“God did not answer my prayer!”

The father of a young man I personally know, in the course of a fight with another man several years ago, picked him up, threw him down to the sidewalk. The man’s skull was seriously fractured, whereupon he was carried to the hospital, and later died.

The young man said to me, “My father was tried for involuntary manslaughter, found guilty, and sentenced to serve time in prison. I prayed over and over that God would not let him go to prison.” He then concluded disappointedly . . . but God did not answer my prayers!”

Was the young man right? Did God turn a deaf ear to his prayers? He thought God did not answer his prayers because his father had to serve time in prison. What he did not realize is that God was getting ready to answer his prayers in a far greater way than he thought would happen, and I will explain why.

Several years later I had the opportunity to be the guest preacher in a series of revival services in the young man’s church. Only one person that entire week came to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and it was that young man’s father. He had served his sentence, was out of prison, and was in attendance during that week. His life was totally transformed. A few years later he died.

I believe God answers every prayer. Jesus clearly said, “Ask and you shall receive” (Matthew 21:22). Even God cannot answer a prayer that has not been prayed. He answers in one of three ways: “Yes” . . . . “No” . . . . or . . . “Not Now!” When He says “No!” to our prayers, it is for one or more of the following reasons:

• We do not pray in Jesus’ name. Jesus said to His disciples: “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14). He is God’s uniquely born Son. God always hears and honors prayers that are offered in His Son’s name.

• We do not ask according to God’s will. God’s will is clearly stated in the Bible. His will is consistent with His Word. Prayers that are prayed for selfish reasons clearly do not coincide with God’s will (see James 4:3). Because God loves us, He will not give us what we request if it is not what is best for us.

• We do not really believe God will answer. Though the analogy is not fully adequate, going to God without faith is like going to a shopping mall without money. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith does not give God a shopping list with the expectation that He will give us precisely that for which we have prayed, and at the precise time that we want it delivered. It does not demand miracles. It does, however, create the kind of environment where miracles are possible.

• We do not pray specifically. Be specific in your prayer request. A lady who was going to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore several years ago to have some surgery said to me, “When you pray for me, mention my name, and give God my street address.” It was a tongue in cheek statement on her part, but she was also serious. She knew the value of being specific when we pray.

• We have unconfessed sins our lives. King David wrote in Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.” Since God is a holy God we have no legitimate or moral right to enter His presence with known sin present in our lives, of which we have not repented, and for which we have not sought and found God’s forgiveness.

• We are unwilling to forgive others. In what is called the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive out debtors” (Matthew 5:12). Are there others whom you have not forgiven? If so, why would you ask God to forgive you, if you are unwilling to forgive others? Forgive them, then God can and will forgive you.

Roy M. Pearson, in United Church Herald, says of sincere prayer: “It is not a lazy substitute for work. It is not a short cut to skill or knowledge. And sometimes God delays the answer to our prayer in final form until we have time to build up the strength, accumulate the knowledge, or fashion the character that would make it possible for Him to say “yes” to what we ask.”

Robert J. McCracken, in What Happens When We Pray for Others, reminds us why it is so important to pray for others: “Prayer is love raised to its highest power; and the prayer of intercession is the noblest and most Christian kind of prayer – because in it love and imagination reach their highest and noblest range.”

 

 

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