Here’s What to Do When God Isn’t Answering Your Prayers
Keeping any relationship healthy and thriving is hard work.
Sometimes our marriages feel like they’re falling apart. Sometimes our best friend won’t call us back and we don’t know why. Sometimes we disagree with our parents and it puts a rift in our family.
So we pray.
We pray that our spouse will understand our point of view. We pray that our friend will tell us what’s going on. We pray that our parents won’t spend their money on yet another thing they don’t need. We ask God that the worst-case scenario would simply be avoided. But our marriage just gets harder, our friendship just gets awkward, and our parents just get in more debt.
Nothing seems to be changing, so we begin to wonder if prayer even works. Does God even hear us? Does He even care?
Many of us have asked these questions of God at some point in our lives, and if we’re truly honest, we’ll admit that we still have unanswered prayers looming over us like dark clouds waiting to burst.
Remember when I said that keeping any relationship healthy and thriving is hard work? It’s the same with our relationship with Jesus. Remember, we’re human beings, which means that we’re often easily distracted and prone to wander. God’s always working, but sometimes we just don’t have our eyes open to see Him or our ears attuned to His voice. So, when it feels like God isn’t answering our prayers, we have to learn to trust that He absolutely is.
So how can we know that God is answering our prayers even when it doesn’t seem like it? Here are three easy ways:
Evaluate your desires. Why don’t we feel like God is answering? Are we seeking His will and what He sees is the best course of action? This is where we learn to submit our own plans to Him and surrender to His will. Once we allow God to align our desires with His plans, our prayers will become aligned with His will. This will allow our hearts to be open to see the things He’s doing in a fresh, new way.
Speak Truth to yourself. When we remember God’s promises to us from His Word, we’re able to keep our heads faced forward on the path He has for us. God’s Truth protects us from distractions and keeps our eyes attentive to what He’s doing around us.
Rest in Him. God always comes through on His promises and we can trust that His plans are much better for us than our own. Sometimes His answer is “wait,” or “not yet”. Other times it’s a flat out “No, child. My will for you is better.” We’ll never be able to see the full picture of what God has planned for us. But the more we learn to rest in the fact that He’s for us, the easier it’ll be to stand strong in our faith when His answer to our prayer isn’t quite what we expected.
Want to go deeper? Try a Bible Plan.
Written by Jillian Zavacky.
