Why Isn’t God Granting My Prayer?

The simple fact is that a loving Father cannot give us everything we ask in the way we ask for it. 

A farmer prays for rain; a baseball fan prays for sunshine that same day, for that same county. Both sides prayed for victory in the Civil War.

His timing may not be ours. He might right now be working to answer your prayer, but you cannot yet see that work. 

You’re needing a new job and have prayed for one. Today God is engineering circumstances in such a way that a person is being promoted to the home office of her corporation. Then someone in her office will be moved into her position. Then that person’s job will be yours. It is going to take another two months for that process to become obvious to you, though God is working on the issue right now. You just don’t know it.

And God loves us too much to give us what we ask for unless it is for our good. 

When one of our boys was very small, he watched me use a razor blade to scrape paint from a window and wanted to play with this shiny new toy. He was incensed that I refused.

Here we come to one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith. When we prayed for something God did not grant, we can know that it was best that he acted as he did. Even when we do not understand why. The person did not get well; the house burned down; the divorce became final; the car wreck happened. It’s not a question of timing, for the worst has already occurred. And we do not understand why God did not grant us our prayer.

‘He is doing something even better.’

Years ago, a very dear friend suffered from cancer for many months. I prayed every day for her healing. When she died, I was deeply distraught. Her healing would have brought such glory to God and good to her family. I didn’t understand and still don’t.

Dr. E. K. Bailey was the Senior Pastor of Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas, where I live, and one of the finest ministers of the gospel I have ever known. Our friendship was priceless to my soul. Several times, God healed my dear friend of cancer. Then he did not. I still don’t understand why.

I must assume that it was not best for them to be healed. They are both with the Father in glory, in a paradise we cannot begin to imagine. One second on the other side of death, they were glad they were in glory. In the providence of God, their contribution to his kingdom on earth must have been completed, their reward prepared, their eternity made ready. Even though I don’t understand or like it.

That’s the faith assumption I must make when God does not grant what I ask: he is doing something even better. Though my finite, fallen mind cannot begin to imagine how that could be so, I must trust his love and compassion enough to accept it by faith. 

Not until I became a father did I understand some of the things my father said and did. Not until we are in glory will we understand completely our Father’s will and ways (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Recall a time in your life when an unanswered prayer left you frustrated. What better thing might God have done—or currently be doing—in regard to that prayer?

Then pray about your response. Only God knows what’s best for you.