Why Your Prayers Aren’t Being Answered

At one of my Gospel Truth Seminars, I asked anyone who believed in the power of prayer to raise their hand.

 Nearly every hand in the audience went up. Then I asked everyone who sees all of their prayers answered to keep their hands up. Just about every hand went right back down. It demonstrated a common problem among Christians today: very few people are seeing consistent answers to prayer. But the Bible teaches that everyone who seeks, finds and everyone who asks, receives:

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened (Matthew 7:7-8).

Clearly, there’s a problem somewhere—and we know it isn’t with God. I believe that there is a better way for us to pray, a way that leads to finding what we seek and receiving what we ask. It’s not the only way to pray, and God isn’t mad at you if you pray differently. I just think there is a more effective way for us to pray that gets better results.

I should add that I have prayed in every way I’m about to advise you not to pray, so I’m not saying that you aren’t saved unless you pray like I do now. I have prayed in a lot of “wrong” ways in the past, but I loved God and I was doing it with a pure heart. Over time, however, I have discovered that the Word of God teaches a better way to pray. By following it, I’m getting better results than I have ever gotten before.

When Jesus taught on prayer, He spent time identifying the wrong ways to pray. So, before I get into the better way to pray, I want to talk about what prayer is not. One of the first things Jesus taught His disciples about prayer was:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward (Matthew 6:5).

The Lord made a startling statement here: He said that hypocrites love to pray. Therefore prayer, in and of itself, is not that valuable. All of the world’s religions pray. Some groups bow down on mats multiple times a day in prayer, and then they get up and go kill people in the name of God. They are devout, yet their life is contrary to everything that the true Word of God reveals. They are praying, but they aren’t in contact with God. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of religious Christians who pray all of the time, but they aren’t connecting with God. Prayer is no good unless you are connecting with God. Communication requires interaction, so God needs to be speaking back to you.

Prayer also needs to be real. I have heard people change their voice when they pray and start speaking Old English. “We beseech Thee,” they say, “that Thou mightest, wouldest, couldest do thus and such.” I suppose there might be cases where a person has heard prayers like that so many times that they think they have to talk that way in order to communicate with God, but usually it’s just religious hypocrisy. God doesn’t speak Old English. I use the King James Version Bible, but I don’t pray in King James language. I don’t prophesy to people in King James language.

Changing your voice or personality to talk with God isn’t genuine prayer. God wants us to talk to Him like He is a real person. We need to drop all of the religious trappings. You don’t have to have your hands folded with your eyes closed, and be in a kneeling position to pray. Those things may be appropriate at certain times, but they aren’t required.

Prayer is just communication with God. Even meditation, or what you are thinking, can be prayer to God. Scripture says, “Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray” (Psalm 5:1-2). Not all prayer needs to be spoken; it can be the meditation of your heart. When Jesus arrived at the tomb of Lazarus and was about to raise him from the dead, He said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me” (John 11:41), but He hadn’t spoken a prayer yet. Apparently, Jesus had prayed in His heart. He was in constant communication with God, not just when He spoke.

Imagine going to your pastor for advice and upon arriving at his or her office, you immediately launch into a monologue that lasts for an hour. You never give the pastor the opportunity to give you any input whatsoever, and when the hour is finished you say, “Thank you,” and walk out of the office. That wouldn’t be very smart. The whole point of going to someone for advice is to hear what they have to say.

I had a very close friend who was a pastor, and we used to pray together. I remember he was telling me a story one time about how God had recently spoken to him while he was in the shower. My friend stopped in the middle of the story and said to me, “I wonder why God always talks to me in when I’m in the shower or out running? I pray for hours every day, and God never speaks to me when I’m praying. It’s always when I’m in the shower or something that I get these revelations from God.”

As soon as he asked the question, I thought to myself, I know exactly why God doesn’t talk to you when you pray.

My friend's mouth was like a rapid-fire machine gun when he prayed. He’d start praying, Bam, Bam, Bam, and hardly stop to take a breath.

He wasn’t getting revelation when he prayed because he never gave God an opportunity to say anything. The Lord couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Prayer isn’t effective if you don’t let God speak.

Aside from talking too much, we tend to compartmentalize prayer into a separate time of our day. A man once came to my office and asked me how much I prayed. As I was considering the question and trying to quantify how much I prayed every day, the Lord spoke to me. My wife and I had spent the entire previous day together. We weren’t talking the whole time, but we were together doing different things. We ate together, drove in the car together, and had a great day.

The Lord asked me, “How much time did you spend with Jamie yesterday?”

The whole day, I thought.

Then the Lord said, “I’m available twenty-four hours a day. Why reduce the time that you communicate with me down to thirty minutes or an hour?”

Jamie and I would have a sorry relationship if I ignored her when we were together eating dinner, driving in the car, and being in the same room without ever acknowledging that she was there. God is with us all the time. We can spend the entire day in the presence of the Lord. Instead of only setting aside certain times for prayer, we can be in communion with God constantly.

I have developed a lifestyle of keeping my mind focused on the Lord regardless of what I’m doing. Even when I’m busy making television programs, I’m still listening to the Lord. God speaks to me and reminds me of things and I’m constantly in communion with Him—that’s what prayer is. Jesus said,

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly (Matthew 6:6).

Prayer is not supposed to be something we do for acclaim from other people. Someone who is trying to compare the amount of time he or she spends in prayer with the time that other people spend in prayer is praying for the wrong reasons. Merely spending time in prayer doesn’t earn you extra favor with God. The motivation for prayer should be that we desire to have relationship and communion with God. Besides, Jesus made it very clear that length of time isn’t what makes prayer good:

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking (Matthew 6:7).

Some of the best prayers that you can utter are short ones, like “Help!” That’s a great prayer. Jesus saw great miracles happen when He prayed, but He prayed short and to the point. “Peace, be still,” calmed a raging storm. “Lazarus, come forth,” was enough to raise the dead. Many times when we pray long extended prayers it’s only because we’re trying to psyche ourselves into believing. Short prayers actually take great faith. Jesus said that we are not going to be heard based on how long we pray because the quality of a prayer is much more important than its quantity.

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and He taught them a model that has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer” (Matthew 6:9-13). It starts off by praising God, which is consistent with what is written in the Psalms where it says, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (Psalm 100:4). It also ends with praise, and in the middle is a request to “give us this day our daily bread.” It’s a great model for prayer, but it was never intended to be recited the way it is by so many Christians today. There may be some benefit to reciting it, but that’s missing the point. Jesus only offered it as a way to pray. It shows you that you enter into His gates with thanksgiving, slip in your prayer request, and then finish by praising God.

Rote memorization and recitation of prayers is vain repetition. If you look at some of the groups who pray multiple times a day at specific times, they are just going through a ritual and chanting a mantra. There is no communion with God. I’m saying this with love, but merely praying the rosary and reciting a canned “Our Father” style prayer is a form of vain repetition. Jesus said the heathen pray like that, but we shouldn’t. God wants relationship with us. We shouldn’t make prayer so structured that we don’t have any true communion with Him.

I also need to point out that there is a huge difference between the way people prayed under the Old Covenant, and the way that we pray under the New Covenant. For instance, after David was caught in adultery and the murder of Bathsheba’s husband was brought to light, David prayed:

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me (Psalm 51:10-11).

It was appropriate for David to pray those words because he wasn’t born again, but under the New Covenant it is wrong for us to ask God to create in us a clean heart or renew our spirit. God gave you a clean heart when you were born again, and you can’t ever lose that clean heart. Your body and your mind may be defiled, but your born-again spirit is sealed by the Holy Spirit and it always retains relationship with God (Ephesians 1:13).

The prayers being spoken today are often completely contrary to the Word of God. People are beginning church services by saying, “O God, please be with us as we meet today,” when God has promised that He will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5). Prayers like that demonstrate a lack of understanding of what really happened to us when we were born again. We became entirely new creatures: old things passed away, all things became new, and we were made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17). We don’t need to approach God through a mediator as they did in the Old Covenant, and we don’t need to ask God to make us worthy. Jesus made us worthy.

Another wrong concept of prayer being promoted today at “spiritual warfare” conferences is the idea that you have to get your prayers past demonic opposition in the heavens for God to receive them. The whole notion that you have to create a hole in the heavens so your prayers can reach God is completely wrong. Every born-again believer is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). God lives in you, so you don’t need your prayer to get above your nose. It is true that we have an enemy, but the devil can’t stop you from communicating with God.

Like I said, at one time or another, I have done everything that I have just taught here is wrong. When I was first really turned on to the Lord, I wanted to spend more time focused on God in prayer, so I came up with a routine. I would pray from seven to nine every morning. I would stop whatever I was doing and pray for an hour or two. I did it as a discipline to focus on God, and there was probably some benefit to it, but after a while I started to dread that time. I would pray for about five minutes and think half an hour had gone by. I just didn’t know how to pray. I wasn’t connecting with God. I was talking a lot, but I’m not sure that I was listening. It was just a monologue, and it became ritualistic.

One morning as it was getting close to seven o’clock, I said to the Lord, “God, I hate to admit this, but you know my heart anyway: I dread this prayer time. I start dreading it at 6:45,” I said.

“Andrew,” the Lord said to me, “don’t feel bad. I start dreading it at 6.”

I thought, If God isn’t enjoying it, and I’m not enjoying it, then why am I doing it? I realized it was just a religious exercise. It was something I was doing to make myself feel holy, but I wasn’t connecting with God.

The purpose of prayer is simply relationship with God—it is fellowship and communion with Him. There are times when we have to use the authority God has given us and command sickness or obstacles to flee, but mostly prayer is about building relationship with God. It is an opportunity for us to spend time with our Heavenly Father, and to be further transformed into His image.

God is always present, and the blood of Jesus has made it possible for us to enter into the Holy of Holies (Hebrews 10:19). The veil has been torn in two, and the obstacles that separated mankind from God under the Old Covenant have been removed. Now, we can enter boldly into the throne room of God and soak in His presence.