There is the idea that if we are faithful to God and we ask in His name, then whatever we ask for will be granted us.  Our Lord Jesus Himself said this in the Gospels. He said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Most people think this means that God will answer all of our prayers if we are faithful.  Yet this is due to a misunderstanding of what it means to “ask in His name.” These people think that this means that if we put his name on a prayer usually by ending it “in Jesus’ name,” then the prayer is in His name and will be answered.  This is actually true, but only partially.

What “in His name,” actually means is that what we prayed is within the will of God.  But as becomes clear, the will of God will lead to God not answering some of our prayers.

Many lose hope in God when some of our prayers are not answered, and this leads them to stop praying altogether and even stop believing in God.

But the example of how this situation will arise and how His not answering our prayers can lead to good is that our Lord Jesus Himself, who is the Son of God, had a prayer that was not answered.  This very fact should demand further reflection from us because it teaches us a valuable lesson.

Jesus’s Unanswered Prayer

On the night of His betrayal, our Lord Jesus prayed to God “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36).  This cup referred to His suffering.

Our Lord prayed earnestly, fervently, and even to the point that he was sweating, and sweating blood (Luke 22:44).  Sweating blood is attested in medical research as arising from extreme anxiety that leads to high blood pressure and elevated heart rate.  This is how earnestly our Lord Jesus Christ was praying, and God the Father did not answer His prayer.

Why?  Because it was God’s will that humanity would be saved by the suffering, death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If God the Father granted our Lord Jesus His prayer, then we would not have been saved.

The reality is that it was greater for our Lord to suffer, die, and resurrect and “draw all peoples” to Himself from “every tribe, tongue, and nation” and across the centuries and to restore them to the image and plan God had for them in the beginning than to simply have come and taught like any other prophet.

His death reversed and defeated sin, death, and the powers of evil by exposing them and giving us a model of how to live our lives by imitating Him, the Son of God who became human according to the original purpose for how humanity was to be.

So what does His unanswered prayer and the results that came from it teach us about unanswered prayers in general?

1. Unanswered Prayers Show that God is Ultimately in Control

First, it teaches us that God’s plan is often beyond our grasp, and if we follow Him, then we must be ready to conform to His plan even if it is painful.  Further, if God answered every one of our prayers, then we would be God, and He our servant. But this is not the case because God is the creator, and is all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere.  Since this is the case and since He is our creator, God has a plan for our lives, but that doesn’t mean we have no freewill. When we choose to follow what He says and where He leads us, we fulfill His plan in our lives freely.

It is like a marriage.  When a man first set his eyes on the one he married, he took note of her appearance and her personality.  Those attracted him, and this was out of his control. Yet something was in his control which was whether he continued talking to her or not, and whether he asked her out, and whether he continued dating her, and whether he asked her to marry him, and whether he continued to be married to her.  In all the following actions, he was fully free. And she, if she first found him attractive, and found his personality fitting, every time she said yes, that was fully in her control. In both cases, there was an element that was out of their control, but their responses were not out of their control.

Further, in marriage, challenges arise.  These can be due to life in general or to the marriage in specific.  Assuming both the man and the woman are faithful, when challenges arise, they will face the challenges together and with a mind to solve the challenges together, not to run away from them.  The challenges arising are out of their control, but their responses to those challenges are free.

This is how our relationship with God is.  He has a plan for our lives, and while that is out of our control, our responses to Him and the actions that follow are not.

2. Unanswered Prayers Retune Our Prayer Lives

Second, unanswered prayers also teach us how to pray for the things that last such as our personal spiritual growth, asking God to help us develop certain virtues, and asking God to grant us the grace of serving others to the glory of His name instead of asking God for material objects.

For example, “God please give me to work at this city because it is close to the beach, and my family, and it will be easy there” vs “God please put me at where I will be established, where I will be able to do good work, and where I will be able to make a positive change in the lives of others.”  The first prayer is totally focused on the material; the second prayer is totally focused on the spiritual. You will find that God almost consistently grants the spiritual prayers because they are in line with His will.

3. Unanswered Prayers Make Us More Reflective and Watchful

Third, when God does not answer certain of our prayers, it will cause us to watch for the hand of God in our lives, and we can trace out a pattern looking back, and we can see the benefits we reaped in our lives because of those unanswered prayers.  In our fallen state, we don’t always have a clear grasp of goodness and we often cannot imagine what good things can happen until we experience them. God leads us into these, so that we have a broader and deeper understanding of the way God works in our lives.

We would also never become reflective in our prayer life unless we first faced challenges which our unanswered prayers provide.

In the 2nd Century, the sermon known as Second Clement ends with an observation about prayer.  The preacher of the sermon says, “Do not let it trouble your mind that we see the unrighteous possessing wealth while the servants of God experience hardships.  Let us have faith, brothers and sisters! We are competing in the contest of a living God, and are being trained by the present life in order that we may be crowned in the life to come.  None of the righteous ever received his reward quickly, but waits for it. For if God paid the wages of the righteous immediately, we would soon be engaged in business, not godliness; though we would appear to be righteous, we would in fact be pursuing not piety but profit” (Second Clement 20.1-4, from the Holmes translation, pg. 165).

4. Unanswered Prayers Make Us Grateful

Then with all this in mind, fourthly, unanswered prayers make us grateful.  We learn that when our prayers are not answered, we should not become overly grieved.  We learn to trust that this is for the best and that in this way the plan of God is being revealed to us in the course of our lives.  This is why in the Coptic Prayer of Thanksgiving, which is found at the beginning of all liturgical prayers whether the Book of Hours or the praises or the Liturgy it reads, “We thank you for everything concerning everything and in everything.”  No doubt, sometimes praying these words is very tough. Sometimes we don’t have that gratitude. But this understanding of unanswered prayers can help us pray this prayer authentically. Considering what the Copts have been through in the past 2,000 years and how many martyrs they produced in the ancient world and how often they have been persecuted since, this Prayer of Thanksgiving is noteworthy and its placement at the beginning of all liturgical prayers shows us what type of attitude we should have and how we should pray.

So, unanswered prayers show us that God is ultimately in control, and not us.  They show us how to retune our prayer lives so that we know how we ought to pray and for what, they make us more reflective and watchful about God’s work in our lives so that through the course of our lives so our faith becomes steadfast, and in all this, they transform our hearts so that they are truly grateful for God’s work in our lives.  These are lessons we learn and realities we start to perceive that we would not learn or perceive in any other way. This is why God does not answer some of our prayers, even some fervent ones because by so doing, He reveals to us who He is, who we are, how we should be, and who He wants us to become.

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