By Shawn Hennessy 

In today’s world, there is a common question that many of us wrestle with—why doesn't God answer my prayers? 

Chances are at some point in your life, you've asked God to do something that you knew He could do, and quite frankly, even thought that He should do. But for whatever reason, He didn't do it. If you have ever prayed and God didn't do something, that probably rattled you. It may have caused you to wonder, “Why didn't God do what I asked him to do?” 

I asked that question a lot, especially when I was a new Jesus guy. When I didn't see God do what I wanted Him to do, it created a sense of doubt in me. When I would read the Bible, it felt like God was pretty clear that all I had to do was believe what I was praying, and He would respond. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, "You can ask anything in My name and I'll do it so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes. Ask anything in My name and I'll do it." I looked at a verse like that and thought, “I asked in Jesus' name, I believed it and I knew that God coulddo it, so why didn't He? Is this a me issue? Am I doing something wrong? Am I standing when I should be sitting? Or am I sitting when I should be kneeling? Am I using the wrong words? Should I be speaking in the King James version? Am I speaking into the wrong end of the phone? What is causing God not to answer my prayers?" 

I think most of us have asked those same questions. Maybe you saw somebody who prayed for another person to be healed and then that person was healed. So, you prayed for your friend or your relative, but they weren't healed. Because of that, you wondered, "God, I know you could do that, but why didn't you?" 

Perhaps you tried to conceive for years. You wanted to have kids and be called mama or daddy. It seemed like all your friends had kids, and yet, they took them for granted. They spent most of their time complaining about their kids. You knew that God could answer your prayer—you begged Him. But, for one reason or another, He didn't. Even though you prayed, even though you believed, you still didn’t end up with a child of your own. 

I don't have all the answers. However, I want to give you some biblical thoughts and some conversation starters for you and God to talk about. God actually always answers our prayers. It's just not necessarily how we want them to be answered or how we think He should answer. Here are four possibilities why God doesn't answer, or didn't answer, our prayers.

 

1.     Broken Relationships

I am not talking about your relationship with God. I am talking about your relationship with others. If you are like me and you believe the Bible is unchanging, having a broken relationship with another person actually has a lot to do with the efficacy of your prayers. 

But, this is not simply my opinion. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus said, "Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you've received it and it'll be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that you Father in heaven may also forgive your sins."

In I John, He says, "If we say we love God, but we don't love each other, we are liars." In other words, we can't go around saying, "I love you God, but I can't stand that guy." The fact is you need to fix your broken relationships. Your horizontal relationships impact your vertical relationship.Your relationships with each other have a direct bearing on your relationship with God.  

In a very small way, I can understand God's position, because I'm a dad. When my kids are fighting about something, it's usually about something insignificant. When they are fighting and then ask me for something, I don't want to give them what they're asking for because I care more about how they treat each other than simply giving them what they want. They need to fix the relationship between each other and quit fighting before they ask me for anything. 

 

2.     We have the wrong motives

When you pray, maybe your motives are wrong. Listen to what the earthly brother of Jesus, James, had to say about that. He said, “When you ask, you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives. And those motives are that you may spend what you get on your own pleasures.” 

In our North American culture, we are some of the most selfish prayers on Earth. While so many people on Earth have nothing, we spend much of our prayer currency praying for more things. We pray selfish prayers when what God really wants is for us to pray selfless prayers. When was the last time you spent all your prayer time praying for someone else?

In Proverbs it says, “You might think everything you do is right, but the Lord doesn't judge your actions, He judges your motives.”

 

3.     You don't believe God is actually going to do it

One interesting interaction in the Gospel of Mark tells us of a father who is concerned over his son. The son is caught up in some evil things. This dad is desperate, like any of us would be. He says to Jesus, "If you could do anything, could you just take pity on us and help us?" Jesus said, "If you can? Everything is possible for one who believes." Our faith matters when we pray.  He said, "It was done unto them according to their faith." He said, "If you have a little bit of faith you can say to this mountain be moved, and it will be."

Jesus is saying “your faith matters.” Unfortunately, there are many people claiming to be Christians who don't actually believe that God is going to do anything when they pray. We know that word of mouth is the best marketing. If there are people around you who aren't Jesus people, they can pick up on the fact that you don't actually believe in prayer. Prayer is one of the foundational principles about being a Jesus person. 

It's like the characters in this old story. There was a pastor and a bar owner. The pastor was upset because there was a bar down the street and they were selling alcohol. The pastor openly called alcohol the devil's drink. He gathered all of his people together and they had prayer meetings to pray against the bar. Well, something worked because one day lightning struck the bar, and the bar burned to the ground. So the bar owner sued the church.

When they were standing before the judge, the judge asks the bar owner, "What happened?" The bar owner responded, "This pastor prayed and because of his prayers, God struck us and now I lost everything." The pastor responds, "Wait, that wasn't our intention. That isn't what we meant at all. We just had a harmless prayer meeting. That's not why the lightning struck. This isn't our fault."

The judge looked at the pastor and said, "I can't believe what I'm hearing. We have a bar owner that believes in the power of prayer, and a pastor who doesn't." 

That might sound silly to us, but how often do we have people in our lives who call themselves Christians who don't actually believe in the power of prayer. The reason we know they don't is because you can hear it in their language. They might say something like, "It’s been really hard. We've done everything we can do but now all we can do is pray."

If you try everything you think will work and then you pray, it's pretty clear you don't believe in the power of prayer. Prayer should be our first instinct, not our last resort. The Bible says, "When you ask, you must believe and not doubt because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind. That person shouldn't expect to receive anything from the Lord." 

 

4.     God has something different for you

Maybe God has something different in mind than you have. What God has in mind is always better than what we have in mind for ourselves. God's will is always better. God's will always matters more than our will. Jesus acknowledged that truth when He was preparing to go to the cross. He's in the garden and He's praying, "Father, if you're willing, please take this cup of suffering away." Jesus didn't want to die. Who does? But, He goes on to say, "Yet I want your will to be done, not mine."

Even though we think we know what's best for us, God knows better because He is all knowing, and He is everywhere. Scripture says, "This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything, according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of Him."

We can have confidence that we can ask for anything, and if it fits into His will, He hears us, and He responds. We can also have confidence that if we are asking for something that's outside of His will, even when we think it's best for us, God loves us enough not to give it to us. There have been so many times I have prayed for something that I thought was what should happen, that I thought was best for me, but God did something different.

Years ago, Pastor Sonny and I were desperately praying that we would have a baby. She just wanted to be a mama, and I just wanted to be a daddy. After years of praying, we finally got pregnant, but things didn't end how we wanted. After this really long, hard fight we lost our little girl Savannah. We had to stand beside a little grave and bury our little girl. We were devastated. I honestly thought I was never going to recover. It definitely was not what we wanted. But out of that, I was able to write a book called, The Gravity of Grief, which I can't tell you how many families have been able to walk the road of grief because we were able to walk that impossible road before them. He didn't answer our prayer how we wanted, He answered our prayer how He wanted.

I now get to hold unknowing hands with a knowing hand. A hand that knows not only where they are, but also knows where they're going. Also, I have the comfort of knowing that I have this beautiful little girl in heaven who's waiting on me. I am pretty convinced she is constantly tapping Jesus on the shoulder saying, "Are they here yet?”  And I'm pretty sure He's patiently answering her, "Not yet Savannah, but they're coming, I promise."

I wonder what prayers you have been praying that you thought God wasn't answering. That in truth, He was. He just answered them differently. He just answered them in ways that you haven't thought of, or couldn't have even imagined.

Trust Him. He knows what He's doing. He's been doing it for quite a while. Here are three things I believe about prayer: 

1. Believe that God can.

2. Believe that God will.

3. Believe that even if He doesn't, you will still believe.

Prayer reminds me, I'm not in control.It's not about me, but it keeps me close to the One who is control.