REASONS FOR UNANSWERED PRAYER

 

Some people like to pray with no conditions. They want God to be a heavenly genie who, when called by prayer, must grant any request they make. They find some encouragement in the fable of Aladdin and his lamp as they strive for this level of control over God's power in their prayer life.

The reasons why people neglect or avoid prayer are understandable. Everyone has times when prayer seems like too much work for no apparent reward. But if you want your relationship with God to deepen over time, you need to communicate with Him regularly. There are no rules about how many times a day or a week you need to pray if you want to see God's answer. But the more time you spend with someone, the more well-known and safe you will feel. The more often you bring someone into life situations that are important to you, the better you understand how they think and react. This is true of a friend or spouse, and it is also true of God. God wants you to know Him in a way that will change every aspect of who you are. Prayer is one of the ways He chose to do this.

 Despite all the evidence that prayers don't work the way they're meant to, prayer is still what most people do when they have nothing to do in terrible, scary, or painful situations. And if that gives them even a modicum of comfort and hope in times like these, so be it. Here are some reasons of unanswered prayer:

1. Unconfessed Sin: God is perfect and cannot tolerate sin in you. If you knowingly tolerate sin in your life, it pushes God away from you. As a result, it renders your prayers powerless. The good news is that when you confess a sin, God forgives it and it goes away. At this point, your relationship is restored and your prayers take on their power. Your past actions may still have consequences, but the sin itself is forgiven. Your whole life is a process of purification. You must make sure that there is no unconfessed sin in your heart when you pray, as this will certainly be an obstacle to effective prayer.

2. Lack of Faith: Lack of faith has an incredibly negative impact on your life. Without faith, prayer has no power. A double-minded person is emotionally divided, as if he had two souls. This condition makes a person unstable and unable to hear God or accept His gifts.

3. Disobedience: If you want to grow in your relationship with God, you must learn to obey. If your mouth says that you believe, but your actions do not back up that belief with a strong act of obedience, this shows the weakness of your faith. Obedience should be the natural result of faith in God. He who obeys God trusts Him; whoever trusts Him obeys Him.

4. Lack of transparency with God and with others: When you confess your sins, which requires you to be completely open, God can heal and cleanse you. You experience spiritual, physical and emotional recovery. In addition, your openness helps others because it shows them that they are not alone in their difficulties.

5. Unforgiveness: Forgiving and being forgiven are inseparable twins. When a person refuses to forgive another, he harms himself, because the lack of forgiveness can take hold of him and make him embittered. And a person cannot enter into prayer with bitterness. Forgiveness allows you to make your heart not only right, but also bright. Forgiveness is essential for your spiritual, mental, and physical well-being. Unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, hatred, etc. — all these are obstacles on the way to love for God. They enslave you with a life of suffering to the point that it affects your physical health. If there is something that you have not been able to forgive, you can start by asking God for the mercy of wanting to forgive because He commands you to do so. He will free you from your bondage.

6. Wrong motives: Another obstacle to effective communication with God is praying with selfish desires and wrong motives. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with the wrong intentions. When your motives are wrong in prayer, your prayers have no power. Sometimes even knowing your own motives can be difficult.

7. Disregard for others: One of the added benefits of prayer is that it helps you learn to love others. It is impossible to pray for a person to hate or criticize the one for whom he is praying. Prayer breeds compassion, not rivalry.

8. Unsurrendered will: A person whose will is surrendered to God has a relationship with Him. There are great advantages in surrendering your will to God. First, God promises to answer your prayers and fulfill your requests. Second, you can receive the power of God.

9. Undue control: If you view prayer simply as a means of gaining a certain level of control over your life and the world — as a means of influence — then you will inevitably be troubled by prayers that seem unanswered. But if you view prayer primarily as an ongoing conversation with God, then you will realize that there really is no such thing as unanswered prayer. If prayer is primarily a conversation between you and God, then His promise to always listen may be the answer your heart needs most. Prayer can change people's lives by changing their environment — bringing them into the better, illuminating the one they are in, and even giving them faith, hope and courage in the face of unbearable circumstances.

10. Against God’s plan: It is true that God already knows everything that will happen until the end of eternity. He knows the big events and small moments of each of your lives, and nothing is beyond His control. So it is a mistake to think of prayer as a way to change God's plan or change His direction in a given situation. However, even in situations where the prayer itself seems unanswered, the prayer itself can have a powerful impact. Prayer can leave an impression that lasts long after you have moved on.

Whether you realize it or not, you are dependent on God even for your next breath. It is God who sustains everything in existence. Everything you have is a gift from Him, and He expects you to be good stewards of what you have received. When you are worried about what you need, you must first turn to God. When you put God first in your life, he will help you make the right decision about what you really need. You will reach your potential for happiness in this life when you discover God's specific plan for you by asking Him every day for help in prayer and keeping the commandments He has given you to guide you in the right direction. Whether you are praying for yourself or for another person, you acknowledge that someone else — God — is the centre of the universe. You recognize that He needs to change something in you or in the situations that you offer Him. You transfer control to someone else i.e. God. Everyone craves control to one degree or another. Some simply believe that they are in better control of the situation than others. Prayer allows you to acknowledge before God that He belongs to the driver of your life.