Why You Don't Get Answers to Your Prayers (It May Surprise You)

If you’ve been praying and it feels like nothing is happening, you’re not alone.
You’ve been talking to God about the same stuff—your money, your health, your relationship, your stress, your future… and you’re still waking up in the same situation. 

You’re trying to keep the faith, but if we’re being real, it’s getting hard. You’re starting to wonder:

• “Is God even hearing me?”
• “Am I doing something wrong?”
• “Why does it seem like everyone else is getting breakthroughs but me?”
• “How long am I supposed to keep waiting?”

Let's be honest, when you pray and pray and nothing changes, it can mess with your hope. It can make you think, “I can’t keep doing this if nothing is going to change.”

In this episode I'm going to share with you something you that may actually shock you and certainly something you're not hearing on Sunday morning, but I'm going to provide a clear explanation and practical next steps you take to finally see the change you're looking for!

Free Resource Mentioned In The Episode

https://www.iamthepossible.com/selfconceptreset

Transcript

Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:01)
how to train your brain to see answers to your prayers, how to train your brain to see what you're praying for. So many of us as Christians, so often we fail to see what we're praying for. And so today I wanted to share some information that I believe is going to ⁓ help to inform, inspire,

enlighten us as the Christian community around something that I think needs to be talked about a lot more and it's going to help you to begin to see answers to your prayers. If you have been or if you are someone who you pray and it just seems like nothing changes. You pray and it seems like God doesn't hear you, God's not moving.

Life isn't changing. You aren't changing. Things aren't changing. It's starting to be frustrating. You're starting to lose faith, lose hope. You're wondering what's wrong with you. All of those internal questions, right? All of that internal wrestling. That's what's happening in your life right now. I want to share something with you that I think is going to open up so much for you and begin to really empower you and equip you.

to pray differently and to just really begin to see some things happen in your life that actually aligns with what you're praying for, you're desiring. All right, does that sound good? So let's get into this today. ⁓ Today, I wanna share a little bit about how the brain can block the very thing that you're praying for. The brain can actually filter out and prevent you

from seeing the answers to your prayers. So let me share an image with you, share a few things, share a process real quick. And then I want to provide you some real simple hands-on ⁓ tools that you can begin to utilize, man, to begin to see answers for your prayers. All right? So let me share my screen here. Now, what I'm sharing right here,

is actually here, let me re situate this. What I'm sharing here is not meant for ⁓ this overall presentation or for today's episode. This is actually from a slide from a workshop that I offer called the MX3 method. So I won't be going into the MX3 method. That's concerning how to get over fears and

and how to move forward in life, even when you're afraid. But I want to show this graphic because I want to show this image of the brain, okay? And as we say in the church, stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this, all right? It's gonna all make sense in just a moment. But I wanted to show this picture of the brain because this picture, it highlights an area in the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex. The medial prefrontal cortex.

that highlighted blue area in the brain near the front of the brain, that is a region of the brain that's responsible for decision making. And a part of those decisions that you're going to make on a daily basis is going to be what you filter out and what you allow in.

to your life, to your reality. It's very important to understand this, that the brain is heavily connected to what you are aware of, what you pick up on, what you take notice of. And this area in the brain, it's responsible for allowing you to take notice of things throughout your day. You know how you can walk past, let's say that there's like,

a $10 bill or a $20 bill on the ground. You walk right past it, but someone else walks right behind you and oops, boom, they see it. You just walked right past the $20 bill. You overlooked it, but they somehow, they saw it.

Nothing is 100 % bulletproof, but there is enough evidence for us to begin to take serious this area in the brain because the person that picked it up and saw it, there is a chance that that person was open to receiving more. They were open to drawing in.

and bringing into their lives more, whether it's financial, whether it's abundance in general. If you did enough research, asked enough questions of that person, and if you did enough research on yourself and asked yourself enough questions, there may be, and there's enough cases for us to begin to take this serious. There may be some connection between what you will allow into your reality, into your life.

versus what they are open to allowing into their lives. See, because this area in the brain, it is responsible not only for what you are made aware of and what you notice easily, but get this, it's also responsible for what you expect of yourself and what you expect for yourself. And that's major. That's super major because

If you are praying, God, I need blank. God bless me with blank. God open up a door for blank. It is possible if you are not aware of this for you to pray and desire change in a given area of your life. But this region of the brain filters that out. Now, if you're saying

That sounds crazy. What are you talking about? God is all powerful. God is all knowing. God can do anything. God, and this is made challenging folks. God is a provider and a partner. Now that may be something that you're not used to thinking or saying of God because of your current image or your current concept of God. But one thing that I've learned in my 49 years of living and 20 plus

25, 26, 27 years of being a Christian is that God desires partnership. God wants you to grow, develop, reach your full potential. And a part of that is your participation in this wonderful thing called life. And so a part of that is God does not just drop things out of the sky magically. Oftentimes God provides and allows things to be available.

Available that's why it's so important for us to learn and I'm not gonna go down that track But it's so important for us to learn this thing called resourcefulness. God is a giver of resources our job as Christians or just people in general is to be resourceful Making full use of the resources God has provided So that's a whole framework in and of itself just how you see God, but with that understanding

going back to the brain and going back to your prayers, you will filter out the resources, the provision that are right in front of you. Because here's the point, and this is where I'm gonna transition. This part of the brain, when it's making those decisions about what to expect for you, expect of you, what to take notice of, and it's a lot of other decisions that this area of the brain makes for you, but it goes to...

And this is my bread and butter. This is where I have planted my flag. It actually goes to, and is informed by the self concept, the self concept, the concept that you hold of yourself, the concept that you hold of yourself is informing the media prefrontal cortex of your brain as to what you should see, what should show up, what

aligns with who you believe you are. To make this super simple and not get all scientific and get all wordy. Who you believe you are determines what you see. Can I make it any simpler than that? Who you believe you are, what you believe you are heavily influences what you allow into your life, what you give yourself permission to see, to have, to do, to attempt.

to try what you expect. When we go to church, we talk about be in expectation, be in expectation. We should be. Shout out to my uncle, Pastor Lamar. ⁓ He always be in expectation, be in expectation. One of the problems with being in expectation is if your concept does not accept what you're praying for and believing for.

It's gonna be hard to be in expectation because it's gonna inform this area of the brain. Don't look for that. Don't find that. Why? Because that does not align with the concept I have of myself. So what we need to do is when you're praying, no matter what you're praying for, you're praying for some sort of change. So the concept that you have of yourself must align with the change that you desire.

You're praying for change, but you're not changing the very thing that will determine whether or not you'll ever see the change. Because the concept says, this is who I am. This is what I expect of me. If I'm a loser, I expect to lose. If I am the abused, I expect abuse. If I'm always last, I expect to come up short. Whatever concept you have of yourself, that's what's going to determine.

what you see. Now, let me go ahead and show this next screen here. Let me go back to the full screen.

tab. Okay, yep.

All right, so you guys should be seeing the CX3 framework. Yes. Okay. Perfect. So let me go back here. All right. Perfect. So this is what I wanted to show you guys. All right. Again, apologize about the technical issue. I think I closed down one of the tabs that I was supposed to keep open or something like that, but you guys should be seeing right now the CX3 framework. So this is what I was talking about. All right. The self concept, the concept, the self concept is essentially a picture of yourself, right?

It's a picture. It's an image. It's the idea that you have of yourself. And that picture is what we see in ourselves, right? It's whatever you see in yourself is determining what you say to yourself. That's the self conversation, right? That's the inner dialogue, self-talk we call it. That's determining what we're able to sustain for ourselves or the capacity that we have, right? Called the self capacity. That capacity then determines what we are able to handle.

the load, the weight, because anytime we pray for change, anytime we're looking for change, that new thing, whether it's a new house, a new car, a new relationship, new job, better health, whatever it is, it comes with new responsibility. And I think that's not talked about enough. Whatever you're asking for comes with new responsibilities. And with those new responsibilities, you have to, if you want to sustain it,

You have to have the emotional internal capacity to bring on that new thing and its responsibilities, which are stressors, not in a negative sense, but a stressor. Just like if you go to the gym, you lift weights, you're under stress, you're under tension. That stress is working for you. So the word stress, side note, is not a negative thing. It just means tension. Okay. So whenever you take on something new, that new thing brings on tension with it.

If you have not developed the capacity within yourself to manage and maintain the new thing, AKA its responsibilities, AKA its tension, AKA its stressors, then you're going to tap out. That's when you're going to burn out. That's when you're going to quiet quit. That's when you're going to, you know, half-but it. I was going to say something else, but yeah, okay. This is Christian audience. Okay. But you're going to half do it. Right? You know, that other word I wanted to use. You're, you're not going to show up for yourself.

and you're gonna lose that thing. You're gonna drop that thing. You're gonna self-sabotage. You're gonna take two steps forward, three steps back, right? It's gonna be that rubber band life. If you deal with the concept, if you deal with the seed, the root, if you deal with the concept that you have of yourself, what God says about you and what you can discover about yourself through the assessments that I provide.

If you develop a greater concept, you have a greater conversation, you have a greater conversation, you have a greater capacity, you have a greater capacity. You can then begin to give yourself permission to receive the very things that you're praying for. I hope that makes sense. If I went too fast, go back, listen to the replay, watch the replay. But guys, this is what it is. It's the concept. It's the concept. Your self concept is informing your brain. It's informing here. Let me stop sharing.

Let me go back to the studio. All right. Your, your concept guys, it's informing your brain and your brain is using that information to filter out things that might be right in front of you, but you overlook them. You, you walk right past them. You ever, you ever be in the house? I'm just kind of making them something. Have you ever been in the house and you're like looking for your keys? Let's just say.

just something common. Man, where I drop my keys, where I drop my keys, where I put my keys, where I put my keys. The key is sitting right there on the table or right there on the mantle or right there by the TV. It's in the room, but it's not in your awareness. It's in the house, but it's not in your consciousness. It's not allowed to come in yet. And you walk right past me, walk right past me, walk right past me, walk right past them. And then all of a sudden, boom.

Oh yeah, I put them over there and you go right over there to them. Or in my case, you just, cause I've practiced when I let things go and that's a whole nother side note, that's a whole nother show. But when you let things go, they actually come to you much faster when you make them less important, when you make them less critical, right? Things that you take simple, take ease is no big deal. Those things seem to come to you, but those things that you obsess over, you create this resistance with those things. anyway.

That's a whole nother show. But my point is this.

The things that you are praying for, they're usually right there in front of you. The resources, the relationships, the things that God has provided. You say, hey man, I want some apple cider. I want some apple juice. I want an apple pie. And God gives you an apple tree out in the backyard. Tree full of apples. Tree full of apples.

And you, Lord, give me apple pie, apple cider, apple juice, the finished product. And however, or rather, however, the finished product is not usually. Usually there are those outliers, but it's usually not what God provides. God provides the resources. The apple tree, go cut some apples down.

That's an extreme example, but you get my point. You get the point. What you're praying for, it's there. It takes a little creativity, a little innovation, a little resourcefulness. But sometimes we're looking for the finished product and God is a provider and a partner, providing the natural resources.

and wants to partner with us, wants to encourage us, inspire us, infuse us with this God-given energy of innovation and revelation and inspiration, right? To use the things that he's given us to create the life that we desire. But many times we look or we overlook those things because we're filtering those things out.

because we don't have a good concept of ourselves. And the concept that we have of ourselves becomes the story. It becomes the narrative. Who I believe I am, what I believe I am, how I actually feel about myself, not when someone asks me on Sunday at church, how you doing? Blessed and highly favored. No, ain't. Well, you are, you are. But to you, to you, where it matters, in your mind, in your heart, to you.

You're not, you see, that's what you've been trained to say. That's that mask. That's that outside stuff. What I'm talking about today is that inside stuff. We live from the inside out. We project from the inside out. That's why the brain works on the inside to say, Hey, who do you think you are? Your brain is asking that that medial prefrontal cortex is asking, Hey, for today, who do you think you are? And you say, well, I'm someone who prays. ⁓

I'm someone who goes to church. I'm someone who reads my Bible. I'm someone who believes in God, but I'm also someone who really, if you really knew my heart, I'm also that same person that does not believe that better is for me, that I'm worthy of better, that I'm worthy of that thing that I'm praying for. There's a worthiness issue.

There is a trust issue. I don't trust myself to handle that. I don't believe that I'm the guy or the gal to handle that. don't believe that I'm the person that can handle that, that can manage and maintain that thing. And so please filter out. Please, please. That's like that internal neural conversation right there. Not even the self-talk, but one just happening between the neural pathways. That's, hey, you know, the brain said, hey man, who do you think you are?

I don't think I can handle it. Okay, I'm going make sure that you don't see that today. I'm going make sure that it stays out of your view. I'm going let that show up for somebody else. I'm going make sure you walk right past it. I'm going make sure that when you're praying for that $20 bill that we talked about earlier, as soon as you get to the point where that $20 bill is, I'm going to cause you to look up. I'm going cause you to look over there. I'm going make you have an itch on your arm or something to where your attention is diverted.

Anything other than seeing what you're asking for, seeing what you're praying for. Okay, I'm done. If that has made sense and you want to begin to improve the self concept, because I can go on and on and on and on, but why? At that point, I'm just, I'm just doing too much. Right. I have placed a link in the description of this video. If you are on YouTube, if you are on LinkedIn, there is a link. Okay. That is in the description. Click that link.

Click that link and download this free guide. It's going to begin to walk you through again, what is the self concept? What does it do? Why is it doing that? How to identify it, how to change it. When you begin to change the concept that you have of yourself, you begin to change the conversations you have with yourself. And you begin to develop the capacity within yourself to have and to really lay hold of and to really allow in the change.

that you're praying for. It starts with who you believe you are. It starts with who you actually believe you are. Because that person is like a, in closing, in closing like a preacher, right? I enclosed two or three times. In closing, think of it like a character in a movie. When you watch a character, right? Who's your favorite, your favorite actor or actress? Get them in your mind. Think of your favorite movie with that person.

They, they played a role, a part, and they had a, they had a specific name. They grew up somewhere. They had certain things happen to them. They behaved a certain way, spoke a certain way, did certain things. And depending on who they were, the character, the role that they played, you expected certain things of them. What comes to mind for me, cause I'm a big Denzel fan, Denzel for me is the goat. ⁓ and I remember equalizer.

think it was like three of them, right? And I think of a man who is stoic, a man who is calculated, a man who is skilled, a man who means what he says and says what he means and he ain't about them second chances. ⁓ I think of a man who was built around a very ⁓ rigid routine. Think about all the different scenes in that movie. Now, knowing who he is in that movie, it's hard for me to picture that person.

⁓ I don't know. I'm trying to think something just way out of character. It's hard for me to think that that person is, ⁓ I don't know, going to dress up in a clown suit and I don't know, tell jokes or something. Like I'm really struggling with like trying to just pitch it. But you get my point. It's like he was the equalizer. He killed folks. He took them off the set. Like he was about that life.

But anything other than being about that life, if you said, hey, he's going to go sing in an opera or he's going to put on a suit and, you know, play, play the piano or something, it's just, it's just out of character. You get what I'm saying? It's out of character. Well, the same is true for you. Your concept is the character that you play in your world, in your life. And until that concept changes, your world is not going to change because it's, it's the role that you are choosing to play.

Now, usually in these videos, I go way back into the trauma and the drama that created your concept and all those different things. I'm gonna be doing this for as long as God graces me to do this. So I'm gonna touch on some of those deeper things in other videos. I've touched on them in other ones. You can always go back on YouTube, see those other videos. But a lot of our concept was trained and conditioned in childhood. And then as adults, we carried a lot of that pain and suffering into our adulthood.

And the concept never changed. got saved, but the concept never changed. The word of God says be transformed by the renewing of the mind, be transformed by the renewing of the mind. And the brain and the mind are not the same thing, but it's still dealing with the internal world. Okay. It is a renewing of the mind, the inner self that must be renewed for your life to begin to transform. So this is why you can pray and not see.

what you're praying for. All right, that's it, man. Love y'all, praying for y'all. Believing in y'all again. If you want help with this, click the link in the description. Got another, got my little cameo cats right back here. Cameo cats. I think that's, can't see all the way back there, but I think that's Genesis and that's Dallas. I don't see the third one. We got another cat around here somewhere, ⁓ Tyson. But anyway.

That's the fam this morning. Got my little cameo cats hanging out with me, getting that, getting that good word. They got a good image of themselves. Trust me. The way they'd be acting around here, they have a very, they have a very good self concept. They are very high on themselves. So yeah, anyway, that's why they always photobombing and jumping into my videos. But anyway, man, I love y'all, praying for y'all, believe in y'all. This is Travell CW Lynch. Mr. What, what? This is the, am the possible podcast ex-

experience the live pop-up Thursday morning edition and Yeah, man, as always say, please remember until next time relate better to yourself create better for yourself and most importantly those Around you.