A faithful Bible-believing mother of five prays to God that her cancer be removed and that she be healed of it. Two months later, she passes away. A drug addict asks God for redemption and prays to God for a job after losing one because of bad conduct. Two weeks later, he gets another job.

Sounds very much like something from a cheesy skeptic film, but it happens. Do some prayers really work more than others? Apparently they do.

Looking at the Bible, we see a good example of this in the story of Elijah. At one word, Elijah prays and commands that a famine start saying "As surely as the Lord lives, no rain or dew will fall during the next few years unless I command it." (1 Kings 17:1) When time comes that he has to pray for it to return, he has to bow low enough to get his head between his knees seven times. One has to wonder whether it was painfully frustrating the first six times.

Why are some prayers more effective than others? Here are three things to consider that may shed light on this mystery.

It's about God's will not ours

When people ask, it's not always according to the way God wants things done. But we can all agree that God's ways are better. In fact, every time God had His way in the Bible, things always turned out better than when people were left to do things on their own. John 5:14 says, "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us."

God's ways are infinitely greater than our ways, and our greatest desire must first be to seek His ways although admittedly sometimes it doesn't make sense. That's why Jesus taught us to first pray in Matthew 6:10, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Are our requests really good for us?

Matthew 7:9-10 says, "Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?"

Well, as blind as we can be, many times we ask God for things thinking they will be bread or fish for us when in fact they are snakes and stones. Of course God wouldn't grant a request that would only bring harm to you.

The most effective answers God gives you is that which brings His "good, pleasing and perfect will" for you.

God has already answered

We think that just because God answers "no" or "wait," it isn't effective. But isn't a quick response denying or delaying what we want still effective? I realised this: That I would rather want a stoplight that abruptly switches from green to orange and red than one that takes time getting in between two signals. The latter would just be a recipe for catastrophic disaster!

Many times God already answers a quick and effective denial for our own good. We're just unwilling to listen to and accept it.