Prayers That God Does Not Answer

"You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." James 4:3 ESV

       God does not always give us what we ask in our prayers. If He did, it would not be well for us.

       There was a young man in prison in New York a year or two ago for committing a great crime. I met an old man who had known that young man all his life. He said, "The trouble with that boy was that his father spoiled him. He gave him everything that he wanted. If the father had been a little wiser, the boy would not have been ruined."

       Your fathers and mothers do not give you everything that you ask for. If they did, it would be a bad thing for you. And God deals in the same way with us. If He were to grant us everything that we ask, it would harm instead of help us.

       Very often we ask Him to do something for us that we ought to do for ourselves. 

       When I was in school once in a while one of the boys would come to a problem that was very hard. After looking at it for a moment he would take it to his teacher and ask him to work it for him. The teacher would say to him, ''Now, my boy, it is not going to do you any good if I work this problem. You go back and see if you can solve it yourself."

       That boy had been sent to school that his mind might grow strong by working hard problems and doing hard things. So his teacher did not do what he asked, but made him work it for himself. He wanted his teacher to do something for him that he ought to have done for himself.

       If you ever pray to God asking Him to do something for you and He does not do it, ask yourself if it is not a problem that He wants you to work for yourself. We ought never to trouble God with things that we can do for ourselves.

       Then sometimes boys and girls pray for clear weather. They are going on an excursion, perhaps, the next day, and they are afraid that it will rain, so they ask God to give them a clear, bright day. The next morning when they wake up the first sound that they hear is the rain coming down on the roof. They are disappointed, and they think that God has not heard their prayer. But God has a very large family to take care of, and He has to think about all His people. Out in the country there are thousands of farmers who have planted their fields and they are praying for rain to come and make the crops grow. If God were to answer your prayer and send sunshine every day there would be no rain and the farmers would have no fruit or grain, and there would be nothing to eat. God has to think of all His children, and if He sends you rain when you ask for sunshine, just think of all the blessings that the rain brings to the earth, the grain, and the fruit and the flowers.

       I read once in a book of a parson who was asked by the people to pray to God for rain. Before he prayed, he thought he would find out what day would be the most convenient for the people to have it rain. Well, the women did not want it to rain on Monday, for that was wash-day, and Tuesday the market people wanted clear weather. Wednesday the farmers were going to cut their hay and Thursday they were planning to gather it in; Friday and Saturday it was something else, and of course the other ministers did not want it to rain Sunday. There was no day that suited everyone. So the parson went and asked the Lord to send the rain whenever He thought best, and that is the way He sends it.

       Sometimes we are very selfish in our prayers. There was a boy who wanted a quarter very much to buy something that he needed, and he had no way of getting it, so he prayed that he might find a quarter. That seems like a harmless prayer, but it isn't so harmless as we think. If he were to find a quarter some one else would have first to lose it.

       He was asking God to take the money out of the pocket of someone else, and put it into his. We must be sure that our prayers, if they were granted, do not make someone else suffer. If they do, God may not answer them.

       We will all pray many times when God does not answer, and the reason is not that He does not hear us, but that we are asking for something that is not right, or is not best. Hutchinson

Unanswered Prayers.