Unanswered Prayers - God Will Surely Come To Your Aid

God tells us to pray continuously about all our concerns, yet he grants only those petitions that align with his will.

Because we cannot fully grasp God’s will from our earthly perspective, we often ask him for things that fall outside his intentions.

These unanswered prayers cast doubt on his trustworthiness.

So why does God tell us to pray about everything when he knows that many of our petitions will seem to go unanswered, thereby diminishing our trust in him?

Primary Purpose

God does not encourage us to pray so that he can stay informed of our latest wishes. He already knows our desires before we express them.

God tells us to pray because prayer is integral to our communion with him. It positions us to experience true contentment.

Prayer turns our attention from ourselves to God and opens the door to worship him humbly, align with him morally, convey gratitude for his blessings, and express faith in his goodness.

The model prayer Jesus introduced, The Lord’s Prayer, indicates that God wants us to incorporate these themes into our prayers whenever practical, especially in times of affliction.

Articulating them, even when submitting requests or lodging complaints, conditions our heart to commune with him and experience true contentment.

God tells us to pray about everything because he considers the true contentment we derive from communion with him more important than the distrust that may arise from unanswered prayers.

Volitional Freedom

What should we conclude when God seems to disregard petitions we know align with his will?

For example:

We know God wants everyone to be spiritually reborn, so we pray that a friend will accept his offer of eternal life. But instead, they die as an unbeliever.
We know God condemns hate, so we ask him to protect the weak from the bigotry of the strong. But instead, their oppression continues.
We know God detests rank hypocrisy, so we pray that his public advocates will forsake their sins and live righteously. But instead, their duplicity persists.

Unanswered prayers like these do not signify that God is aloof, powerless, malevolent, or nonexistent.

Instead, they demonstrate his utmost respect for the moral autonomy of the will.

God so esteems the volitional freedom of those we intercede for that he willingly subordinates his preferences and our desires to their moral choices.

He gives them the means to refrain from unrighteousness at critical junctures and prompts them to choose virtue over vice. But in the end, he defers to their free will.

God likewise respects our free will when we make moral choices that conflict with his preferences and deviate from the desires of those who pray for us.

Personal Circumstances

Do our prayers ever do any good? Does God ever change our circumstances in response to our requests? Or does he only use prayer to change us?

God indeed improves individual situations in response to prayer. Perhaps not as often as we would like, or in the way we want, or as quickly as we prefer.

But if we could see everything he is doing in the lives of reborn believers worldwide, we would realize that he frequently makes life better, providentially and miraculously, in answer to prayer.

Amid affliction, we should ask God to change both our circumstances and us. He responds to both requests as he deems best, and we can trust that appraisal because of his perfection.

God’s Best

But here is the caveat.

God’s best encompasses more than the goodness of our current circumstances. It also includes our understanding of his excellence and the effectiveness of our ministry, both now and in the future.

God may allow our suffering to continue despite our pleas for relief because our perception of his goodness still depends on the comfort and convenience of our circumstances.

We have yet to learn experientially that he is thoroughly good even amid affliction.

God may allow our distress to linger because he is using it to build a unique message about his excellence into our lives, one he intends for us to share with others.

God redeems our suffering by using it to produce redemptive goodness in us and in the lives of those within our orbit.

He may allow our misery to persist after this goodness blossoms in our lives because it has yet to germinate in theirs.

Walk By Faith

Once we settle into heaven, we will understand the rationale behind God’s responses to all our prayers, including those that seemingly went unanswered. We will agree with his logic.

Until then, we reconcile the disparity between our requests and God’s responses by faith.

We believe God is truly good and benevolent—even if we may not feel this way—because we choose to base our judgment on what he has revealed about himself in nature and in the Bible rather than on what we might infer about him from his seeming indifference to our desires.

We walk in harmony with God through the aftermath of unanswered prayer, believing he is executing a plan superior to ours.

We trust he will help us endure the resulting distress and produce goodness from it until he brings about his intended outcome.

God Cherishes Faith

God delights in the warm sentiments we express about his excellence in good times, but he cherishes the faith in him we exhibit in the wake of unanswered prayer.