UNANSWERED PRAYER

UNANSWERED PRAYER

The fourth method God uses to get our attention is through unanswered prayer. As long as our petitions are sufficiently granted, we can cruise along, enjoying God’s blessings and provision. But when a particularly urgent need arises and the heavens are brass, God has our complete attention.

Often, such seeming silence is a ripe time to conduct a spiritual self–examination under the illumination of the Holy Spirit. God’s Word indicates there are reasons why some supplications are not answered—asking for the wrong reasons (James 4:3), disobedience (1 John 3:22), asking out of the will of God (1 John 5:14), among others. We should ask God if any of these problems have affected us.

James 4:3 NASB

3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask [a]with the wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request [b]on your pleasures.”

1 John 3:22 NASB

22 “And whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.”

1 John 5:14 NASB

14 “This is the confidence which we have [a]before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

According to 1 Peter 3:7, unanswered or unfruitful prayer can even stem from insensitivity in a marriage relationship. Peter stated that a husband’s prayers are “hindered” if he isn’t loving his wife as he should.

1 Peter 3:7 NASB

7 “You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with [a]someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.”

At times God refuses to answer our prayers because He knows that if He answers them, we will stray further off base. That is why Satan will be more than happy to help us get an answer to everything we want outside the will of God, because he knows pleasure today may mean trouble tomorrow. Closed doors to prayer may sometimes be a sign of God’s hand working to redirect our focus to another needful area of our lives.

The Lord used Paul’s thorn as a teaching tool that has ministered to countless millions of believers (see 2 Cor. 12:7).

2 Corinthians 12:7 NASB

7 “Because of the extraordinary greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to [a]torment me—to keep me from exalting myself!”

His prayer went unanswered, but at the same time, his focus shifted from considering the severity of his problem to a new understanding of God’s grace. When Paul opened his letters with his familiar “grace and peace” salutation, he well knew the meaning of the phrase. Unanswered prayer brought Paul into a new dimension of dependence on God.