{"id":4499,"date":"2026-06-10T10:41:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/?p=4499"},"modified":"2026-06-10T10:45:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:45:03","slug":"prayer-answered-or-unanswered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/2026\/06\/10\/prayer-answered-or-unanswered\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer &#8211; answered or unanswered?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Greetings friends. The subject of our blog today is prayer. Last Sunday (June 7) I preached at a partner church (Hope Community Church) and was given the passage Matthew 7:7-12 as my text. I did my preparation and context weighed heavily in my sermon, partly because the church has been going through a series of messages on Jesus&#8217; &#8220;Sermon on the Mount&#8221; (Matthew 5-7), and partly because there are many unanswered questions in what Jesus states about prayer in this section, and the context helps to clarify some of those questions. I&#8217;ll share the link to the video below and if you are interested, you are welcome to enjoy. The <strong>main point<\/strong> of the message (and hopefully the passage) was: <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Through humble, persistent prayer to our gracious Father, He helps us practice kingdom conduct in loving others.<\/span> There were four questions I used to address issues related to prayer: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>For what are we to pray?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How are we to pray?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To Whom are we to pray?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Why are we to pray? <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>However, there was one question I didn&#8217;t dive into as deeply as I would have wanted. What about unanswered prayer? Sometimes we pray, and pray, and pray, and it seems that God remains quiet. For example, my wife Holly has struggled with health issues for much of our marriage, and we both have gone before the Lord many times every day asking Him to grant her healing with no apparent response. On Sunday afternoon, our son Andrew will get married to a delightful girl named Ivy Jo in an outdoor wedding I will be conducting. But the day is predicted to be one of our hottest days of the year, and Holly is very sensitive to heat. If it is as warm as predicted, she will not be able to be present, so we&#8217;ve been praying and praying, but at this point there seems to be no change in the one day of intense heat. Jesus says clearly in Matt. 7, &#8220;Ask, and it will be given to you.&#8221; We are asking. Why isn&#8217;t God giving?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While I know some of the biblical answers to this question, the primary answer I have settled on is, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221; Here is some of how the Bible responds to the question of unanswered prayer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Sin blocks our prayer. Psalm 66:18 &#8211; <em>&#8220;If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.&#8221;<\/em> (cf. 1 Peter 3:7 &#8211; treating a spouse poorly hinders prayer; Prov. 21:13 &#8211; ignoring the poor hinders prayer.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bad motives hinder prayers. James 4:3 &#8211; <em>&#8220;You ask and do not receive, because you ask&nbsp;wrongly, to spend it on your passions.&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What we request is not good, and God does what is good. Psalm 84:11 &#8211; <em>&#8220;For the&nbsp;Lord&nbsp;God is&nbsp;a sun and&nbsp;shield; the&nbsp;Lord&nbsp;bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who&nbsp;walk uprightly.&#8221;<\/em> Sometimes we may not know what is truly in our best interest.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Timing isn&#8217;t right, or it isn&#8217;t God&#8217;s will. Jesus prays to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane moments before His suffering and subsequent crucifixion, <em>\u201cFather, if you are willing, remove&nbsp;this cup from me.&nbsp;Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.\u201d<\/em> Clearly it was not the Father&#8217;s will for the suffering and death of Christ to be removed. Since we don&#8217;t always know God&#8217;s will, we must persevere in asking (cf. Luke 18 &#8211; parable of persistent widow who kept asking till judge granted request.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lack of faith. James 1:6-7 &#8211; <em>&#8220;But&nbsp;let him ask in faith,&nbsp;with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like&nbsp;a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord<\/em>.<em>&#8220;<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ultimately, though, we must accept that we don&#8217;t know God&#8217;s ways and will never fully understand how God works. He is sovereign and we are not and we submit to Him. Isaiah 55:8-9 &#8211; <em>&#8220;For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the&nbsp;Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>While none of these good, biblical responses completely settle the issue in my mind, I will trust God, submit to His authority and will, and keep on praying, knowing He is good and will do what is right. As the famous commentator Matthew Henry put it, &#8220;If all the compassions of all the tender fathers in the world were crowded into the [heart] of one, yet compared with the tender mercies of our God, they would be but as a candle to the sun, or a drop to the ocean.&#8221; (cf. Matt. 7:9-11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is a link to the message I gave on Sunday:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Prayer and Kingdom Conduct | Matthew 7:7-12 | 6.7.26\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GhfmTVxcV5U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greetings friends. The subject of our blog today is prayer. Last Sunday (June 7) I preached at a partner church (Hope Community Church) and was given the passage Matthew 7:7-12 as my text. I did my preparation and context weighed heavily in my sermon, partly because the church has been going through a series of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/2026\/06\/10\/prayer-answered-or-unanswered\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Prayer &#8211; answered or unanswered?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-messages-and-presentations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4502,"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions\/4502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/belzglobal.com\/ministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}