Unanswered Prayers

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:1-3 (NIV)

One of the most confusing things for most Christians, particularly young Christians, is unanswered prayer. I have heard many perplexed and discouraged Christians say, “I have prayed and prayed for something or someone or some type of deliverance, and God has yet to answer me or to do what I asked of him.” I have said it myself many times. Why is this so?

The Bible gives many reasons as to why God chooses to answer some prayers and not others. It could be that our prayers aren’t the will of God, and so he chooses to say no to us. It could be that he desires to teach us patience and reliance upon him, and so he chooses to tell us to wait. It could be that he has sovereignly chosen to deliver us through or in our suffering instead of from it. But, in some cases the reason God doesn’t answer our prayers lies within us. Our selfish pride causes us to ask things of God from the wrong motivations.  Our desire is often not to see God glorified, but rather to see ourselves advanced. That’s what James tells us when he asks the rhetorical questions, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires to battle within you?” We ask for and seek things from God with the wrong motives so that we may spend what we get on our own pleasures. Such an attitude is the opposite of that which is after God’s own heart and that which he honors. May God grant us the insight and humility needed to put his own heart and desires above ours.

As you pray, ask God to show you the motivations of your prayers. As he reveals them to you, examine them. Ask the hard questions – Are my desires and the prayers that arise from them for my own glory and advancement or for God’s Almighty and the advancement of his kingdom? Examine your heart. Is it seeking God’s own heart. Turn to him.

CHD

Helpful Scripture Passages:

James 4:1-12

Psalm 104

Acts 13:13-52