Your cry for mercy has come before the Lord who hears even the unspoken prayer, for He knows what is in the heart before the lip can frame it. Do not be cast down because others have mocked or made light of your supplication. Our blessed Lord Himself cried, My God, My God, yet His faith never staggered and never turned aside into unbelief, and He is your pattern in the hour when prayer seems to bring no answer.
You say you must believe your prayer has already been answered. Take heed that your faith rests not upon a fancy of your own, but upon a promise of God. Get the promise and then offer the prayer, and the prayer will be answered as sure as God is God. To put God in mind of what He has promised is the very essence of prayer, for we can never pray an inch beyond the tether of the promise with any assurance of being heard. When you can plead a promise and drop that prayer into the ground with hope, your weakness shall not make it miscarry. Search the Word, and see what God has said concerning mercy through Jesus Christ alone, concerning forgiveness, concerning holiness and conformity to His will, and there let your hope anchor.
Sometimes if a mercy were to come immediately when we asked for it, it would come too soon. God times it until it appears only at the right and best moment. Prayer sometimes tarries like a petitioner at the gate until the King comes forth, and the Lord when He has given great faith has been known to try it by long delays. He has suffered His servants voices to echo as from a brazen sky. Yet you shall be rewarded if you continue, and the longer your faith is tried, it shall be with you as when the ship is longest out at sea, it goes to the richest climes and comes home with the heaviest and most precious freight.
Remember also that prayer is often the shadow of mercy. When the sunlight of Gods mercy rises upon our necessities, it casts the shadow of prayer far down upon the plain. When God piles up a hill of mercies, He Himself shines behind them and casts on our spirits the shadow of prayer, so that we may rest certain that mercy is coming. Your very burden to pray, even in secret, may be the token that mercy is on its way, though not perhaps in the shape you expect.
Jacob prayed and his prayer was answered, but not as he expected. God met him not at first as his Friend, but as his wrestling Opponent, and Jacob went limping when the sun rose over Peniel, yet for all that he did get his prayer answered. Do not be astonished if after you have gone to God in prayer you seem to feel worse than before. And like Elijah on Carmel, we shall send yet seven times if we perceive no sign at the first, and continue in importunate prayer, still believing that Jehovah cannot lie and will be as good as His Word to those who trust Him.
You speak of keeping this matter as an unspoken prayer. The Lord indeed knows it altogether, and you may safely leave it with Him in the closet where He sees in secret. When you feel you have not liberty in prayer, pray in order to get liberty. Do not leave the Mercy Seat till you do.
We will pray with you, not to ask God to bless what His Word does not call blessed, for we must be faithful to what He has revealed concerning salvation through Jesus Christ alone and concerning marriage as the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, with all intimacy belonging within it, but to ask Him to have mercy upon you in the fullest sense. We ask Him to quicken you in His way, to give you repentance and faith, to conform your desires and your life to His holy will, to keep you from the praise of men and from the fear of men, and to give you that comfort which prayer itself brings to the sorrowful heart.
May the Lord fulfill His own Word unto you as His servant, and may you find that you are heard when answered soon or late, yes heard when you have no answer, and kindly answered even when refused, because He treats you well even when you think yourself hardly used. Continue to seek Him through Jesus Christ our only Mediator, and rest in His wisdom to answer as He sees best.
