Check out a highlight from last week’s podcast: Joel 2 Explained (Verse 25): God Will Repay
Have you ever wondered if God is actually listening? Or is it just me?
I grew up when ’90s country music was taking off, and Garth Brooks had that song Unanswered Prayers. He tells a story that, in hindsight, makes perfect sense—God said “no” to a prayer, and it turned out better than he could have imagined. The girl he thought he wanted wasn’t who he was meant to be with, and that “no” led him straight to his wife.
And I get it. It’s a whole lot easier to praise God when you can look back and clearly see what He was doing. It’s much harder to trust Him moving forward when everything feels uncertain.
But if I could challenge Garth a bit, I’d ask—what do you tell the guy who doesn’t get the rosy outcome? What then?
Because if I’m being honest, I’ve had seasons where it felt like my prayers were just going into a lost filing cabinet somewhere.
I was talking with my wife about this recently, and she shared something that really stuck with me. For her, God’s silence has gone on so long that quietness almost feels like the expectation in their relationship. She still reads her Bible, goes to church, and prays—but her consistent experience has been that God is quiet.
Throughout her life, she’s watched her family pursue what they believed God was calling them to, all while walking through heavy challenge after challenge. There were multiple times she thought she might lose her brother due to serious medical issues.
From the outside, she was doing everything “right”—the things we point to as strong, faithful living. And yet, she still felt unseen.
So what do you do when it feels like your prayers are falling on deaf ears?
For many, that’s the moment they begin to pull back… and sometimes walk away from faith altogether.
Thankfully, she didn’t. And maybe part of the reason is found in passages like Psalm 13:1 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?…”
Not because it gives easy answers—but because it gives permission.
In that psalm, King David—described as a man after God’s own heart—is crying out in what feels like deep silence. He repeats “How long?” over and over again. You can feel the weight of it. The frustration. The hurt.
Honestly, I’m so grateful that kind of raw honesty made it into Scripture. Because life is hard, and there are seasons where God feels completely distant.
If that’s where you are right now, I don’t want to minimize that pain or frustration.
But maybe this is a gentle reminder worth holding onto: His silence does not mean His absence.
There is nothing broken in you for feeling this way. And as difficult as it is to navigate, there’s still something grounding in this truth—silence from God is still far better than the noise of the world.
Sometimes it’s not about having the answer yet. It’s about staying present, staying open, and being ready for when He chooses to speak.