While you question why your prayers are not answered, have you asked yourself, ‘Am I asking aright or based on bad motives’?

James 4:1-3 (MSG) speaks to this asking you to reflect,

Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it. You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to. You’re spoiled children, each wanting your own way.

Can we see the root of both our personal wars, and such wars of nations as is going on in the Middle East that is shaking the nations?

“A pastor writes: ‘According to legend, King Midas loved gold so much that when Dionysus granted him a wish, Midas asked that everything he touched would turn to gold. At first, Midas was delighted with his request, but when he discovered that his touch made food inedible and his embrace made loved ones lifeless, he stumbled upon what sociologist Robert Merton called the law of unintended consequences’.

Like Midas, getting what we want can result in… undesirable consequences. So much for the Midas touch. Sometimes an unanswered prayer is God, in His sovereign wisdom, sparing us the pain of unintended consequences. Sometimes God allows what His power could prevent. Most of the time that causes us a great deal of temporal angst, but someday we will owe God as many ‘thank-you’s for the prayers He did not answer as the ones He did.’

James writes,

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’ (vv. 2-3 NIV).

C.S. Lewis said,

‘If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where would I be now?’

The pastor continues: ‘Many of our prayers are misguided. We pray for comfort instead of character. We pray for an easy way out instead of the strength to make it through… Many of our prayers would short-circuit God’s plans and purposes for our lives if He answered them. Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking Him what He wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances.”—Taken from Word for Today

Oh, beloved saint when we come to terms with these truths, we will appreciate the depth of this quote from an unknown author.

Once a man was asked, “what do you gain by regularly praying to God?” The man replied, “Nothing…but let me tell you what I lost. Anger, ego, greed, depression, insecurity and fear of death.” Sometimes the answer to our prayers is not gaining but losing, which ultimately is the gain.

If we know and trust His love for us and faithfulness towards us, the assurance of answered prayers we will know without question. Selah


Pastor Afolabi Oladele