What About Unanswered Prayers

Good morning again, my blogger friends!  It is an absolutely gorgeous morning here in the mountains of Western North Carolina!  My favorite kind of day!  The sun is shining outside and the SON is shining on the inside of my heart!  Now, I enjoy the snow as I blogged recently, and I even enjoy a good old rainy day once in awhile, but my very favorite is a beautiful sunshiny day where it is warm enough to be outside without too much in the way of jackets, hats, scarves and gloves.  Today promises to be that kind of day so I am moving quickly to be able to get out there and enjoy it.

Yesterday the blog was about praying for each other.  I am so convinced that the majority of problems we deal with could be dealt with in prayer that I could blog from now on just about prayer.  I believe that most of  you believe in prayer too, but, having been a counselor for so long, I know unanswered prayer is one that really keeps people from praying.  Sometimes prayer doesn’t seem to get an answer and the conclusions we reach range from there is something wrong with me to there may not be any God at all.  Or, at least, not one who cares about me.

There are many reasons why our prayers may not get the result we are looking for and many books have already been written about this topic so I will not attempt to wax eloquent today about it myself.  One of my favorite authors on the subject is Andrew Murray.  Right now I am using one of his books “The Best of Andrew Murray on Prayer” as my daily reading.  I would highly recommend any of his works.

Murray says one reason we give up is that we mistake delay for no when the virtue of persistence is needed in our character.  There are many other mistakes that can be made when we begin to pray, but the worst is to believe the lie from our enemy that God does not care and He does not have our best interest at heart.  Again, I could go on and on about the difficulties, but I would like today just to reiterate something I am sure I have already said somewhere along the way.

Jesus said “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”   (John 15:7)  And in another place, “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.  And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” (1John 5:14, 15)  So, here we have some of the conditions necessary for answered prayer.  One is quite clear!  if we know what God has said in His Word and pray in line with that we are standing on His promises.

Yesterday’s blog was centered around a prayer that I put together from God’s Word that we can pray for each other.  We can know it is God’s will because it is what He said He wanted for us as His children.  When we agree with Him it sets heavenly forces in motion to bring it to pass.  While we may not understand how that happens, we can believe that it is happening, no matter what we see or don’t see.

I believe that one reason we don’t see more evidence of answered prayer is because many of us give up out of discouragement.  Another favorite speaker of mine says there are really NO UNANSWERED PRAYERS but only abandoned prayers.  Today I pray that the Son of God will be shining brightly into our hearts to release the gifts of faith we need to keep praying.  Please keep praying for me; I will keep praying for you!  And that's a promise!