Thoughts On Unanswered Prayers

I don’t believe unanswered prayers exist. I think God answers every prayer, we just may not like the answer.

If our prayers are aligned with His will, then the answer will be “yes”. If our prayers are not aligned with His will, then the answer will be “no”. And if our timing doesn’t line up with God’s timing, then the answer will be “wait”. But God always answers our prayers.

1 John 5:14-15 says, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” Aligning our will with God’s heavenly will is the ultimate goal of a Christian’s life.

But life also comes with many distractions that can get us off course. Sometimes we pray for things that aren’t Biblical because our emotions get the better of us. James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” Sometimes we pray for things that are good, like the healing of a friend’s illness, but it isn’t God’s will to heal them and we have to accept that.

If our will is God’s will, then it will come to pass because God’s will has been set in place since eternity past. How do we determine what God’s will is? Prayer…even if we don’t know what to pray. Romans 8:26 says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

Unanswered prayers are a myth for those in Christ. John 15:7 says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”