Unanswered prayers - these can't simply be "God's plan"

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I’m remembering you in my prayers as you untangle all these threads.

People do crappy things to each other and one of the results is an insecurity about the world that is extremely difficult to shake.
 
People who say it is all God’s plan–NO IT IS NOT! Stop saying that!

Another way to look at it–‘unanswered prayers’ could just be Him answering in a different way. Maybe you put expectations on God and He showed His love differently than expected.
BUT,
God does not will anything evil or bad to happen. But because of the gift of free will, not even He is going to break that apart from us. Because of free will, humans sin.

Do I think that God willed my baby cousin to die unexpectedly? No, never. God would not want to kill a baby. He allowed it to happen, and from that trauma my whole family experienced, God made good things come from it. It brought my family closer together, it brought some other family into the faith. That doesn’t mean I am thankful he died, I would have given anything if I could have been there and seen him grow up, but from this horrible thing, good came from it.

I think He let’s it happen because if He doesn’t that breaks the whole free will thing. Forcing someone to act differently because its more humane isn’t the choice of that person. In the same way if He hadn’t given us free will and everyone was in peace and no issues and no sins, on Earth, (NOT IN HEAVEN< DIFFERENT SITUATION THERE LOL) but on Earth, would that be real love? Would that be choosing God if we didn’t have a choice? no, it wouldn’t.

It sucks and I don’t have a better answer than this. Take it with a grain of salt, I am still learning so so much everyday about God and my faith.
 
I’m truly sorry for all the pain and hearache you and your family went though in losing your baby cousin . Thank God for the good that has come from this suffering.

You’re right in that God does not will evil. You are also right in saying He let it happen. This is what is called His Permissive Will - as opposed to His Active Will.

When it is said it is all part of Gods’ plan - those who say this do so may because they know there really isn’t anything they can say to console those or to undo what happened, and it is their attempt to explain things that are truly hard to understand. Inept? Yes, but what else could be said that would truly remove the pain of those suffering/grieving?

What is meant by that (IMO) is the overall picture God has for the salvation of mankind - all souls from Adam & Eve to the final judgement. Everything happens according to His Will - Active & Permissive and so when looked at it in that way, it is part of Gods’ Plan.

There often isn’t any acceptable explanation to us, for many occurrences of suffering in this life. There are many injustices suffered by many in various ways in this world.

The greatest of which is Jesus’ suffering and death - one who was innocent and knew no sin, was made to be sin so that we might become the righteous of God.

But we trust in God, we hope in God, we have Faith in God and His Goodness and we continue to love God.

God bless you bumblebee.
 
I’m sorry you have that experience.
No offence but your concept of free will is very limiting and limited. You can choose something and then change your mind, again and again and again. God gives you that option. he even goes in and cleans up our messes, constantly. But I do understand, that if you are in a wounded place as you sound like you are that you may not be able to see that. That is really harsh for you. You have no reason too, but believe me, God is going before you making life easier than it would have been and going after you, fixing all the messes we all make so we can still go to heaven if we want too. He is really (in human terminology) polite and respectful and won’t force us in interrupt our free will though so we can choose to ignore him, if we want too.

I see what you mean, only I dont agree completely. Abusers are wrong to use that phrase, I am sorry they made it a bad one for you. It is true though, cos if children did know they would not believe an abuser and they’d go tell. They’d believe a good society and their teacher and good parents who say don’t talk to strangers and tell if anything makes you uncomfortable etc. Still there are always bad people who slip through the cracks… but God is good always so he will never let you down. But again, if you are wounded then it is difficult to let God heal you, because of what humans using their free will have done to you. This is sad for God, it breaks his heart because he wants to heal wounds, that is exactly why he chose to be wounded and not just to die. He chose to be wounded so our wounds could be healed, but we have to let him heal them, ask him as he will never ever force us to do anything as he respects us and our free will too much. Even if we use it for evil.

I am sorry you see yourself that way. Also that you see God that way. God bless you, I’ll pray for you. I hope you find your healing in Him some day.
 
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I am one who detests the phrase: “It was meant to be.” I lost a child, the biggest loss I have experienced in my life, thus far. I reject the statement that says losing my child was meant to be. Yet, in recognition of faith in Jesus as my one, true, faithful friend, I accept it (together with all my life’s losses and disappointments) as my particular cross.

Everyone experiences loss, from the first moment of our existence, to our last breath. The past is gone, is but a sack of rocks. It is hard to let go that sack of rocks, giving it over to Jesus who asks us to leave it at the foot of His cross.

This present moment is all we possess. This moment encompasses eternal power, when offered up in relationship with Jesus. Jesus is friend, healer, savior. If I choose to leave Him, to whom shall I go?

You @DarkLight are part of the body of Christ. When you hurt, the entire body hurts. I pray the Holy Spirit to cover you, healing you (physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally) and bringing you to a place of peace where you will find joy in living for Him, who loves you most of all. 🙏 Amen.
 
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Most of the choices I’m thinking of aren’t the kind you can make over and over because life doesn’t stay the same once you make them.

Our answers just seem to make God so helpless in the face of human free will, even when there are clear and obvious possible ways to answer prayer that don’t violate free will. That’s why I’m really hitting on the epistemic side so hard. Yes, the choices that people freely make to do wrong cause a lot of suffering. But so very much of it also depends on people who want to do the right thing not having access to the information that they would need to actually do it. So people cause a lot more hurt and suffering, not because they’re choosing to do evil, but because they’re trying to choose to do good and don’t have the right knowledge to actually do the right thing.

Free will in those situations seems less like a gift and more like a cruel joke. We want to do the right thing, but we don’t because we can’t possibly get the information we need to actually do so. And we end up causing incredible evil out of our very desire to do what’s right.
 
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Sometimes the sin of others causes harm to us. In abuse cases the victim is stripped off his/ her freewill. Misinformation is the nature of “a lie”. Jesus say that His Father enemy is “the father of lies”, when “he” speak, he lies, and that he wants to murder humans since the beginning of time ( John 8:44)

The opposite of the lie, is the truth. Jesus say, The Truth shall sets you free.

Sometimes It takes Divine interventions, as in Joseph story. Joseph received dreams long before he was sold as a slave. The dream was about him became Egypt’s pharaoh righthand man. The story shows God has a plan, but in our most difficult times we need to cooperate when opportunity appears in front of us.Sometimes one must wait a lifetime for such divine intervention
 
I’m thinking not just of the choices of abusers themselves. Think, for example, of the well-intentioned adults who report an abused child’s distress back to the abusive parent, or who reassure the child that it’s normal to have struggles with their parents but they need to be mature and talk it over with the abuser. Or even the well-meaning but somewhat more abrasive folk who tell teenagers and young adults complaining about poor behavior on the part of their parents that they need to grow up and stop expecting their parents to be perfect. These people aren’t acting out of malice, but out of their own presumption that the parents are good people who want the best for their child, and that the child simply isn’t mature enough to understand what’s good for them. Even the child may not know, when they become an adult, that they can walk away, because they’ve been told for so long that their experiences are normal and it’s best for them to not oppose their parents.

None of that is explained by free will, I think.
 
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What you said is very true. St Augustine said our human good work without God is evil. This sentence alone shows the inability of moral teaching-- detached from the Lord-- to produce any good work… The intepretation of the use of freewill you mention is derived from moral teaching. Jesus ask us to use our freewill to believe Him. I am not saying that the moral teaching get it all wrong, it is a narrow scope of the use of freewill derrived from the law of moses. (example : If one choose to murder his neighbour, one is guilty. If no intention to murder him, then he is innocent.)

In the new testament, Jesus shows the new way how to use our freewill: everytime a person choose to believe Him, He set this person free even miraculously. Before a person is free, his freewill is arrested under the clutch of sin. This can mean a spiritual clutch too in which everything is clouded even the people around us and everything else just doesn’t work for our goodness.

But God has a plan to free us in His time, just as He freed Joseph from the slavery and even crowned him to become the most important man in Egypt, second to Pharaoh.
 
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True. We do have free will, but it is not always 100%. Like in the case of abuse, the victim did not have the option of exercising his free will to not be abused. And many more cases, like victims of accidents, bullying, war. Sometimes the free will of others supercedes the free will of an individual. That is why it is not necessarily true that you ware who you are because of your choices. Partly, yes. But partly also because of circumstances you can’t change. It isn’t 100%.
 
It seems like ignorance, which is also a sin, unless it is completely involuntary. It is impossible to say what is happening internally in someone else’s soul when they act or say something with a certain intention. If evil results, then there is something wrong with it. Should God remove all involuntary ignorance from the world? That may reduce suffering, but it would increase culpability and, likely, guilt. It’s difficult to say where or what the greater good is with our limited and finite grasp of reality.
 
My mom used to say “I am so mad at God for making you with this mutations! It’s not fair!”

The thing is, I’m happy with who I am. Thankfully, I was quick enough to accept that this is how God made me and there is nothing wrong with that. Combating disability has its difficulties but God gives graces while in the midst of it. Sure, I was born with a recessively inherited genetic condition. I suddenly developed it when I was 20 years old. However, that doesn’t mean that God has completely abandoned me. He’s still with me.

That’s what I want to say to those who have said that God does not exist based on my genetic disorder. No, He transformed my life for the better.
 
“Unanswered prayers” simply means that your life is not over yet.

I would pray for the virtue of patience - if you have the patience to, that is.
 
Perversion will always exist in this world.

But the Spirit of God give wisdom and understanding. Jesus disciples were mostly uneducated men. They became wiser than the scribes and the scholars.

When we are in darkness of situation, pray for God’s light to shine on it. He will show the way.
 
francisca.chapter3 said:
When we are in darkness of situation, pray for God’s light to shine on it. He will show the way.
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This is exactly what I did that resulted in me being seemingly led to the answer that I deserved to be abused and if I just tried to follow God harder it would all end - but it would be a sin to actually try to do anything about the abuse itself.
 
DarkLight said:
This is exactly what I did that resulted in me being seemingly led to the answer that I deserved to be abused and if I just tried to follow God harder it would all end - but it would be a sin to actually try to do anything about the abuse itself.
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No no no. You did not deserve to be abused. No one deserves abuse. Abuse is sin. Sin is against God. When we see abuse we need to fight against it. I am sorry you had no one to support you in that fight against an abuser, who has sole responsibility for their actions.

I pray you will find courage to go through and past your experiences, receiving healing and Christ’s peace. You are a beautiful child of God. Trust in Jesus who loves you so much!
 
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fin said:
We do have free will, but it is not always 100%
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DarkLight said:
This is exactly what I did that resulted in me being seemingly led to the answer that I deserved to be abused and if I just tried to follow God harder it would all end - but it would be a sin to actually try to do anything about the abuse itself.
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Sometimes it takes time to find our way out. God called Israel out of Egypt, to go to the promised land. They wandered around and around for 40 years in the dessert, before they finally decided to make the first move to enter it.

Our battle is also against misinformation, ignorance, perversion of teachings, basically the lies of the world. Freedom is the revelation of God’s truth we all are seeking in our life
 
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Sometimes we wonder why people make poor choices. The thing we don’t know is, what options were available to them? Maybe they were all substandard, so not much to choose from. I know what it feels like to have options before me, none of which are favorable or I like, but no other choice but to choose one. 🤷‍♀️ Free will is not 100%. It is constrained by other factors.
 
I understand you, I think most people have experienced this. This is even harder to understand when we are asking for relief of certain sufferings or evil things. However we must understand that we can only see a tree, while God sees the forest.

The best thing for us to do is to continue to trust in Him, and keep praying.

Consider Jesus crucifixion, I do not think there is a more grave injustice which has happened in all of human history, considering how perfectly Jesus lived. Jesus suffered unspeakable things on the Cross, not to mention the Blessed Mother Mary, who we know from doctrine never sinned, and had to witness the slaughtering of His Son. She therefore also suffered tremendously although not physically, her suffering was spiritual and psychological.

However through those sufferings came the greatest good possible: humanity redemption.
 
Mother Theresa said “Love until it hurts”, because love is tested in suffering.

Job went through this. He was tested with all calamities in life. He refused to curse God. Instead, he hoped for God’s redemption. In the end, God restore his body and his family and his possessions
 
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