In my few years of coming to the full realisation of my status as a child of God, I have had some of my prayers answered and some not answered. However, I have heard some people declare that there is no prayer they prayed that was not answered. This statement made me wonder sometimes whether God deals with His children differently or whether He has preferential treatment for some special people.
Even though I decided to take things as they are, I am still not satisfied. Why are all my prayers not answered like those of others?
Where I come from, people pray — morning, afternoon, night, and in between. We have prayer chains, vigils — night and day. We have different prayer mountains — some specifically for the male gender and others for both genders. We pray different kinds of prayers — warfare, supplications, all manners of prayers as outlined in the Bible — yet we have little or no results to show for it.
We have replaced all other things with prayer. Do not get me wrong, prayer is good. Yes, it is the key; we cannot do without it. But most times, our engagement in prayer is wrong.
God should always be the centre of our prayer. Our focus when we go to pray every time should be to fellowship with God, not only to ask for things.
He created us in His image and likeness, and Jesus Christ, the begotten of God, showed us clearly what this means in Mark 3:14:
“And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach.”
So, your focus when you go to pray all the time should first and foremost be fellowship with your Heavenly Father.
Fellowship is not just singing songs of praise and worship to Him. It is deeper than that. That is just you entering into His gate.
Psalms 100:4 says:
“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”
When you have access to a friend’s house, do you just enter and begin to demand things? No. So why do we do that with our Father?
Some of our prayer time is just a time of requests. God is not a machine; He is not a robot.
Although He is the Almighty, He has some characteristics that He has shared in part with His human creation, who are made in His image and likeness — love, holiness, justice, mercy, faithfulness, goodness, etc. And so, He delights in fellowshipping with them.
Fellowship is a relationship with shared interests.
God wants to talk with you, not just hear you or your complaints or your demands. He wants to do things with you. He has His own feelings and desires.
Those of you who have best friends, BFFs, and so on, you do not just talk. You also listen to them. God has an agenda too. There are things He wants to do, loves to do, and wants to achieve. He also loves to discuss with you.
So, when you go to prayer, listen to Him too.
If He knows you are there for Him and not just for your demands, you may not need to make demands anymore. He is your Father; He knows what you need before you ask. He created all things and has even made provision for you before you were born.
This brings me to the next focus of prayer — your growth.
Sometimes, you do not need to ask for some things. They are already set in your way. All you need is to grow to the point of accessing them.
Prayer time should be a time for capacity building.
When you allow God to speak, He will tell you the areas of your life you need to work on and His Word that builds you to that point.
As a child of God, your growth is dependent on the amount of His Word in you. Not the one you just read or the one you quickly open in an emergency, but the one within you.
God told Joshua in chapter one, verse eight:
“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.”
Biblical meditation is the active and deep reflection on God’s character and works through His Word, rather than the emptying of the mind. You fill your mind with divine truth. You engage actively with His Word, and through this, you see your flaws, your weaknesses, and the grace for growth is supplied.
At the end of your prayer time, we should be able to measure and see your growth. It is this growth that will determine your requests, and since it is based on your fellowship with your Father, all will have His attention.
When you meditate the biblical way, you:
* Fill your mind with divine truth from His Word.
* Recite or whisper God’s Word repeatedly to commit it to your mind.
* Become deeply concerned with the matter in the Word, thinking it over and over in your mind.
You become like a ruminant animal. Ruminants are animals that chew the cud. You give deep reflection to the Word, and through this, you are able to see areas of your life that are not in conformity with His Word and the way to change them to become more conformed, so that you and God are on the same page.
When your prayers are not answered, I can tell you categorically that it has nothing to do with the availability of God’s power or its efficacy. Under ideal conditions, the power of God will always produce the desired effect. He is God Almighty. All power belongs to Him.
* Psalms 62:11
* Isaiah 40:29
I am sure you are still wondering why all your prayers are not answered in spite of the above. There are so many other reasons.
In the next publication, we will try to look at one or more reasons out of so many others.
Stay focused.