9 Holy Week Lessons for Handling Hard TimesSample

“But if not.”

This may be the most powerful line to pray in suffering.

In the book of Daniel, three young men were facing a trial that would end in death. They were asked to follow laws foreign to their faith and refused. The king ordered that they be thrown into a fiery furnace. It’s a familiar story to most, but I had forgotten what may be the most important part of the story:

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.

But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.’”

Daniel 3:16-18

Great faith is defined by bold prayers, but even more by trust when prayers are not answered. “But if not” is a phrase I’m trying to learn and I think will help you as you face uncertainty or suffering.

The longer I study the passion of Jesus and what he did for us on the cross, the more I’m reminded of this phrase. The apostle Paul, responsible for writing two-thirds of the New Testament, experienced extreme suffering. Paul could pray like no other. He raised someone from the dead. He was able to handle snakes. He converted people everywhere he went. But he had something inside him that he called a thorn in his flesh. And he prayed three times for God to remove it. God‘s answer was no. God went on to say, my grace is sufficient for you. But his grace did not involve removing whatever was inside the apostle.

And Paul kept moving forward.

It was only this year that I noticed a new dimension to the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed. Jesus went off to pray alone. I’d always known that part, and that he prayed so hard that his sweat became blood (which apparently can happen medically). What I hadn’t noticed was that he went through this cycle three times. In the Bible, three is a number of completion. Jesus prayed not once, but completely that he not have to go to the cross.

And then the most important part of his prayer comes at the end. “Nonetheless, not my will, but yours be done.” Almost another version of “But if not.”

Isn’t that a beautiful bookend to Jesus’ life? When the Virgin Mary, probably a 13-year-old girl, was visited by an angel and told that she would become pregnant with the son of God, she said, “Let it be to me according to your will.”

I wish I could write a devotional that would tell you that your suffering is going to go away. I wish that my wife’s cancer would go away. I know she’s going to be healed and have a heavenly home, but selfishly, I really want her healing to happen now so that we have a long life together. We’re holding onto a verse that one of our pastors gave us on a sculpture that says, “I believe I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.”

And I’m hoping and praying that I will continue to have the strength to say, “But if not.”

As we’ve entered this season of prayer around cancer, I’m holding onto a simple framework that I hope endures. Here it is.

1. I will trust that God is good and has a plan that is good.
2. I believe that God hears and answers our prayers.
3. I’m going to pray like crazy that this cancer be healed permanently here on earth.
4. I’m going to believe that God hears and answers his prayers.
5. But if not I’m going to trust that God is good and has a good plan.

I can’t promise you that I won’t have dark nights of the soul, but I can promise you that there’s a model in scripture from some pretty great people who’ve been able to endure and have been rewarded.

From boys facing a furnace, to a teenage girl being told she’d become pregnant, to an apostle who had a thorn in his side, to God‘s very own Son. All of them ended their prayers with some form of “but if not.”

As we celebrate Good Friday, I would encourage you to try that prayer out. Whatever suffering you’re facing, end it with something along the lines of “but if not.”

If the scriptures are true, the ending will be the right one, even if it’s not the one we would have chosen.

Prayer:

Dear God, I come to you with a heavy heart, feeling lost and overwhelmed. The weight of my circumstances feels unbearable, and I find myself on the brink of despair. But even in this darkness, I will cling to the hope that you are near, that you hear my cries, and that you are capable of turning my despair into joy, and that your plan is always the best one.

Amen