What do you do when your reality keeps moving against what you are praying for?
When I saw this particular question on our directory, it caught my attention immediately and I believe it is a timely one.
So my first question is this,
How many of us have been here?
How many of us are currently here?
Eniola - I have been there
Amaka - Currently here
Anointing - Been and currently is😁
This is such an “amazing” place to be
Especially for cases where you probably heard God and know His will concerning the matter. Like you know that what you are praying for is God’s will for you.
You are so convinced it is, Yet!
The first thing I will say to you (and to me) is this:
God, indeed hears our prayers
God, Indeed, answers our prayers
You may not see an answer yet, in fact, you may be seeing the opposite of the answer increasingly even as you pray.
But you must never forget this:
That God hears your prayers,
He is inclined to answer your prayers.
There are times answers come to us so easily, even before you are done praying/asking.
There are times they come so clearly and with precision (you can’t miss them).
There are also times when we pray and then, nothing…
Unanswered prayers are a real thing in this walk, and if we do not face it head-on, it poses a bigger threat.
It weakens our resolve and convictions about God;
It slowly tilts us from the things we believe about God;
It causes our faith to be unstable;
It allows doubts into our hearts.
So what do we do in cases such as this…
1. First believe that God truly hears prayers and answers them
No, you are not praying to thin air, neither is your request is not bouncing back.
God truly hears us when we pray.
In fact, He knows our thoughts, He knew that prayer request before you requested.
[11] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Matthew 7:11 NKJV
[15] The eyes of the Lord are toward the [uncompromisingly] righteous and His ears are open to their cry. [17] When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their distress and troubles. Psalm 34:15, 17 AMPC
When the righteous cries for help, God hears.
These are not my words.
If this was true in the days of David, how much more after Christ?
How much more?
God’s ears are opened to your petitions, to the ponderings of your heart, to the worries and questions.
He sees, hears and knows all.
For some of us, the lie the devil tells us is that we are “negatively special.”
We believe God truly hears and answers prayers, just not ours.
We see believers even boldly say, “as for me, my own prayers don’t get answered like that like that”
Like how?
Who are you?
Whose son are you?
Even evil parents give good things to their kids. How much more your God?
Why do you even think God has singled you out for such?
Like He has said He hears and answers prayers but your own is different? How?
No scripture supports that so first, throw those thoughts out.
2. Know God’s disposition and will concerning that matter
This one will save us a lot of headaches.
What does God think about that thing you are asking?
Is it His will?
To the best of your human knowledge, are you sure that this is the path God will have you walk?
Are you certain that this is THE answer?
What has God told you about it?
“Faith begins where the will of God is known”
You cannot have faith for something outside of God’s will, your faith will fail and answers will not come.
Imagine Peter having faith that Jesus will not die on the cross.
A total waste of his faith because his faith at that point would have been fighting a better plan of God’s.
For some of us, our faith is against God’s better plan for us
God is trying so hard to redirect our gaze to His plan not because He cannot give you what you are asking but because what He has planned is way better, but we just can’t see it.
We don’t know His mind, so we keep praying and hoping for the wrong one, then frustration sets in when we don’t get answers.
One of the first things you do before dropping your faith on a matter is to know God’s mind about that matter.
What does God think?
Will He have you keep your faith here?
And there are matters that are straight to the point. You don’t need God to appear dramatically out of the cloud to speak to you.
Are you sick and praying to God for healing?
Well, scripture already has the mind of God concerning that spelt out so clearly
Take His mind.
It is for you, take it and then run with it.
Let it govern and direct your prayers.
Build your faith on the things the Lord has said.
3. The answer to unanswered prayers is…PRAYER
You’ve checked your heart and faith and you are so sure this is God’s will for you, but no answers yet.
What do you do?
The answer to unanswered prayers is Prayer!
Not complaints, Not grumblings,
Prayer!
And when I say prayer, it is not even just in asking the Lord over and over.
It is in the communication.
Prayer is a two-way street.
Continue to have conversations with God concerning that situation.
Don’t resign your faith when you know the will of God.
4. Engage the Spirit
This week during our night prayers, we had conversations on the spirit of God.
The Lord highlighted to us how believers have underutilized the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
How a lot of things we face have an easy fix in the Spirit.
“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. His delight is in the fear of the Lord, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears;” Isaiah 11:1-3 NKJV
Here, we see what was written concerning Jesus.
Christ was able to do all He ought to do by the Spirit.
We see a breakdown of the 7 spirits of God;
The spirit of Wisdom
What is wisdom?
Experience, Expert knowledge, Good judgement
Following the soundest course of action.
The Spirit of Understanding
Discernment, right dissection of situations.
You are paused and in a fix?
No answer?
The Holy Spirit brings with Him understanding of that situation, He knows what is happening there beyond what you can see
And please you will need to ignore the physical a lot!
So many times our cries of unanswered prayers are based on what we can see in the physical, and what we fail to understand is this:
While you are crying and worrying over the present physical state of things, Spiritual decisions are being made in that moment for your future state of things.
The things that will happen tomorrow in the physical are already being decided today in the spirit!
Everything is happening opposite to what the Lord told you?
You are grumbling, you are crying,
Does that change anything?
I hope that you know I’m preaching to myself as much as I am to you.
Engage the Spirit
In Him, there is ability to look and understand beyond the physical.
You want to be crying “God why and God when” when you can as well know the real why and what to do?
Earlier this week, the Lord began to present illustrations to me;
Imagine someone lying critically ill in the hospital and they are coughing really hard, my immediate response will be that they’ve caught cold and need a cough syrup or something.
A young doctor will probably list 30 possible causes of this cough and then begin to check other symptoms or run tests to narrow it down to the main suspect.
A veteran doctor/specialist on the other hand will look at this same patient and may easily guess what the exact issue is.
How? They carry with them a wealth of knowledge amassed by experience.
You have a baby and the baby is crying morning and night,
Someone who has given birth before will most likely tell you if they are growing teeth or they are having navel pains.
Can the baby speak? No
How are they able to discern and understand these things?
Knowledge!
You bring a baby home and they are looking really yellow/pale, an older person will tell you it is jaundice even though they are not doctors.
Knowledge!
You see, men are able to amass knowledge and become experts in those areas, maybe in one to three areas. There is no man that is an expert in every field/area of life.
But there is One who was before time began,
There is One who has seen even the end before the beginning,
Available to you with all the wisdom you need!
So again, why are we crying?
Why are we not asking Him?
“Holy spirit, please reveal to me what is really happening in this situation”
Because see, the root of Jesse was not judging by the sight of His eyes
He wasn’t deciding by what He heard physically
And the Bible says that same Spirit is inside of you
Exactly that same Spirit!
What is happening physically is not what is happening spiritually!
Pause and ask
Inquire of the Lord!
For some of us, the things you will cry God when for in the next three years are already being decided for you in the spirit now.
Please engage the Spirit.
Don’t be reactionary.
Don’t wait till it scatters before you ask
In fact, don’t wait till the prayer is unanswered before you start asking questions
We must get to that point where at every phase of our lives we know what is happening spiritually.
Another thing God revealed to me earlier this week is that so many of us are just a knowledge gap away from our answers.
What you’ve termed unanswered prayers is simply a knowledge gap that needs to be filled or a right discerning of that situation.
And warfare prayers may not forcefully bring these answers to you (sadly)
The key to unlocking those answers may just be something really simple that you do not know.
But the Spirit knows
So again, Engage the Holy Spirit
5. Sometimes what we term as God’s No is a Yes to another
You are asking for ABC and hearing No but what God is really saying is YES to XYZ.
Unanswered prayers sometimes is God redirecting our gaze and us not seeing it yet
This is why we stay with the Spirit
This is why we must discern things spiritually
“God did not answer me”
Did God really not answer me? Or I am just not looking in the direction of God?
Again, discern by the spirit
Do not judge matters by what you see physically
6. Waiting is an answer too
Waiting can be so frustrating to be honest.
And here’s what I tell myself
That all of our journey on earth is also a waiting period for when we will be joined with God again for eternity.
Your unanswered prayer might have an answer and the answer is simply to Wait.
I taught on Waiting on God sometime ago and broke down in that series what waiting entails and how to wait effectively.
I am sure there is something for you there. Look out for the links at the end of this teaching.
7. The Lord will do what is best for you
You see this knowledge, let it stay with you as you know your name.
When it doesn’t make sense and I really don’t know what is next, this is where I sleep and wake:
The Lord will do what is best for Olúrèmí!
I may not have an understanding of His will in full (we know in parts),
I may even have failed to discern rightly,
I may have missed out on the instructions of the Spirit at some point,
But you see, I know it so well,
That Olúrèmí’s God has the best thoughts for Olúrèmí
The Lord will do what is best for Olúrèmí
Oh say it for yourself
Say it and mean it
And very importantly, I pray the spirit brings this to your remembrance on days that everything seems bleak and you don’t know what to think again.
That at least, you think this:
That your God will do what is best for you, regardless of what is happening.
We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.” Romans 8:28 AMPC
So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose.” Romans 8:28 TPT
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28 NKJV
We are assured
We are convinced
And we know!
I’m sure you know this scripture very well but do you know the truth you’ve been declaring?
Do you really know?
I will stop here for tonight and we will continue this conversation during our nightly prayers.
We will also be moving it from conversations/sermons to engaging the Lord.
Please don’t miss prayers this week.
You can join us HERE every Monday to Saturday, 9pm daily
Let us pray
Our dear Lord, thank you for your word
Thank you for this reminder
Thank you for this teaching
We needed it
Thank you
Now we pray Lord that you help us
For it is one thing to hear and it is another thing for these words to be translated to our reality.
Help us!
Spirit of God, show to us the things we need to discern
Open our eyes to see spiritually and make an understanding of where we currently are by your own view.
Help us, Lord
Help us!
For those of us who need redirection, shift our gaze to where it ought to be
For those of us who just need to sit still and wait, help us.
In the dreams of the night and visions of the day, let instructions come for us in this season
Drop your thoughts and guidance even in our minds
Our testimony will be that we have received help and insight from the Lord!
And more importantly, help us to never forget that you are a good God and it is your utmost desire to work all things out for our good.
We are reminded always that you will do what is best for us.
Thank you Lord, for answers are here for us
In Jesus name we have prayed
Amen.
As mentioned earlier, here are the links to the “Waiting on God” series:
