Honest Questions: Why Didn’t God Answer My Prayers?
Today, we are diving into a deeply personal question for many of us. In fact, this question was the number one question in our honest questions series as voted for by all of you in our Sonrise community. It is one that touches at the heart of what the Christian faith is all about because the question has two points of emphasis. First—why? What is God’s reasoning behind what He is doing? I know that He claims to be loving and I know that we believe that He is also all powerful, so He has to have a reason for not answering prayer. The second emphasis of the question is my prayer. This isn’t just that He isn’t answering the prayers of some person suffering out there, but specifically He is not answering my prayers. He might be even answering the prayers of others, but my prayers seem to be falling on deaf ears. So, I am actually going to challenge you to do something out of the ordinary today. This might feel a little bit weird in church, but I am going to ask you to do a little talking this morning. This will be a bit vulnerable, but I think it will help all of us engage with this topic in a more personal way. Would you turn to someone near you and share with them about a prayer of yours that went unanswered? This should probably be with someone you trust, but I will give you a couple of minutes to talk and reflect on something you feel that God did not answer for you.
As you can tell from all of the chatter in this room, this is something that we can all relate to. If we are honest, we have all had prayers that have gone unanswered or that were answered no. What causes the confusion though, is that all of us have also had prayers that have been answered, yes. As I have shared before, we prayed for many years to have a child and finally God answered with a yes. We didn’t know that was how He would answer and there are people in this room who are currently in the middle of a no answer to that question.
As a child, I woke up one morning absolutely freaked out by a nightmare that I had. There was a monster that was eating me in my dream. It’s amazing how that is a part of a child’s fears. Even though there has never been a true monster on the face of the planet, we get afraid of them as kids. Anyway, from that day on, I never had another nightmare. So, I have seen my Heavenly Father respond, “yes” to my requests. However, I am praying for some relationships in my life to be reconciled, I am praying for healing for some people that I know, and I have prayed for some people to come to faith in Jesus that never have.
In a very helpful book on prayer called God on Mute, the author makes a great observation. If God always answered our prayers or never answered our prayers it would be much easier to comprehend His work in our lives. The challenge is that He answers some prayers and not others. In terms of our experience, He also seems to answer far less prayers with yes than with no. It seems random when He answers certain prayers and not others. His choices about when to intervene or not intervene seem to defy any logic that we understand. So, it forces us to wrestle with and try to understand this God who acts in seemingly arbitrary ways.
The challenge is that not only does it feel arbitrary, but the promises that we read in the Bible seem to contradict our experience. Jesus, in particular, makes a variety of statements about how our Heavenly Father responds to our prayers. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” “If two of you agreed on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” He told a parable about an unjust judge who gave in to a widow who kept bothering him for justice and said if that is how an unjust judge is, imagine how your Father in heaven will respond to His people's cries for justice and respond quickly. “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
This is not an exhaustive list of every time that Jesus said something about our prayers being answered, but these are the kinds of verses that cause us consternation. Jesus is saying that we just have to pray and that He will respond to our earnest prayers and grant what we ask. There is always a little caveat though—if you ask in My name, if you have faith, etc. Experientially, we know it isn’t true that I receive whatever I ask for in His name. As a clear example, not all of the people who I pray for to come to faith in Jesus do. That is clearly something that is in line with what He desires and I know He saves people all the time, so I don’t have any doubts that He could change anyone’s heart. So, the above verses must not be true. Yet, when life is normal we don’t think too much about it. We can avoid the contradiction because it doesn’t affect our lives too much one way or another.
This is where we can fire off several simple answers to why our Heavenly Father doesn’t answer certain kinds of prayer. Imagine for a moment that there is a really pious group of people from Philadelphia who gathered together in February of 2023 to pray for their amazing Eagles’ football team to win the Super Bowl. Do we doubt the character of God because He said no to that prayer? Not at all. Even though those fans were so pious and godly compared to the Chiefs’ Fans. Just kidding, if you know anything about Eagles’ fans they are the opposite of pious, so we have to first say that God doesn’t generally answer prayers that have little spiritual importance. We may pray for a lot of things that we would like, but they just may not be that significant.
Another thing we can know that God doesn’t do is answer prayers for logical contradictions—He won’t make a square circle. It is logically impossible. This is the type of prayer that I might pray if I double-book myself and I pray that God would clone me and allow me to be in two places at once. More practically, if I have to choose between two candidates for a job position, I pray that I will make both happy with the decision. While not impossible, God doesn’t generally work against logic or natural order. Also, He doesn’t tend to answer selfish wistful requests. Like, “God, could you make a million dollars show up in my wallet, please?” It is easy to understand why He would ignore these types of requests and we don’t have to wrestle too much with God’s character until we get to that moment when the inherent contradiction in our experience and Jesus’ teaching on prayer makes all the difference in the world.
Perhaps you have prayed and prayed for an addiction not to destroy your life, and yet here you still sit in the shambles of your life because that prayer was not answered. Or perhaps you have had to do one of the toughest things any person has to do and you sat at the bedside of a dying child and your Heavenly Father didn’t save your child. He answered that prayer “no.” Others of you may have just experienced not getting the job that you thought would make things go better in your world or you haven’t been able to meet that Mr. or Mrs. Right, yet. Whatever the issue you face, Jesus’ words don’t seem to jive with the reality of your experience.
As I was reflecting on Scripture and all of the places I could go to as we discussed this topic, I was struck by one event in the life of Jesus. In John 14-17, Jesus gives a long talk to His disciples and in that talk, He prays for things that don’t happen as well as promises that He will do whatever they ask in His name. Let’s just breeze through this real quick. John 14:13, “And I will do whatever you ask in my name.” Then in John 15:16 He says, “and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” Finally, John 16:23-24, “Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”
The irony about this is that these comments take place in the same context as two significant prayers that Jesus prayed. First, in John 17, Jesus prays for all believers in verses John 17:20-26, and His main prayer for those believers is unity. Well, I don’t think I am stretching it too much to say Jesus’ prayers haven’t been answered. We are anything but unified. This is also right before His arrest, and so even though we don’t see the prayer in the garden here in John, the other three gospels describe how Jesus went to the garden to pray before He was arrested and put to death. He was praying that the Father would allow Him not to face what was ahead and the Father answered no. Jesus submitted Himself to the Father’s will, but He let Him know that He would prefer it otherwise. What do we do with these statements of Jesus right in the midst of a situation where two of His prayers go unanswered? He also prays for protection for His followers and that doesn’t seem to be a yes answer either depending on how you define protection because most of them died as martyrs.
My first takeaway from this is that God is mysterious and we are meant to engage with that mystery. He promises to meet us in our need, so we pursue Him in prayer. Jesus knew for a long time that He was going to the cross. He talked about it multiple times before He ever got to the garden. This wasn’t a surprise that the Heavenly Father sprung on Him at the last minute.
Oh by the way, there was part of the plan I didn’t tell You—they will crucify You. Jesus knew the plan all along, and yet, He still prayed to be released from what He was about to face. Jesus embraced the mystery of how God responds to His children in relational ways and still brings about His purposes. It is a mystery. I can’t figure out when He is responding relationally to me in my times of need and when He is bringing about His purposes. The two are so intricately intertwined that they can’t be pulled apart. So, enter and embrace that mystery in prayer.
Jesus accepted what His Father asked Him to do without shying away and asking if there might be another way. There are many stories in the Old Testament, like when King Hezekiah fell ill, in which that which God stated was amended based on the prayers of His people. Hezekiah prayed that he would be healed when God initially said that the disease would kill him. God also told David that the child Bathsheba bore him would die, David prayed earnestly for the child to survive and it did not. Prayer forces us to face the mystery that we don’t understand God. It is one of those moments when we push into the mystery of God and seek understanding.
My second takeaway from the prayers of Christ in John 17 is that God’s stated desires can be thwarted. At times, He allows our sin to interrupt His clear designs and desires for His people. Jesus prays for unity of His followers, but we aren’t experiencing that. Even in just one small expression of the church here in this building, we have to work hard to stay unified. Even then, we know that sometimes we don’t experience that unity the way that Jesus prays about here in John 17. We don’t understand why God allows that disunity even to the point at which it is contrary to the prayers of Christ Himself.
Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t solve this tension for us, it just shows us what is. So, we shouldn’t be surprised when people’s sin interferes with what we know God desires and what we are earnestly praying for. I am sure many of you have prayed for people whose marriages are in trouble at one point or another. Perhaps you were praying for your own marriage or even your parents’ marriage and ultimately that marriage you were praying for failed. You know that our Heavenly Father is not pleased with divorce and yet those prayers of yours went unanswered. It is almost guaranteed that the sin of one or both partners in the marriage impacted the answer to your earnest prayers. At the same time, some of us have prayed earnestly for a marriage and seen it saved. Most likely there was sin involved in those situations as well. What made the difference in those situations where marriages were saved? Was it the faith of the people praying? Was there less sin involved? Did God care less about the marriages that failed? Those are the kinds of questions that we begin to ask ourselves in the midst of those disappointments.
We ask those questions because we don’t get to see behind the curtain. Occasionally, we might understand why something happened, but more often than not, God does not give us the why behind that which we are facing. So, instead, we are left with some of our prayers being answered and others not being answered. Sometimes, we also have a clear no answer when healing doesn’t come or that marriage doesn’t survive. Other times, we don’t know what the answer is because we are praying for a situation that is ongoing and it seems that our prayers aren’t being addressed at all. There is a lady at the church I grew up at in Colorado who has prayed for her husband to come to know Jesus for decades. She doesn’t know why God has or has not intervened. There are people who have suffered with long term physical disabilities and their prayers have not been answered.
If I were thinking about deconstructing my faith, this would definitely be one of my points of contention with the Christian faith. I would point out how the intensity of prayer and the sincerity of the heart of the person saying those prayers doesn’t seem to have any impact on the outcome of the situations being prayed for. That seems to me like good evidence to point to a reality that maybe God isn’t out there or that He doesn’t really care. Facing the reality of our experience also makes me wonder if it makes any sense to pray at all? It doesn’t seem that my prayers make any difference. Perhaps it is the misguided perception or caricature of God that needs to be deconstructed and not the whole concept of Him.
Number one-—God is relational and not formulaic. In the same way that different children react differently to the same rules, God doesn’t respond according to a formula or equation. He has thoughts and motives that are far beyond our own. We want to understand how to influence God to the result that we desire, but healthy human relationships don’t even function that way. So, we need to adjust our understanding of God. He loves us, but that doesn’t mean He is obligated to meet all of our desires even if they are good desires. God would be no God at all, if we could control Him and force Him to do our bidding. That turns Him into just a powerful machine. We don’t need just a powerful machine. At the same time, because He is relational, I believe that prayer does have influence. He would be lying in all the above verses if He said that He would give us whatever we ask for, but our prayers played no part in how He interacts with us. We can’t come up with an equation that will force Him to do as we ask, but if we believe that He is truly a relational God, our interactions with Him matter. We want to be able to put an objective set of rules up next to everything that happens in our world and be able to justify why God does what He does, but that is not how a relational being operates. What is fair isn’t His highest value. His highest value is what is loving and we know this because of the price that Jesus paid on our behalf. What we don’t understand in the waiting is how pain and suffering are loving, but that is where we press into the mystery of God and keep pursuing Him and keep bringing before Him the desires of our hearts.
Number two—God doesn’t owe us an explanation. This is where Paul’s first message in this series set the framework for many of the other questions. We are sometimes tempted into thinking that God has to answer to us. That is just not the case. If He is God, He is allowed to keep His own counsel and can see the fuller picture that we can’t see. I love the story from the Hiding Place that Corrie Ten Boom tells about her father. As a child, she asked a question about sexual sin. In answer, he told her to carry his heavy suitcase with all of his watch repair tools in it off the train. She tried, but she could not lift the case. Her father went on to explain that some answers are too heavy for us to carry right now. She would remember that illustration as she faced the horrors of a concentration camp. She had to choose to let her Heavenly Father carry the weight of some things on her behalf.
There are some things in our world that do not make sense to us. There are some moments when it seems that a different answer to prayer would make a lot more sense than the answer we are getting. Part of walking in the way of Christ is recognizing that we don’t get to decide what is best and God doesn’t have to answer to us for how He chooses to work. There is no doubt that this runs counter to our natural way of thinking. We feel that He should owe us an explanation especially when things are so hard, and He is not answering a sincere prayer the way we feel He should. Even after all that Job suffered, God doesn’t give Him an explanation. He confronts Job with Himself and is really asking the question who has the right to decide what people should and shouldn’t go through. Well the story shows that Job’s friends sure shouldn’t be the ones to make that kind of decision and we even come to understand that Job shouldn’t be the one to make those calls either. So, God doesn’t owe us an explanation.
Finally, the positive tension that makes the Christian life worth living and makes the problem of unanswered prayer so painful and poignant is that God is love and is at work for our good. So, while He may not be formulaic in the way He approaches us and He does not owe us an explanation, we are encouraged to hold onto the message that He loves us and is working things out for our good. We look at the cross and we know that it is true that He would give anything on our behalf. He gave all that He had to give—His own life in order to bring us into right relationship with Him. This is why people who have struggled for years in unanswered prayer or those who have lost something they earnestly prayed for—the life of a significant other, protection for a family member, a healed relationship, etc.—can oftentimes describe a close and intimate relationship with God despite living in the challenge of unanswered prayer. Those who have persevered in prayer often find that even if God’s answer to something is consistently no, it is not the no of a cold and distant stepfather. It is the “no” of a loving dad who sits on the floor and cries with you in your pain.
Crying doesn’t fix it though does it? God can be sad with us, tell us how much He cares for us, be present regardless of what we face and it still isn’t enough. There is one more lens we have to look through when we think about prayers going unanswered and that is the reality that one day He will answer all our prayers. He will heal our wounds and repair our world. He will bring unity to His people and protect them from the evil one. He will wipe every tear from our eyes when He returns. In our life prior to the coming of the kingdom of God, every physical healing is only temporary. Everything that you can be given will one day disappear. Only when we experience the resurrection from the dead through Jesus and His kingdom is fully established on the earth will we actually receive full answers to our deepest prayers. Jesus still went through the pain of crucifixion, the scars were on His hands and in His side even after resurrection, but they lost their power over Him. Our struggles and the pain of those unanswered requests will lose their power because they will be healed in Him.
So, what do we do when we feel that we are praying into the void and it doesn’t seem that God is responding, we let our faith and trust in the character of God anchor us to Him. I love Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I don’t get to define what that reward is but if I truly believe in the character of God, my pursuit of Him and faith will be rewarded. Pursuit of God means a great deal to Him whether we have our prayers answered in the way that we desire or not. Over the last several months, I have become weary with something that I have been praying for. From my perspective, what I have been praying for has not been changing. Yet, I heard God’s subtle reminder even as I prepared this message that it doesn’t mean I should give up praying. It is my faithfulness that is waning not His. His faithfulness will never wane and He will make all things right in the end.
Life Level Application
1) What are we tempted to think about our Heavenly Father when our prayers go unanswered?
2) How does knowing that the Father didn't give a yes answer to all of Jesus' requests impact our understanding of unanswered prayer?
3) What keeps you praying even when it seems like no one is listening?
4) How does living in light of eternity affect our current prayers?