What To Do When Your Prayers Aren’t Answered [41]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of Back to Rurality, Pastor TJ Freeman addresses the common frustration of unanswered prayers. Drawing from Tom Ellif's book 'A Passion for Prayer,' TJ identifies seven barriers that may hinder prayers: neglecting personal holiness, praying with wrong motives, unresolved relational issues, relying on worldly sources, Satan's opposition, divine purposes, and a lack of faith. He emphasizes the importance of self-examination, genuine motives, and faith in God's wisdom and timing. TJ encourages listeners to trust in God through prayer for spiritual growth and alignment with His will.

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• Website: backtorurality.com
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• Email: tj@brainerdinstitute.com

Transcript

Have you ever wondered why God is not answering your prayers? Maybe you felt like your prayers are just kind of bouncing off the ceiling, or maybe your circumstances haven't gotten better, even though you think you're doing all the right things and you're praying all the right things. What do you do when God does not answer prayer? Well, stay tuned. 

Well, hello, my name is TJ Freeman and I am a rural pastor. That's right. That means I, just like you, live in the middle of nowhere, but guess what we're getting. That's right. We're getting a Chick-fil-A now. It's not exactly in my town. That'll never happen. You know where it is? It's an hour away in another little town. Well, a bigger town, called Williamsport. And I will drive that hour gladly to eat the Lord's chicken. 

So, I can't say anymore, I'm two hours from the nearest Chick-fil-A. Now I'll be an hour from the nearest Chick-fil-A. Still pretty sure that this qualifies as the middle of nowhere though. And living in the middle of nowhere sometimes it's hard to know who you can talk to about things like prayer. 

What do you do when you feel like your prayers are not effective? Like they're bouncing off the ceiling or like maybe God isn't answering them. Well we're reading a really good book right now with the elders at my church. It's by Tom Eliff and it's called A Passion for Prayer.

Really wanna recommend that book to you. It's been super helpful to us. And in chapter nine, dear brother, Tom walks through a number of barriers to answered prayer. The chapter is called a "Proper Response to Delayed Answers", and I just thought that'd be helpful for us to think about together here on this episode of the podcast. So there are a number of barriers that he lists as reasons that God may not be answering our prayers. And the number one barrier is neglecting personal holiness.

So we have a tendency as Christians to jump to the gospel and assume that because we're Christians, therefore God must accept everything we do. And as long as we say we're sorry, we're good, and we can just kind of move on. And the gospel does, in fact, change our relationship with God.

But we should not be so presumptuous about the way that God is going to respond to us when we turn to him in prayer, because if you are not trying to live for his glory and seeking him, that will have an impact on your prayer life. Think about the way that the Psalmist comments on this In Psalm 24: three and four, he asks the question, who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place?

He who has clean hands and a pure heart. If you're hiding sin in your heart and cherishing sin in your heart, then the way that God listens to you is different. It's like the psalmist says in Psalm 66: 18. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. 

James comments in the New Testament similarly, but from the opposite perspective, he talks about the righteousness that's necessary for powerful prayer when he says The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. So God does care about the way that we are living our lives. And he may be slower to answer some prayers based on the condition of your heart before him.

Just to recap, we shouldn't expect God to respond in a positive way when we're living in willful sin. Your prayer actually loses some degree of effectiveness when you're treasuring sin in your heart. So why not just take a moment and ask the Lord to make known any sin that you have in your life, and if there's sin that you know you're hanging onto, just turn that over to him and ask for his help to be repentant and to walk in holiness and righteousness. That still matters. 

Even if you're a Christian, you're saved from hell. You especially become accountable to what God has said in his word because you've received his grace and said, I wanna follow after Christ instead of following my own way. I wanna live to make Jesus known, instead of making myself known. That responsibility is serious for a Christian. You want to turn to the Lord to make sure your heart is right as you're asking him for things in prayer. 

And similarly, barrier number two is praying with the wrong reasons. As Christians, we often have to deal with the reality of mixed motives. We want to have a pure heart, but sometimes it's really hard to even know how pure our heart really is. Didn't Jeremiah say the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond our understanding, really. 

But the way that the Bible talks about our heart when it comes to prayer seems to indicate that we can have good motives. Like in James four, he says in verse three, you ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. So you should be able to discern, am I wanting to spend this on my own passions or for the glory of God? Am I gonna trust in the goodness and wisdom of God?

Or am I trying to kinda like manipulate things here to get what I want? Psalm 37:4 has a similar theme and it tells us to delight ourselves and the Lord. And then talks about how after we do that, he'll give us the desires of our heart. So our delight should not be in the thing we want from God.

Our delight should be in God. And he's going to align our desires, the desires of our heart to match his will. So we should not be approaching God like a vending machine. Or sometimes people say like the genie in the bottle. We should be delighting in him and delighting in his will and his desires and trying to come in line with those.

The third barrier we see in this chapter is failing to maintain right relationships. Did you know that your relationships with other people impacts your prayer life? Like in Mark 11, verse 25, when it says, whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone so that your father, who is also in heaven may forgive your trespasses. So it's pretty hard to expect forgiveness from the Lord if we're unforgiving in our relationships with others, and we wanna make sure that our heart is right before God and that our relationships with others are right.

That's why in Matthew 5: 23 and 24. We're told first be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift. So it's like you're standing there at the altar ready to give, and the Lord's saying, actually, you got a problem in a relationship you need to go deal with first. Then you can come in this way and offer your gift.

Here's a heavy one. This has to do with husbands and wives. In first Peter three, it says, husbands live with your wives in verse seven. In an understanding way, live with your wives in an understanding way so that your prayers may not be hindered. 

Husbands, there's some degree to which your relationship with your wife impacts your relationship with the Lord. And if you've been harsh with your wife and not living with her in an understanding way, that will have an impact on your prayer life that is negative. So maybe your relationships are a barrier to God answering your prayers.

The author words it this way, barrier number four is looking to the wrong supply source. If you're looking for hope, for comfort, for relief, whatever, from something in this world, you're looking to the wrong source. So Philippians four reminds us. We don't need to worry about the details of this life because we should be fixed on the Lord.

Think about what he says in Philippians four: six, and then I'll jump to verse 19. It says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

So we shouldn't be anxious about the situation, the need, the person, whatever. We should turn to the Lord, in prayer, asking him for what we need, being thankful as we ask him. And knowing that he's gonna supply what we actually need according to his abundance, to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. God will not withhold the things you need, and you need to just turn to him and rely on him as your source of comfort and hope and encouragement and all of the above.

Barrier number five, Satan's opposition. He says in the book that every time we pray, we're engaging in spiritual warfare. You're turning to the Lord really in battle against an enemy who wants to destroy everything that God cares about, including you. That's why we're reminded in Ephesians six to put on the whole armor of God that we may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

And that idea of a whole life centered on things like faith, salvation, truth, righteousness, a readiness given by the gospel of peace. 

When we are living with these principles in mind and God's priorities in mind, we're well suited to do this kind of battle. And if you're not living that way, you're engaged in a spiritual battle. And it could be that the forces of darkness are opposing even the very way that you're praying. So part of the way you do what James said in James four, resist the devil and he'll flee from you, is to be saturated with the gospel and the things of God. 

Don't be surprised when you're praying and opposition comes. The enemy does not need to oppose a Christian who's not praying in the same way. The next barrier, barrier number six, divine purpose. Did you ever think about the fact that the thing you want may not be the thing that God wants for you? You have a very limited view of everything.

God has a limitless view. He knows how to refine you, how to sharpen you, how to give you what you need, how to work in a way that impacts the future that you have not yet seen in the best way. Because he knows the future. 

Just a quick example would be the way that God promised children to Abraham and Sarah, but he delayed for a long time. And then even after Abraham has a child, there's the whole go up on the mountain and sacrifice him. There's a lot of things where it's like, man, God's ways are so much higher than our ways, and we may not totally understand what he's doing. 

But God has a divine purpose that is much bigger than what we can see, and we need to trust him even when it feels like he's delaying his answers to our prayers. Barrier number seven. This is the last one. It may be that you are praying without faith. Psalm 37: 5 says, commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him, and he will act.

James one: six. Let the person who's praying act in faith. Without doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, talks about being tossed to and fro. We need to trust the Lord and that's a hard thing to do. Sometimes you may be praying something that just seems so, obviously God's will and you're not seeing him answer it in the way you would you would expect.

Don't let that shake your faith. Let that grow your faith. God is wiser than you are. He's more capable than you are. He loves you more than you understand, and it is good to have to sometimes wait on the Lord and to trust him more and more. So we've kind of very quickly walked through some barriers that could potentially be impacting you as you pray.

It could be that you're neglecting personal holiness. That you really aren't trying to live a righteous life. You're treasuring sin in your heart. It could be that your motives when you pray are not good. You're trying to just build up your own little kingdom instead of the Lord's. Could be that there's a relational problem.

You haven't handled your relationships well, and the Lord wants to draw your attention to that. It could be that you're trusting too much in the stuff that you're praying for, the situation resolution that you're praying for, whatever. You're looking to the wrong supply source. It could be that the enemy's pushing back a little bit because he sees you engaging in prayer by faith, and you just need to trust in this whole armor of God as you continue to labor in prayer.

It could be that God's purposes are just different, for whatever reason, in this situation, and it could be that you're praying without faith. Now, there probably are a number of other reasons that God may be delaying his answer to your prayer or answering in a way different from what you hope for. 

At the end of the day, as Christians, we must rely on the Lord instead of anything else. So put your trust in him and ask even in prayer that he would help you to grow as someone who trusts him more and more as you pray more and more for His glory and for your good. 

Well, thank you for listening to this episode of Back to Rurality. This is a ministry of the Brainerd Institute for Rural Ministry. If you'd like to learn more, just head on over to brainerdinstitute.com. For now though, let's get back to life, back to Rurality.