Unanswered Prayers Part 1
How to Pray Using the PRAY Method an acronym
These four aspects of prayer based on the Lord’s Prayer can provide a structure and flow for your prayer life. Approach them like dance steps rather than hard-and-fast rules to infuse freshness into your prayers.
Matthew 6:9-13 (NKJV)
9 In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Pause
Jesus said . . . ,“When you pray, . . .”
To start we must stop. To move forward we must pause. This is the first step: Put down your wish list and wait. Sit quietly. “Be still and know that I am God.” Become fully present in place and time so that your scattered senses can recenter themselves on God’s eternal presence. Stillness and silence prepare your mind and prime your heart to pray from a place of greater peace, faith, and adoration. In fact, these are themselves important forms of prayer.
Rejoice
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name.
The Lord’s Prayer begins with an invitation to adoration: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name.” Having paused to be still at the start of a prayer time, the most natural and appropriate response to God’s presence is reverence. Try not to skip this bit. Hallowing the Father’s name is the most important and enjoyable dimension of prayer. Linger here, rejoicing in God’s blessings before asking for more.
Ask
Your kingdom come, your will be done. . . . Give us today our daily bread.
Prayer means many things to many people, but at its simplest and most immediate, it means asking God for help. It’s a soldier begging for courage, a mother alone in a hospital chapel. The Lord’s Prayer invites us to ask God for everything from “daily bread” to the “kingdom come,” for ourselves (petition) and for others (intercession).
Yield
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. . . . Amen.
The final step in the dance of prayer is surrender. It’s a clenched fist slowly opening; an athlete lowering into an ice bath; a field of California poppies turning to the sun. We yield to God’s presence “on earth as in heaven” through contemplative prayer and by listening to His Word, which is “our daily bread.” We yield to God’s holiness through confession and reconciliation, praying, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” And we yield to His power in spiritual warfare, asking our Father to “deliver us from evil.” It’s by surrendering to God that we overcome, by emptying ourselves that we are filled, and by yielding our lives in prayer that our lives themselves become a prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—in the end.
So,
What Are We to Make of Unanswered Prayers?
Gary Yates, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, tells the story of a chaplain’s prayer. Chaplain Max Helton prayed beside the car of racecar driver Dale Earnhardt prior to the start of the 2001 Daytona 500. Holding hands, “they prayed for wisdom and safety,” Yates said. But Earnhardt lost his life in that race — in a final lap crash. Yates asked why God did not bring wisdom and safety when He promised believers, “Ask and you will receive.”
Puzzled by such “unanswered prayers,” some believers wonder whether Jesus was being totally truthful when He said,
“If you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14).
What are “unanswered prayers” and how do we explain them considering Scripture?
What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Unanswered’ Prayers?
When we think of the phrase “unanswered prayer,” many questions might come to mind. Does God hear all our prayers?
How does God respond to our requests?
Do we believe that He is capable of making mistakes?
Do we think we are entitled to what we ask of God?
Is there something in us that causes God to withhold or delay an answer?
Do we need to learn how to be better pray-ers?
Most people find prayer mysterious. We don’t always understand how it “works,” let alone how it “doesn’t work.”
When we believe our prayers aren’t answered, we might wonder whether our faith is small or if there are any one of a hundred reasons why God might turn away from our prayers.
“Unanswered prayer” is intensely personal. It’s how we view God’s response to our prayers.
The more theologically clever usually don’t like the phrase “unanswered prayer.” In reality, they say, there are no unanswered prayers.
The sovereign God is also a good Heavenly Father, and He gives His redeemed children what they would have asked for — if they knew everything that He knows!
Does God Hear All of Our Prayers?
God hears every one of His children’s prayers, and He answers them with “good gifts” in His good time and in His way.
Scriptures teach us His “ears” are tuned to the cries of the righteous.
He does not forget or forsake (abandon) His own. In fact, God knows our needs before we even ask in prayer.
Satan wants us to believe our Heavenly Father doesn’t care about us, but God is attentive to His children, and He cares about our concerns.
Sometimes Christians, discouraged by seeming unanswered prayers, assume that God has forgotten them. David voiced this in;
Psalm 13:13, saying, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?”
He cried out for God to answer him. Likewise, we want to know that God is listening and truly wants to give us the desires of our heart; but sometimes we feel He has shut up the heavens, and the silence unsettles us. Asaph asked,
“Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he shut up his compassion?” (Psalm 77:7-9).
Psalm 77:7-9 (NKJV)
7 Will the Lord cast off forever? And will He be favorable no more?
8 Has His mercy ceased forever? Has His promise failed forevermore?
9 Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies? Selah
We are not forgotten by the one who has engraved us on the palms of his hands (Isaiah 49:15-16).
Isaiah 49:15-16 (NKJV)
15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, Yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me.
God “closely attends to the prayers of God-loyal people” (Proverbs 15:29b, Msg).
Believers don’t need to fear that they’re not “praying right,” because the Spirit of God helps us in our weakness, interceding for us with
Romans 8:26-28 (NKJV)
26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. “Wordless groans”
He knows and interprets the cries of our hearts.
How Might God Respond to Our Prayers?
As we draw close to the throne of grace with confidence, we need to recognize that our Father God is sovereign in His replies. God appears to answer every prayer with either “yes,” “no,” or “wait.” He desires to answer believer’s prayers, and He does not withhold any good thing from those who do what is right — like every good and loving father. He delights in blessing His children and graciously giving them things.
But sometimes, God may answer believers’ requests with “no” because to answer “yes” is not good for them or is against His good will. Sometimes we get caught up in our frustration or pain, and we accuse God of disappointing us, abandoning us. But God may have something planned for us that is much better than we hoped or imagined.
Isn’t “No” an Answer?
Amy Carmichael
Just a tiny little child
Three years old,
And a mother with a heart
All of gold.
Often did that mother say,
Jesus hears us when we pray,
For He’s never far away
And He always answers.
Now, that tiny little child
Had brown eyes,
And she wanted blue instead
Like blue skies.
For her mother’s eyes were blue
Like forget-me-nots. She knew
All her mother said was true,
Jesus always answered.
So, she prayed for two blue eyes,
Said “Good night,”
Went to sleep in deep content
And delight.
Woke up early, climbed a chair
By a mirror. Where, O where
Could the blue eyes be? Not there;
Jesus hadn’t answered.
Hadn’t answered her at all;
Never more
Could she pray; her eyes were brown
As before.
Did a little soft wind blow?
Came a whisper soft and low,
“Jesus answered. He said, No;
Isn’t No an answer?”
The above poem, written by Amy Carmichael, was based on incident that actually did occur in her life when she was three. It turned out to be in the providence of God for her to have brown eyes. She became a missionary to India in the late 1890s. At first her ministry was primarily evangelistic. But along the way she became aware that some parents in India sold their daughters to the temple, where they were used for immoral purposes. God led one such child to her, and through a series of events and a sense of the Lord’s leading, Amy took the child in. Then more stories of other girls (and later, boys) surfaced and more opportunities to rescue and provide homes for these children arose. Amy had to struggle with this, because the Lord had seemed to be blessing her evangelistic work. Was it right to turn from that ministry to give herself to housing and raising children? She concluded that that was indeed God’s will for her life. The ministry grew exponentially and eventually became a whole compound, with housing for children of all ages, the workers who took care of them, and even their own hospital.
As Amy went “undercover” to find details of these children, she would stain her arms with coffee and wear Indian dress so that she could pass as an Indian woman and move freely in Indian society where she never could have as an Irish missionary. This she could not have done with blue eyes — her eyes would have given her away immediately. Neither she nor her mother could have ever known, all those years ago, the Lord’s purpose for her brown eyes, but the lesson of faith stayed with her all her life.
