My daughter, Tayliana, and her husband, Sam, just celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary. I remember the day well because their wedding took place in our backyard. We had moved into our home a little less than a year before. It had sat vacant for two years before we bought it. The kids got engaged there in February and planned their wedding for June 14. That didn’t leave us much time to get the house ready, but we jumped into full wedding mode.

Part of the preparations involved planting wildflowers along the perimeter of our lawn. As the wedding day approached, not a single wildflower had sprouted. So we bought numerous flowers and plants and placed them all over the yard. The result was beautiful.

Years later, we looked out into the yard one mid-summer day and saw flowers growing everywhere. They had sprung up all over the place! The seeds we planted years ago had finally come to life. What a fantastic and surprising gift! It reminds me of Galatians 6:7 (GNT): “Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. You will reap exactly what you plant.” Later, in verse 9, it says: “So let us not become tired of doing good; for if we do not give up, the time will come when we will reap the harvest.”

I’m not a botanist, so I don’t know why it took so long for those seeds to produce flowers, but eventually blooms came from a long-forgotten planting. And I think of those wildflower seeds as being like some of my prayers. It’s taken a while for some to produce a visible result, and some I’m still waiting for the first signs of growth.

In the middle of waiting for the harvest from our prayers, it’s tempting to think that things aren’t working. We wonder if our prayers aren’t good enough, or maybe if God doesn’t care. Sometimes, we might even feel forgotten and be tempted to give up — or worse, complain and then actually give up. 

It’s easy to slip into a victim mentality. We ask questions like, Why do other people get their prayers answered and not me? What am I doing wrong? Has the Lord forgotten about me? Or we may start doubting whether we should pray about anything at all. If the Lord hasn’t heard me in these things, why would He hear me about other things?

It’s okay to ask the Lord earnest questions; He’s not upset by them. He loves communicating with His children. But we need to be careful not to fall into a victim mentality. We are not victims. We are victors. The Lord has called us victorious and more than conquerors (1 Corinthians 15:57, Romans 8:37).

The problem with adopting a victim mindset is that we lose trust in the God who gave us His Son. 

Romans 8:32 (NLT) tells us: “Since He did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t He also give us everything else?” That doesn’t sound like a victim’s existence to me.

Just because the flowers of our prayers haven’t blossomed yet doesn’t mean we should give up on them, lose hope, complain, or stop expecting them to come to fruition. Maybe we just need to water them with faith. Let them bask in the sunlight of our worship of a faithful God who loves us. The Lord says you will reap exactly what you’ve planted. The key is to remember that the God who gave us His Son will also give us everything else. He is a God who keeps His promises.

Whatever seeds of faith, worship, and prayer you’ve planted, don’t give up. Just like my wildflowers reaped a harvest, so will your prayers. Don’t give up.

LISTEN to Tyra’s devotion here or on the (in)courage podcast!

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