Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” – Mark 11:24
Hannah Kerber
Sometimes when we pray we don’t always feel like the Lord hears us and sometimes we are left hanging for a long time without any known answers from God. I know from personal experience that it is hard to believe that the Lord hears our cries to Him when we don’t see any answers. In fact I think it is very easy to lose trust in God and to believe that He is actually there for us when we don’t see Him in our lives! I hope that this report will help you to see more clearly that the Lord does answer our prayers even when we don’t feel like He is listening!
Prayer is our way of communicating with our Lord! When we pray to God we are usually either thanking Him for something or asking Him for something! Asking God for something isn’t wrong, in fact God wants us to ask Him for things! Philippians 4:6 says, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, and pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done.” So you see God wants us to pray to Him! When we ask Him for something He will give it to us! Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Now you may be thinking that this sounds great and all but what about the all those times when you pray over and over again for the same thing and nothing happens? That is where having to have patience and the waiting process comes into play! Don’t stop reading now… this is not a dead end, in fact this is just the beginning!!!!
How long do I have to wait for the Lord to answer my prayer? The truth of the matter is that there aren’t any special set times of when your prayers will be answered. It could take several days, months, or even years for a prayer to be answered! The time is only known to God. I know what you must be thinking; there is no hope for me right? Wrong! There is always hope for you! Just because the time is unknown to us doesn’t mean that we don’t have hope for our prayers to be answered. God will answer your prayer when it is right for you! God never answers our prayers without considering how it might affect our lives. God is never late and He is never early! If God hasn’t answered your prayers yet that most likely means it not the best time for you to get an answer. You see, God knows what is best for us and He knows when the best times to act are. If God doesn’t think that this is a good time for you to get an answer from Him then He won’t give it to you. Sometimes what we pray for and think we need isn’t always what we need at the time. We really have to wait on God and believe in His timing! Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs is telling us here to trust in God with all our heats and to not lean on our own understanding but the His alone and that He will lead us in the right direction! God created us and He knows what we need more than we do ourselves. We must believe that God will answer our prayers when it is the right time and be content with what we have at the moment! Matthew 21:22 says, “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”
Let me summarize all I have said in the last paragraph. We must wait and trust that the Lord will answer our prayers when the time is right! We have no clue when our prayers will be answered. God is the only one who knows! And we should believe that God knows what is best for us and wait on His timing for answers!!!!! Are you still with me on this? Good, I hope that you have had some time to think about what I have just said and I hope you have decided to trust in the Lords timing and to wait on Him! If you have than that’s great, you are on the right track but if you have haven’t yet than just hang in there, there is still a lot more to this than I have stated!
You’re prayer has been answered and you feel very content! You are glad that you waited on the Lord and that you had to wait for the Lord’s answer because you know now that the timing was perfect!!!!! Is this you? If so than you have learned how waiting for the Lord to answer your prayers is always the best bet! You are so happy that the Lord didn’t answer you right away and you are glad it took a while! That is what it feels like to have your prayers answered on God’s time! God’s time is not like people time! When we are on people time life gets so complicated because we are always changing our minds and changing how we feel about things! God’s time is different! God knows how we are really feeling and He knows just what we need and when! We never need to second guess God’s timing like we do our own! How lucky are we to have a God who cares and knows so much about us that we would gladly trust Him to handle all our troubles and our desires! You see when we wait for God and have patience we can never go wrong there! Isaiah 40:31 says, “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” When I was little I wanted a friend so badly and I prayed to God about it. We had moved to new house and I felt very lonely! After waiting a while the Lord answered my prayer and a girl my age moved into the house right next to us! She and I soon became best friends and we were for about 5 years!!!!!! The Lord answered my prayer for a friend when I was only 5 years old! Not only did he give me a friend my age but he gave me a best friend! The Lord was good to me and I am very thankful that I had her for my childhood best friend!!!! That was not the only time the Lord answered my prayers for a friend. The Lord has given me a lot of different kinds of friends and I am thankful for all of them!
Here are some true stories about people, from the Bible and from misc. sources on the internet, who have had their prayers answered by God! This is a short story I read on the internet about a foster mom who had her prayer answered in a store! The foster mom prayed that her funds would be raised and her prayer was answered when a man, who was mysterious, went up to her in a store, after she prayed, and handed her a lot of money. The money would help her with her funds! Here is another story I found on the internet about a couple who were trying to sell their house. The other homes that were in their neighborhood had been on the market for 6 months or more. They really needed to sell their house and they prayed to God about it. They asked the Lord if He could send them a buyer for their home in a timely fashion! They also asked the Lord to not allow their home to be occupied by people who were ungodly! Within three months their prayers were answered and they had two offers for their home. The people who ended up buying their home were Christians! Here is a small passage from the Bible where it shows the Lord answering the people’s prayers on behalf of Peter the apostle, “The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists. Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.” When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!” “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.” But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.” Another example from the Bible is Elijah’s prayer to God when the people are worshiping Bail instead of God. It is in 1 Kings 18:37-39 and it says, “Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord—He is God! The Lord—He is God!”
I have mentioned a lot in the last few paragraphs about the greatness of receiving an answer to our prayers from God and I hope that it has helped you to see how God always works things out in the end! Okay that’s sounds great but what about me, you may be wondering, I have been waiting and praying about the same thing for a long time now and there still isn’t an answer, this is ridiculous, how much longer do I have to wait to receive a simple answer? I hear you reader, loud and clear, it’s like I said before it can take months or even years for us to have a prayer answered! I know what you are going through, I am still in the waiting process myself for some unanswered prayers, God doesn’t always answer our prayers when we would expect Him too! Keep on reading and I will try to explain in more detail!
Let’s go back to the waiting process for a little while and let’s talk more in depth about the three key points to waiting for the Lord! What are the three key points? They are trust, patience, and faith! Without these three points it is too hard for us to believe that the Lord will answer us!
The first key point is trust! We must trust that the Lord has heard our prayers and that He will answer us when the time is right! Having trust isn’t easy, let me tell you that much, we must realize that when we pray to God we are trusting Him for our own desires and longings! Without trust in the Lord our prayers don’t mean much. When we pray we are trusting that the Lord knows what is best and that He will answer us! As we wait on the Lord we must keep our trust in Him! Trusting not only in the Lord but also in His timing is the key factor here! His timing is very important and we must not forget it! God has perfect timing and He knows when to answer our prayers! Eccl. 3:1 says, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”
The second key point is patience! We need patience when waiting on the Lord! Luke 8:15 says, “… As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.” We must try to remember that God constantly shows us patience when dealing with our issues so we must remember to have patience and wait on Him!
The third key point is faith! We must always have faith in the Lord and in His timing! We must also remember to have faith that the Lord will answer our prayers! Having faith is key! I think faith is the most important thing to have when it comes to prayer! Faith is our foundation on which we base our prayer! It takes real faith in the Lord for us to go to Him in prayer and it takes real faith for us to trust Him to give us an answer that is based on His knowledge alone! I am going to talk a lot about faith from now on because it is really important!
Just how important is it really to have faith that the Lord will answer our prayers? I for one fail miserably when it comes to having faith that God will answer me! If you are wondering about this and are failing in this category, you are not alone!!!! I fail when it comes to faith all of the time! It is so hard to have faith when the Lord isn’t answering my prayers! I think we all fail in this area from time to time! And that is understandable, after all none of us are perfect, but we should always try the best we can to keep the faith! If you are failing, with keeping your faith, then pray to God about it and ask Him to forgive and help you! If you have the right attitude and heart intensions the Lord will forgive you for your lack of faith and He will help you!
Always remember to go to God, He is always there for you, and ask Him for His forgiveness for something you did or ask Him for His help with something! Don’t ever be afraid to go to God in prayer! If you did something wrong ask His forgiveness and He will forgive you! If you need help with something ask the Lord for help! Don’t ever be afraid to ask the Lord for His help! The Lord wants to help us! He doesn’t want us to go through life alone! He wants us to include Him in our lives! Isaiah 41:10 says, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” That verse in Isaiah is telling us that God will help us and that He will uphold us! Do not fear, do not stress, and always have faith to go to God in prayer and know that He will answer you!!
Have you ever rejected the Lord’s answer to your prayer because it wasn’t what you wanted? If this has happened to you than you are not alone! We all struggle with this! It takes a huge amount of faith to accept an answer that God gives you to that you don’t want! How bought getting a blank answer from God? First of all what is a “blank answer?” A” blank answer”, as I like to call it, is when you receive an answer to your prayer without realizing it! Now it’s not really “blank” but it is because it is an answer that is blank to you! You don’t see the answer when it comes to you! It’s almost like an answer in disguise. You don’t really know about it until after it has happened! You can think about it as like a realization! Like you didn’t realize it was the answer to your prayer until after it happened! Now you may be wondering how this applies to faith! Let me ask you this, why did you pray to God in the first place? Why did you go to Him? Why? Faith!! You went to God based on your faith in Him! You had faith enough in Him to go to Him in prayer! You had faith that He would give you an answer! It’s like I said before, to pray to God it takes faith! You see, it all comes back to faith! Faith is our foundation! Faith is the only way we can go to God in prayer! If we didn’t have faith in the Lord than why would we even bother to pray to Him? We wouldn’t because we would not really have faith that He is real! It is because of faith we go to Him in prayer!