Have you ever found yourself in a situation where it's late at night, and you want to go home, but your friend is an overzealous prayer warrior? No? Well, of course not. Why would you?
I’ve been there. It was a long day at the office, followed by a late-night meeting. I hadn’t eaten dinner, and it was 10:45 pm. All I wanted to do was go home when my friend said, “I wonder what God’s up to… You think he wants us to go pray for that guy inside?”
I quickly shot back and said, “It’s 10:45 pm! God wants us to go home and sleep!” But he kept pressing and said, “I know… But I think God wants us to pray for him. C’mon!” And before I could say anything, he was on his way to pray for the guy cleaning after hours.
I have to be honest… I had no faith to pray for this guy. It was the last thing I wanted to do. When we got inside and turned the corner, the guy was vacuuming with his back to us. He also had headphones in, so he couldn’t hear anything. My friend grabbed his shoulder and startled him. Talk about ministry… This guy almost had a heart attack!
And then my friend said, “Hey, can we pray for you?” The guy shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t understand. And I thought, “Great…He doesn’t even understand English! Let’s cut our losses and get out of here.” But then he took out his headphones, put down the vacuum, and we prayed for him.
As soon as we started praying for him, he did the strangest thing… He got on his knees lifted up his hands, and tears began to roll down his face. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t understand. But God was obviously doing something.
When we finished praying, he told us that he had recently moved here and was feeling distant from God. So that morning, he told his wife he was going to fast and pray until God moved. And God sent two tired friends to answer his prayer.
This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me every day. But when it does, it's spectacular. It’s moving to see God answer prayer. But often, I feel as if God doesn’t hear my prayer. It's as if I’m praying to an empty room.
I often lack this kind of experience of answered prayer, and I bet you can relate. You know, often, our best and most desperate prayers remain unanswered. Our most sincere cries for help seem to echo out into an eternal void, leaving us to wonder if God answers prayer.
And let's be honest… Because of this, many of us simply do not pray. I mean, if we thought our prayers would make a real difference, of course we would. But the underlying assumption to our lack of prayer is that we think our prayers make no difference at all.
So, what do we do with unanswered prayer? Does prayer make any difference at all? And if it does… Then why do so many of our prayers go unanswered?
We wonder: “Why did God let this happen? Why am I still single and lonely? Why did they get sick? Where was God in my darkest moment?”
And yet, some people say, “Well, God is going to do what God is going to do.” Then why pray? Others will say, “God can do anything!” Well, then, why doesn’t he?
Recently, I was out for dinner with my wife and two of our friends. And they had the most incredible stories of answered prayer. They told me about experiencing miracles in the grocery store, answers to prayer that came from fasting, and saving someone’s life in Japan through a simple prayer to God. These stories were incredible, but they left me wondering why I don’t have stories like that. Does God not hear my prayers? Do my prayers just bounce off the ceiling? Or can they actually change reality? I believe they can!
The Bible is filled with stories of answered prayer. For instance, David looks back and reflects on his life and writes:
“In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters” – Psalm 18:6, 16
David seems to think that God answers prayer, and the Bible is full of people like this. Hannah prayed, and God gave her a son. In Acts 12, the disciples pray, and Peter is released from prison. In 2 Kings 19, God tells Hezekiah he’s going to die – not the kind of prophetic word anyone wants to hear. So he prays, and God changes his mind and gives him 15 more years to live! Because he prayed. How crazy is that? The Bible is full of examples of how prayer changes reality.
Contrary to this, most people believe that our prayers don’t really change anything at all. We think our prayers have no effect on what God will do. “God is going to do what God is going to do whether or not we pray,” we tell ourselves. But Jesus and the rest of the Bible seem to suggest that our prayers affect what God does or does not do.
Dallas Willard writes, “God’s response to our prayers is not a charade. He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway. Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do.” When you pray, things happen. Your prayers change reality. They affect what God does and does not do. In fact, James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask” (Js. 4:2). Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matt. 7:7). Prayer moves the hand of God. When we pray, things happen. When we do not pray, things do not happen.
Karl Barth once said, "God does not act the same way whether we pray or not. Prayer exerts an influence upon God's action." In other words, things happen when we pray that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t pray. Now, this doesn’t mean that we can use prayer to demand things from God or force him to do something. Rather, the basic biblical idea is that God actually wants to partner with us through prayer. And there are things that God will not do unless we ask (Lk. 11:13; Js. 4:2).
So why do some prayers go unanswered?
Well, some people think that everything that happens in the world is “God’s will.” They claim that this is what it means for God to be “sovereign.” But the Bible has a very different understanding of God's sovereignty. It depicts God as one who continually chooses to limit His power.
My point is that not everything that happens in the world is God’s will. This is why Jesus prayed, "May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10). Jesus assumed that God’s will isn’t always done on earth.
See, God gave free will to those he created. That freedom can be used to resist God's will. That's what happened in the Garden of Eden and is still happening, at least for the time being. This means that we live in a world where other wills are being done on earth. And through prayer, we seek to see God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven.
I know this sounds crazy, and I hate to be this guy… But the world is quite literally caught up in a spiritual war between God and Satan. Just a brief reading of the Scriptures will reveal this reality. For example, Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12 and says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Or John writes that Jesus came to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn. 3:8). Peter later summarized Jesus’ ministry by saying he “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil” (Ac. 10:38).
The Bible tells the story of a cosmic battle between God and Satan, but it also tells us that Satan will lose that battle. Revelation 12:12 says, “Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” The Devil’s will may be done on earth, but his time is short. He will be defeated once and for all.
We also see this cosmic battle in Daniel chapter 10. Daniel prayed to God and heard nothing. Zip... Notta… For 21 days–silence. Did God not hear his prayer? Does he not care? After 21 days, an angel shows up and says, God answered your prayer the day you prayed it… But I got held up. Look at what he says, “But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia” (Dan.l 10:13).
What the heck is that about? Apparently, God sent an angel to Daniel, but he got held up in a battle with a demonic spirit. Kinda weird…I know. But the Bible is very open about the reality that God’s will can be resisted and that there is a spiritual battle going on when we pray.
Like Daniel, some of our prayers haven’t been answered, not because God isn’t willing but because there is a spiritual battle going on in the unseen realm. It is not God who is letting us down. We are in a spiritual battle against a real enemy. Some of our prayers aren't answered because God's will is being directly contested by "the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12).
But on the cross, Jesus confronted the powers of evil and overcame them. On the cross, Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Col. 2:15). We live in between God’s victory over evil on the cross and the final victory over evil at Christ’s return. We live between these two realities, and we look forward to God’s coming kingdom when his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Your prayers matter. Yes, we are caught up in a spiritual battle. Yes, we live in a world where God’s will is not done on earth as it is in heaven. But this is not a reason not to pray. This is the very reason why we pray!
In prayer, we partner with God to see his will done and his kingdom come to earth. In prayer, we come against the powers and principalities. We come against the kingdom of darkness. In fact, Paul writes, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). As we pray, we come against the kingdom of darkness and establish God’s will and God’s kingdom on earth. This is the power God has given us in prayer.
Jesus taught us to pray that God’s kingdom would come and his will would be done on earth as in heaven. But we live in a world where God’s will isn’t always done. We live in a world of unanswered prayer – a world of sin and darkness. We live in a world of sickness and pain.
Praying “Your will be done” invites us to pray for a different world. In prayer, we are standing with one foot in this world and the other foot firmly placed in the world as it will be. And in this place, prayer changes reality.
Years ago, when I was young, my dad would work on these old cars. They’d start out as broken down, rusty old cars, but soon enough, they’d become works of art. My dad would restore these old cars into incredible hotrods. But I wasn’t interested in that.
I remember I’d leave early Saturday morning and go skateboarding with my friends all day. Later in the evening, I’d roll into my driveway, and there was my dad working on his old car. He’d sometimes ask me to hold a wrench or a light or do something small to help, and I would for a few minutes, but I wasn’t very interested.
At the time, I thought my dad wanted me to do a chore. I thought it was about doing a task. But all these years later, I understand. I didn't see it at the time. But now I know. Now I understand. My dad waited for me. He worked on his car all day and waited. I don't know how many times he looked down that driveway, waiting for me to come home, but he waited.
After all these years, I realize it was never about the wrench, the light, or the chore. He waited because he wanted me to do it with him, and I missed it. This is the heart of our Father. He waits for us. He waits for us to partner with him, but we miss it. We miss it because we think prayer is a chore. We miss it because we think it won’t make a real difference.
But I wonder if we’ll look back years later and think, “I missed it… All these years, the Father waited for me. He looked down the driveway, waiting for me to come home in prayer. He waited for me to partner with him in restoring the world, and I missed it.”
Friends, don’t miss the opportunity to join God in prayer. His response to our prayer is not a charade! Our prayers have the power to usher in God's will and God’s kingdom here and now, and he’s waiting for you to join him.
