Prayer is one of the most powerful things on earth. By it, we can talk to God and make our requests, hoping that He will answer. And God does answer, because He is such a good, good Father.
However, sometimes that answer is a "no" so what do you do when He doesn't answer your prayers, or at least not in the way you wanted? Some of us simply get mad and stop praying because "God doesn't answer my prayers," we say. Yet, Christians know that God surely responds to every prayer, even if that answer leads us in a different way from what we were praying for. Do you want to learn how to pray and have every prayer answered by God? Then you have to learn these things from the Bible.
1) Pray according to God's will
God will never withhold what is good from those who love Him. (see Psalm 84:11) In line with this, we must know what pleases Him, and pray that! Have you ever asked a favor from someone who would actually love to do or give what you ask? In the same way, when we pray for what pleases God, we are assured that we will receive it.
1 John 5:14-15 tells us, "And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for."
2) Pray in faith
What's the point of praying to God and making our requests or petitions and not believing or trusting that He will answer? We need to pray in faith, believing that He will respond!
The Lord Jesus said that we should pray in faith. He said in Matthew 21:22, "You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it."
3) Pray with the right motives
Yes, God will not withhold what is good from those He loves, but He surely will not respond to prayers made with the wrong intentions or for things that are ungodly. Here's what James has to say about this:
"You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure." (James 4:2-3)
We shouldn't just pray for anything that we want. We must have the right motives in praying for anything too. Remember, God looks at the heart while He listens to our words. (see 1 Samuel 16:7)
