“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:3).

So, what happens when you pray and God doesn’t seem to answer? What happens when you pray for healing for a loved one and the healing never comes? What happens when you are praying your children to come to saving faith and they are still far from God?

I wish I had a good answer.

But I do know this. God always answers prayers. Always. It’s just that sometimes the way God answers our prayers might not be the way we want them answered.

God answers our prayers in the following way:

• No – God can say no. Particularly if the request is wrong. God is not going to give us anything that will harm us or harm others.
• Grow up – When we are not right, when we are selfish, rebellious, and straying God answers our prayers by telling us to grow up. Grow up and mature in the faith.
• Wait – When the request is right but the timing is not, God tells us to wait.
• Yes – When the request is God-honoring, when we are walking with the Lord, and when the timing is right, God tells us, “Go!” Go for it! You have my blessing!

I am not sure where you find yourself with your prayer life. But I do know this – God always answers our prayers.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites… (Matthew 6:5)
“And when you pray, go into your room… (Matthew 6:6)
“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling…” (Matthew 6:7)

When you pray….Not should you pray, or if you pray.

When you pray.

Praying. Praying is one of the things that disciples do.

One of the questions I hear from people is, “I know I need to pray, but how? How do I pray?” That is a legitimate question. As we have seen in the last few days the Bible does not give us one pattern or one way to pray. There are many ways to pray. The main thing is that we pray.

The following is how I have been organizing my prayer times for the past ten years or so.

1. I write. I don’t do well just sitting there with my eyes closed. That’s a recipe for a nap, but not very helpful for me to pray. So, I write. I write down my prayers in a journal. I find that I can concentrate and focus much better when I write than when I sit with my eyes closed.
2. I divide my prayer focus by the days of the week:
   • Mondays – I pray for friends and ministry partners around the globe. I pray for my friends and pastors in Russia, Brazil, Korea, and Uganda.
   • Tuesdays – I pray for each person in my family. My wife, each one of the kids, my mom and dad, Helen’s mom, and my sister and her family. And when there are needs in the extended family, I include them as well.
   • Wednesdays – I pray for my friends.
   • Thursdays – I pray for the Little Church and Lakewoodgrace
   • Fridays – I pray for our elders and deacons
   • Saturdays – I pray for each of our staff
   • Sundays – I pray for the weekend services

This way, when I tell someone I will pray for them, I pray for them on their particular days. Also, I find praying for different topics helpful because when I don’t organize my prayers in some fashion like this, I end up praying the same thing every day.

This is how I do it. The main thing is you find what works for you. And, most importantly, pray.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26).

I know, that you know, praying is important. We all get it. But the thing is, praying is hard. Sometimes we don’t know what to pray. We don’t know how to pray. We don’t know what to say. Or we end up saying the same thing over and over.

There was a time when I was dealing with depression. I didn’t want to be around anyone. I didn’t even want to open my curtains. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to run away. I didn’t know where…just not here.

When I found myself in that dark place, I didn’t want to pray. Actually, it wasn’t so much I didn’t want to pray as much as I didn’t know what to say. I knew God was the key to getting out of that darkness. I knew I was wrong. I knew I had sinned. I knew I had gotten myself into that dark place.

This is where liturgy and the psalms are such an important part of our spiritual practices. Psalms are prayers. A third of the psalms are laments. When you don’t have words to pray, pray the psalms. Read the psalms and pray those words as if they were your words.

When I found myself in that dark place, it was psalms that provided the words for the prayers I needed. The second thing that helped me was liturgy. When I didn’t know what to say, I prayed the breath prayer, “Lord have mercy on me…a sinner.”

The way breath prayers work is to pray “Lord have mercy on me” as you breathe in, and pray “a sinner” as you breathe out. I prayed that for hours, for days, for weeks.

Then it happened. In time, the darkness didn’t seem so dark anymore. And the more I prayed, the more the darkness retreated.

God gives us the Holy Spirit to pray for us when we don’t even have the words to articulate what’s going on in us. When that happens, get in the psalms. Let the words of the psalms provide you with the language of prayer when you’ve run out of words.