His Wish = Your Request

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him. And this is His command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them And this is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit He gave us. 1 John 3:21-24.

I may be a “mature” lady, but still a veritable toddler in my grasp of God’s incredible generosity, providence, and grace through an effective prayer life.


One thing I’ve found is that at some point, we all have the same question: “Why did my prayer go unanswered?”


Some prayers go unanswered because we never really prayed specifically, and we are out of fellowship with God. To walk in fellowship with God means we must, to the best of our ability, live according to His will, relying on Him for help. We fail hourly, or in my case, each minute of the day and we must confess our sins immediately to always remain in a mindset pleasing to the Father.


If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me. Psalm 66:18-20


Some prayers go unanswered because they are self-centered rather than God-centered, and there is no expectation that God is going to do anything in response to our prayers. We go through the motions of saying “Thy will be done”, uncaringly…sort of like a teen rolling their eyes and saying “What-eh-ver.” We are pouting, immature humans, flawed, and self-centered. We insist on asking only for what we want and do not understand God’s way and heavily oriented to our own desires. Remember that we also pray “in the name of Jesus,” so how does it honor Him that we ask for anything in His precious name that would grieve and hurt Jesus?


You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:2-3.


It’s not magical or enchantment. It’s not rocket science. It’s pretty simple, really. The closer we walk with the Father, the stronger our will becomes desire to honor Him. He wishes for us to follow His commands and that is our strongest desire. Then, our requests are heard by the Father, because (epiphany warning!)He placed the desire in our hearts! The more I pray for God’s will to be done, the more my dreams come true, because my will is His, my dreams are things He desires for me. In my God’s world, there is no such thing as an impossible dream, or an unanswered prayer.