Why Prayers Don't Always Work

However, let’s be realistic for a minute. Prayer does not give 100% returns like we expect. While most patients do better, some don’t. Sometimes people pray for a job, a relationship, an addiction, a stressful situation, and we don’t get the results we hoped.

5 reasons why some of our prayers don’t work.

1. Our motives are wrong. Not praying to God, we’re talking to ourselves.

ILLUS: Praying for a job offer that came through. Husband tells his wife, I really need to pray this thing over. You go upstairs and pack. Motive not God’s wisdom, but self-talk.

ILLUS: Missionaries to prayed, Lord send us anywhere in the world and we’ll go. Just don’t send us to South America. Where did they end up? South America. Only then do they have trust in God.

"When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so you may spend what you get on your own pleasures." James 4:3.

2. Unrealistic

ILLUS: Little boy prayed "God if you can find a way to put the vitamins in candy and ice cream instead of spinach and cod liver oil, I’d sure appreciate it."

ILLUS: 2 kids running to school. race

ILLUS: If we eat double cheeseburgers and junk food our entire life and then ask God to help keep our cholestoral low--gimme a break. God’s brighter than that.

"Don’t be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." Gal 6:7-8

3. Cherished sin.

Ps 66:18 "If I cherish sin in my heart, the Lord will not listen to me."

Deut 1:43 "You rebelled against the Lord’s commandments and were arrogant...You came back and wept to the Lord, but he paid no attention to your weeping and turned a deaf ear to you."

Proverbs 28:9 "If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable."

ISA 59:2 "Your sins have separated you from God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear."

ILLUS: What if your neighbor came to you one day to borrow your car. You lend it to him. He speeds out of driveway...riding the clutch, revving the engine. He comes back 2 months later and the car is almost trashed. No oil in the engine. Interior wrecked, etc. You spend $1000 getting it back to normal. He come back the next week, asks to borrow it again. You’d say, "Are you crazy?" Some of you might do it again, but you know you’re going to lay down a few requirements. Take care of the car. Bring it back by next week. Go easy on the engine. Change the oil. etc...Or "Here you go--trash it again."

4. It’s not God’s best choice for us.

John 5:14 "If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us."

Jesus did not want to die on the cross. "Father, if possible, take this cup of suffering away from me, but not my will, but yours be done." Matt 26:39 Jesus had to taste the bitterness of sin and death for us--not the easy way out. Jesus committed even the way he would die to his Father in heaven.

Paul, "I had a thorn in my side from Satan. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me."