotten what you so deeply long for.
Instead, discover this: It is possible for a mature woman or man to acknowledge to God and to oneself, and perhaps to a few close confidants, the deep longings that are not yet fulfilled, and yet carry on a joyful life — finding a fulfilling job, satisfying ministry, rewarding friendships, delightful leisure, stupendous Christian hope of being with Christ forever, all the while tasting what it would be like for another godly desire to be met that isn’t being met. That means there may be a melancholy note in the symphony of your life, but it will not be perceived as pouting or as, Oh, poor me; please recognize my pain, by mature people. It will be perceived by discerning people that you have tasted sorrow, and you have learned how to live with it without dragging other people down.
So, let’s help each other. That’s what we do in the church. Let’s help each other in both directions. Let’s help each other live with unfulfilled desires, with God’s help, and let’s help each other meet those unfulfilled desires where we can, with God’s help.
