In Defense of the Faith

Answered Prayer

Question: I have been a Christian for many years and have attended hundreds, perhaps thousands of prayer meetings. I have heard many earnest prayers for good purposes but rarely have I seen an answer. This is rather shattering to my faith. Why are so few prayers answered?

Response: First of all, you admit that you have personally seen at least some prayers answered. In addition, you have surely heard or read the testimony of others who unquestionably have had miraculous answers to prayer. Consider, for example, George Muller, whose life was an amazing testimony to answered prayer. He housed, clothes, and fed thousands of orphans, made it a point never to ask for any financial help from man but only from God, and recorded in his diary literally thousands of specific answers to prayer.

He wrote: “Now, if I, a poor man, simply by prayer and faith, obtained without asking any individual, the means for establishing and carrying on an Orphan-House, there would be something which, with the Lord’s blessing, might be instrumental in strengthening the faith of the children of God besides being a testimony to the consciences of the unconverted, of the reality of the things of God.

This, then was the primary reason for establishing the Orphan-House. I certainly did from my heart desire to be used by God to benefit the bodies of poor children, bereaved of both parents, and seek in other respects, with the help of God to do them good for this life…[and] to be used by God in getting the dear orphans trained in the fear of God—but still, the first and primary object of the work was (and still is) that god might be magnified by the fact that the [thousands of]orphans under my care are provided with all they need, only by prayer and faith without anyone [other than God] being asked by me or my fellow-laborers [for help or funds].”

We could multiply other examples to show that God does answer many prayers. Robert Ingersoll, who was the epitome of agnosticism and who ridiculed Christians for praying, demanded “just one little fact” proving that prayers are answered. There are facts by the thousands that he and other agnostics and atheists have refused to accept—not because it could not be proved that prayers are answered, for that has been proved repeatedly, but because their prejudice wouldn’t allow them to face the truth.

In fact, an entire library could be filled with testimonies of answers to prayer that cannot be explained away as mere coincidence. The issue, then, is not whether God is able to, or ever does, answer prayer but why His answer to so many prayers is no. There are, according to the Bible, at least three factors that determine whether a prayer will be answered or not: 1) whether it is God’s will  to answer it; 2) whether it is God’s time  to answer it; and 3) whether those praying are living in such a relationship with God that it would be appropriate for Him to answer the prayer.

We can thank God that many of our prayers are not answered. We are supposed to pray at all times, “Not my will but thine be done.” Yet many of our prayers are not in that spirit at all but are actually attempts to persuade God to do man’s will, to bless or bring to pass man’s plans. Since we are far from perfect in wisdom, it could bring disaster upon us if God always did what we asked.