There are times when it seems like God does not hear us. There are times when it seems like God has become deaf to our prayers and unresponsive to our cries. There are times when we seek but do not find, knock but do not find the door opened. Why is it that God sometimes does not answer our prayers?

There may be any number of reasons, but before we consider a few of them, we need to acknowledge that often God actually does answer our prayers, though either in a way we cannot yet see or in a way we do not accept. He sometimes answers invisibly or imperceptibly and he sometimes answers in a way we simply fail to see or, worse, fail to acknowledge. Then there are times when God gives us not exactly what we had pleaded for but what he, in his wisdom, has determined we need. Either way, we should always take great care before we conclude “God has not answered my prayer.”
Yet there actually are times when he does not answer. This should not surprise us if we have an appropriate assessment of our own finitude, our own selfishness, our own sinfulness, our own simplicity. We know that God has power that is vast, holiness that is perfect, wisdom that is complete, and plans and purposes that encompass all of time and space. Our lives and the world around would be in woeful condition if God was beholden to each and every one of our petitions.
Our confidence, then, is not in God answering every one of our prayers just as we have prayed them, but in God hearing those prayers and determining if, when, and how to best respond. If God is truly who he says he is, if he is truly our good Father and we the children he loves, we can be certain that if he does not answer, it is only because this is better for us. He is not cruel, nor arbitrary, nor apathetic. Hence his inaction must be for our good, not for our harm.
So what are some of the ways God expresses his love and his goodness through unanswered prayer?
God may not answer our prayers when to answer them would be to rob us of a blessing. This is especially true when we pray to be relieved of suffering or delivered from a burden. The Bible and our own experience makes it clear that God often works mightily through hardships, not apart from them. This being the case, to deliver us too quickly would actually be to rob us of a blessing. It would be to take away the very circumstance through which God is conforming us to his image. There are some flowers that can be plucked only in the depths of valleys and only on the peaks of mountains, and there are some blessings that can be gotten only in adversity. God will not rob us of experiencing blessings by lifting us past the means through which they can be ours.
Then, God may not answer our prayers when they are selfish. If we pray in such a way that we account only for ourselves and not for others, God may not grant our request. God’s mind is much greater than our own and his plan much more expansive. He always accounts for all of his children and will hardly do injury to one in order to bless another. Whether our prayers are knowingly selfish or ignorantly selfish, God may not answer them if giving a blessing to us would prove a sorrow to another.
Of course God may not answer our prayers when what they request is sinful or when we ourselves are living in unrepentance. God will not grant prayers that demand what he has forbidden or that reject what delights his heart. He will not grant prayers to those who are living in unrepentant sin and are rejecting the prompting and pleading of his Spirit. God may close his ears to our pleas as a means of fatherly chastisement that is meant to awaken us to our sinfulness, soften our hearts, and steer us back to him.
Then there are times when our prayers are unanswered only because they are delayed. The God who sees the end from the beginning is not refusing to answer, but is simply waiting until the time is right. We may not yet have character that is prepared or circumstances that are appropriate to receive what we have prayed for. Just as a child cannot take advanced mathematics before he has mastered the basics, we may need divine preparation to be able to receive and appreciate some of God’s blessings. Many who plead for success would be ruined if they received it, so God lovingly delays until their hearts and lives have been made ready.
Then, it could also be that the blessings we want have not yet been fully prepared. We may plant an apple tree and immediately pray for it to bear fruit, but it will take many seasons for it to grow and mature and only then will it satisfy our hunger. And this is true of many of the blessings we long for. There may be a long time of preparation in which we need to wait patiently as those blessings are readied by his hand. God’s silence does not flow from apathy or indifference, but love. He is not refusing to grant us the blessing, but simply preparing it, nurturing it from seed to sapling to fruitfulness.
Where we so often go wrong is in failing to believe that God truly means to bless us, failing to believe that his motives are only and always love, failing to wait for his timing to be right and his answer to be perfect. Our task is to trust him—to trust him in what he will give and what he will refuse, in what he will grant in a moment and what he will grant only in time. Our task is to pray and wait, pray and trust, pray and watch for him to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all we can ask or even imagine.

Inspired by The Hidden Life by J.R. Miller

You do not need to extensively in Christian history or Christian biography to spot the connection between sorrow and sanctification. Though it is certainly not always the case, very often the people who are particularly used by the Lord are the same people who endure suffering. De Witt Talmage makes this point well in a quote from one of his sermons.

Call the roll of all the eminently pious of all the ages and you will find them the sons and daughters of sorrow. The Maronites say that one characteristic of the cedar tree is that when the air is full of snow, and it begins to descend, the tree lifts its branches in a way better to receive the snow and bear up under it, and I know by much observation that the grandest cedars of Christian character lift higher their branches toward God, when the snows of trouble are coming. Lord Nelson’s coffin was made out of the masts of the ship L’Orient, in which he had fought so bravely, and your throne in heaven, oh, suffering child of God, will be built out of conquered earthly disasters.
What gave John Bunyan such a wondrous dream of the celestial city? The Bedford penitentiary.
What gave Richard Baxter such power to tell of The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, and give his immortal Call to the Unconverted? Physical disease which racked every nerve of his body.
What made George Whitefield so mighty in saving souls, bringing ten thousand to God when others brought a hundred? Persecution that caricatured and assailed him all up and down England, and dead vermin thrown in his face when he was preaching.
What mellowed and glorified Wilberforce’s Christian character? A financial misfortune that led him to write: “I know not why my life is spared so long, except it be to show that a man can be as happy without a fortune as with one.”
What gave John Milton such deep spiritual eyesight that he could see the battle of angels? Extinguishment of physical eyesight.
What is the highest observatory for studying the stars of hope and faith and spiritual promise? The believer’s sick-bed.
What proclaims the richest and most golden harvests that wave on all the hills of heavenly rapture? The snows, the deep snows, the awful snows of earthly calamity. And that thought is one of the treasures of the snow.

It takes a long time for sinful instincts to become pure, for tendencies toward what is evil to be transformed into tendencies toward what is good, lovely, and pleasing to God. The man who quits drugs will still react when he catches a whiff and the woman who gave up alcoholism will still struggle when she takes a sip. You can be a Christian for many years and still find your heart instinctually swayed toward what you once loved and what once drew your heart.
This is why, I’m sure, the Bible often offers warnings like, “Do not envy the wicked” (Proverbs 24:1). The Bible would not bother to warn us of something that was not an actual temptation. Hence, we can be certain that we need this warning—we need to be warned that, unless we guard our hearts, we will be envious of others—even those who hate God. And not only that, we will be envious of them for the things that are permitted to them but withheld from us.
A man I once met along the way told me that he sometimes wishes he had sowed his wild oats while he was young. He had lived out his young adult years with a good measure of self-control, then settled into married life. He loves his wife and loves his family. But sometimes an inner voice whispers that he might be more fulfilled now if he had experimented more then—if he had dated more girls, slept with a few of them, and had a greater number of sexual experiences. It’s not that he wants to do any of that now, but that he feels a sense of envy that he will go to the grave without experiencing what so many others have. He looks toward the wicked with a sense of envy.
I have never been drunk but sometimes wonder what it’s like. After all, it certainly seems to be an enjoyable experience, at least until the next morning. Though I know the Bible says it’s wrong, I do sometimes wonder why they get to experience it and I don’t. I have never done drugs but have occasionally wished I could try it just once to experience what seems to be a rush that is not otherwise available. I have never played the lottery, but sometimes look wistfully at the photos of the winners with their oversized checks for countless millions of dollars. I know in theory that ill-gotten gains do not profit, but I still sometimes feel a sense of envy toward those who get to enjoy them.
Like that man I met along the way, like the young man to whom Proverbs is addressed, and like you (I presume), I am prone to envy the wicked. And to envy the wicked is to resent God—to fall into the age-old trap of believing that God is withholding something good from me, that I would be happier if he would allow me to enjoy what he forbids, to indulge in what he says is dangerous. My discontented heart is so easily swayed, so easily drawn from the right to the wrong. My heart so naturally believes that God is a foe rather than a friend, one who keeps me from joy instead of leading me toward it.
Yet in my better moments I am not resentful but thankful, for I know that God’s boundaries are good. I know that he permits me everything that will actually benefit me and denies me only what will actually harm me. I know that he withholds no good thing from those that he loves, but withholds only what would harm my body, scar my soul, undermine my relationships, and bring reproach upon his name. In my better moments I look toward the wicked with pity rather than envy, for I know there are always consequences to their indulgence and impending judgment for their wicked ways. “Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes,” said the Sage. “But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9). It is such a sobering thought, that.
I know that if I have missed out on a particular sin, I have not missed out on anything good, anything valuable, anything worthwhile.Share
And so I know that if I have missed out on a particular sin, I have not missed out on anything good, anything valuable, anything worthwhile. I have certainly not missed out on anything that would satisfy me for longer than a moment or that would make me a better man, a better husband, a better father. And I am fully confident that from the vantage point of heaven I will never look back with the least regret, but instead with the greatest gratitude, thanking God that his boundaries were drawn in such pleasant places, that he made known to me the path of life, and that by his grace he kept me on it, even when my heart was so prone to wander, so prone to leave the God I love.