Why didn't my prayer work?

[spockrates]

No… I don’t advertise my faith, but it is there. Its hard to come across others with these issues unless I have sought support groups, but haven’t.

No one sees as I do, or understands how I try and see the world in faith vs. The others who see reality, its lonely.
The problem is, reality is the only thing knocking and faith(answers) are not present despite pain,offering,much prayer etc…

It’s always the same responses, very little actual comfort. I understand it, but doesn’t help.

I hear you! Don’t know what you’re going through, but maybe there’s a purpose for it down the road? I mean, there must be others who are going through the same. Encouraging you by saying they understand your pain might be just what they need. After experiencing that kind of encouragement, you might be able to do the same for others. So, the pain becomes a blessing. Anxiety turns into peace. Despair transforms into joy. And people are better off for having known you! But that’s the goal. The means to that end might be - as it was for Jesus - suffering awhile longer.

 

[Wesrock]

I watched this video few days AFTER I prayed and nothing happened. Like I said, my faith in God had diminished and so I watched this video to rationalise why my prayer is not answered.

A jug of milk has no power to grant prayers. God is not even a being alongside other beings of reality, he is the source of reality itself. That we are existing to begin with is by God’s power.

 

[Eve1]

The guy who made this video is obviously an atheist. If you believe in God why would you trust anything that he says? True, answered prayers don’t always come in the way that we want them to. They don’t always come as soon as we want them to and sometimes they never come at all. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have faith. I’m going to assume that you are Catholic I would recommend sitting in on an RCIA class. Learn more, or refresh your memory. That is how your faith will grow. I speak from experience.

 

[TheLittleLady]

When we pray, we pray the way that Jesus taught us.

That does not mean we rattle off a wish list. When we ask for things, we must add “If this is your will”.

God answers every prayer, sometimes with “yes”, sometimes with “no” and sometimes with “not now”.

Prayer is not a magic way to get every temporal thing you want. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Prayer is not a wish list. Prayer is conversation with God.

I’d suggest you read “The Prayer Primer” by Fr Dubay.

 

[goout]

Jesus promised that if I asked in His name, anything is possible. But after sincerely prayed to Jesus, nothing happened. Correct me if I am wrong. Do I need to pray for my patron saint to intercede on my behalf? Does it mean I cannot pray to Jesus directly myself? I am confused.

Prayer is not cause and effect. Prayer is not the fulfillment of a contract.
Prayer is to enter communion and conversation with God. The highest “value” or result of prayer is the conversation itself, if we could express it in those terms. It’s not the answering of the petition on our terms, it’s the very relationship itself.
Like any father, God delights in communing with us, whether we get what we want or not. In prayer we bring all that we are to God and offer it to him. Our whole life is available to God, and the needs and concerns we have are all part of that, just like our joys and successes.

Why certain outcomes are positive to our liking and some are negative is a huge mystery that hopefully invites us into even deeper conversation with God.

 

[Genesis315]

As the Bible says “You ask, and receive not; because you ask amiss” (James 4:3).

The promise that you receive what you ask for in Jesus’ name is conditioned on it being good for your salvation (or the salvation of another, if praying for another), as Jesus says, “that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). Perhaps not granting us what we ask is better for our salvation in a particular case.

The Roman Catechism sums this up:

For God will either grant what is asked, and thus they will obtain their wishes; or He will not grant it, and that will be a most certain proof that what is denied the good by Him is not conducive either to their interest or their salvation, since He is more desirous of their eternal welfare than they themselves.

 

[porthos11]

Jesus promised that if I asked in His name, anything is possible. But after sincerely prayed to Jesus, nothing happened. Correct me if I am wrong. Do I need to pray for my patron saint to intercede on my behalf? Does it mean I cannot pray to Jesus directly myself? I am confused.

Are you giving God a deadline? Asking him to answer prayers on your terms?

Even Jesus did not get the cup taken from him after he sincerely prayed to his Father three times.

God is not a vending machine. You approach him in a spirit of faith, hope, and a humble submission to his divine will, knowing that he will always answer your prayer in the time and manner that is best for you.

Perhaps that’s why he didn’t answer your prayer in the manner you expected. Look at your response to it in your post to this thread. That your faith is so “crushed”. If you faith gets crushed based on this experience, then perhaps you might want to think about what kind of faith this really is. This alone tells us a lot about your disposition.

Have you not even considered that God has answered your prayer already with a “no” so that you can learn where you still need to grow in your relationship with him? That “miracles” are not the basis for faith, but rather, the fact the first and foremost, God loves you, and what he asks of us is to love him first?

 

[HolySpirit1]

you can sincerely pray to Jesus and your Patron Saint and all of heaven to give you a ton of money so you can serve the poor forever, and pray and ask for the end of diseases, famine, baldness and etc and one of two things will happen, either nothing will happen, or something will happen but not in the way you expect it to happen an you have to be able to discern how your prayer might have been answered. sadly prayers are not answered in clear cut black and white , yes or no answers. everything for some reason has to be mystical, convoluted and confusing. and even if your prayer isnt answered then you have to consider what you were praying about, and why and about a 2000 ways it could have impacted others in any which way. An then there is always the option is just a flat out no, because God is not a genie.

 

[LilyM]

It might also be a matter of God’s timing. Remember St Monica praying earnestly for 20-some YEARS for her wayward son Augustine to convert?

She knew she was praying for something worthwhile… and didn’t stop just because God didn’t deliver like Pizza Hut in 30 minutes or less. There’s a very good reason people are described as having ‘the patience of a saint’ after all.

Mind you … God did deliver beyond her wildest dreams in the end … that wayward son became Saint Augustine - renowned bishop, famous snd influential theologian and Doctor of the Church. And that 20 years in the wilderness played a critical part in his greatness.

 

[DeniseNY]

I’ve been dealing with a chronic condition for almost three years and I have prayed every single day for God to take it away from me. I have begged, pleaded, cried, screamed… done everything I possibly could do to bring about the miracle of healing (and by the way, the condition I have is not curable or even really treatable by any current medical knowledge). The past couple of weeks, I have gone through a really rough and dark period. Questioning whether God loved me, wondering if I am being punished for past sins… I’ve really been close to the edge (I’ll just leave it at that).

After all the novenas I have done, candles I have lit, annointing, holy water, holy oil; I finally reached a point where I think I said the most sincere prayer I have ever made in my almost 50 years. I just basically said to God “Lord I don’t know why this is happening, but I can’t go on tyring to fight you and trying to get You to bend to my will. I can’t do this anymore, Father. Please help me to accept your will and if I have to continue to live with this, help me to do it”.

Do I want to have this condition? Heck no. Do I wish I would wake up one morning and it would be gone? Heck yes. Do I believe that even though medicine says it is incurable, it would be such a little thing for God to fix? Absolutely. But we must accept and trust in His will. We don’t know His ways, and we don’t know His timetable. But true faith is accepting that which we cannot see or predict, but knowing He is in control.

I hope this helps you. Trust me, I still get frustrated, but after that prayer that came sincerely from my heart and was a prayer of abandonment to His will, things are becoming much more clear for me.