When God Doesn’t Hear Me

The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning gathering. If you would like to know more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. Let's get on with our message.

We are in a series called Bad Things, Good God. This is part four of our series. And just to give you a recap, week one, Easter, we launched this series. And we asked the question, why isn't God fair? You know, bad things happen to good people.

Why isn't God fair? Why does it seem like all these bad things happen and God is nowhere around? He is a good God, right? And in week two, we talked about, I don't feel God's presence. Sometimes it feels like we just can't feel God.

Does it mean He's not there? I'm going through these horrible things and I can't feel God. I don't know He's there. What does that mean? We navigated through that, that sometimes even when we don't feel God, in fact, when we don't feel God, He's usually the closest to us.

And then last week, Chris shared with us, I just don't feel happy. This happiness, aren't I supposed to be happy? Isn't there supposed to be... Things are supposed to work out for me, right? If I follow Jesus, things are supposed to work out for me.

And we navigated that and talked about this joy that even the Apostle Paul felt, even in hard circumstances. And then the final, we'll really hit on this. This is the week after next. Does God really have something for me? Because a lot of you are asking that, right?

I'm just a little speck in this world. I mean, can God really use me? Can God do something in me? So, I want you to be here because that's...I'm very passionate about that.

I want you to discover your purpose. God has a purpose for every one of you. And I believe that week, God's going to help communicate through me that you have a divine purpose. God has a plan for you. So, the theme, the idea of this series is bad things happen.

In fact, our theme verse is John 16, 33. It says, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. So, I'm telling you these things because I want you to have peace because here's what's going to happen. In this world, you will have trouble. And Jesus said that.

And I would be doing you a disservice if I told you everything was going to be okay as soon as you made the decision to follow Jesus. Because He said it. You're going to have trouble. It's going to be hard at times. There's going to be ups.

There's going to be downs. But it's going to be... There's trouble is coming and it's inevitable. It will come. But take heart.

For I have overcome the world. That's good news. We can overcome every obstacle and every trial we have. And today we want to deal with this particular subject. Why didn't God answer my prayer?

God is not answering my prayer. I mean, I do everything right. I go to church. I pay my tithes. I go through all the process.

I do all the things. And I pray to God. And it just doesn't seem like He's listening to me. He's not answering my prayers. Now, how many of you can honestly say that you've had this question?

You've actually asked God, why are you not answering? I'm going up right now. Just be honest. Why are you not answering my prayer? Why are you not listening to me?

And you pray and you fast and you read verses like this that say in John 14, it says, I am and I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. And you may ask me for anything, God, in my name and I will do it. And you listen to stuff like that and you're like, why, God, aren't you answering just this simple prayer? Why is it not happening for me? And then we read through the Old Testament, Joshua actually commanded the Son to stand still.

He didn't even have to say, Father, calls the Son. He just said it and it happened. Why don't things happen like that for me? Moses, like, was face to face with God and pleaded with God. He pleaded with him.

He got on his, he was there. God delivered. Do not do this to my people. God was ready to wipe out the people for disobeying him. And God answered his prayer.

And then we have Daniel who prayed and fasted and was thrown in the lion's den. And God shut the mouth of the kitty cats right there. And we ask, why won't God do something like this for me? And maybe you've prayed for someone who's sick, who was sick, and God didn't heal them. And they passed from this earth.

And you're asking the question, why? Why, God? Or maybe you had a marriage that was in trouble. And you prayed and you begged God to intervene and to bring this marriage, to bring this relationship back together. But it didn't happen.

And you're asking, why, God? I prayed. I'm your child. You say, pray. And it didn't happen.

Maybe you prayed. Maybe on the opposite end, you were the child who was praying for your mother and father not to break up. And you prayed and prayed and prayed. And you had the faith even like a child. Because you were a child.

And they parted ways anyway. Or you prayed, God, God, don't let me lose my job. Maybe there's some hiccups in the company where you work. And you've prayed and prayed and prayed. And you lost your job.

And you're like, why, God? Why don't you answer my prayer? Why? Why? I have bills.

Can you just send some money my way, right? So that I can pay these bills. Or maybe you weren't able to have a child. And you're watching other people have children and not even want their children or not even take care of their children. And you're like, God, all I want to do is have a child.

Maybe that's you. Or maybe you prayed for someone's salvation. You want them to come to know the Lord. But it seems like the more you pray, the further they run from God. And you ask these questions, why?

And how do we make sense of all of this? How do we, I can't bring any definitive answers to this. Because if I told you straight up, if I had, I would be doing you a disservice to say that God is going to answer every one of your prayers. Because the truth is, I don't know everything. I don't know.

I'm a pastor. I study the Word of God all the time. I do deep research and study. And I still can't tell you. There's a lot of gray areas we can't speak out loud on.

But there are some things that we can come to Scripture. And the Bible tells us that we can kind of look at. And maybe, perhaps, some of these things will help guide us in our prayer life to have more effective prayer life. So, there's a lot of things I could talk on today. In fact, you could probably do a ten part series on this.

I mean, you could just go on forever about prayer and the effectiveness of prayer. But today, I just want to give you four reasons, perhaps, that could be affecting your prayer life. So, the first thing I want to mention, if you're following your notes, it could be an unsettled relationship. You should. A broken or severed relationship.

An unrepentant situation. There are some indirect examples and there are some direct examples. Let me just give you a few indirect examples taken from the Bible. Mark 11, 24-25, it says this, Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him.

Forgive him. Forgive her. So that your Father in Heaven may forgive you of your sin. Want another one? This may not be in your notes.

1 John says this, Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother and sister is a liar. Whew! It's heavy. If you're hating somebody, if you've got hatred in your life for somebody, that's not God. For whoever does not love his brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.

Matthew 5, 23-24 talks about gifts, presenting gifts to God. It says, So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before you go to the altar. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. So as you can see, there's indirect things that could be affecting our brother. Maybe it's some type of relationship issue.

If that's not good enough for you, here's a very direct, direct verse of Scripture. It says, Husbands, 1 Peter 3, 7 says, Husbands, it's relating to marriage. When you go to marriage, you know, this is the real deal, right? Husbands, in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and the heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Nothing will hinder your prayers, whether it's your marriage relationship, whether it's a friendship, whether it's a business associate, whatever it is.

Maybe it could be some kind of relationship issue. Let me just give you an example. Most of you here that have kids understand this. Kids fight, right? And when you're driving down the road, and you're trying to go somewhere, it always happens, like, when you don't want it to happen, and you're trying to be patient down the road, and what do they do?

They start fighting in the back seat, right? I don't want that! Give me that! And Max has something that Savannah wants, and Savannah has something that Max wants, and all I'm doing is I'm like, if you don't be quiet, I'm pulling this car over, and, you know, you swing back, and you're just trying to, come here! Get back over, get up!

You know, and you're just trying to get some leg or some butt or something, you know, and kind of hush them up, you know? And then, what happens? They usually are fighting in the middle of fighting. Daddy, can I have ice cream? No!

Okay, some M&Ms. No! Well, I want apple juice. You're not getting anything! You're not getting anything!

You've been fighting the whole time. What makes you think, I want to give you anything, after you've been fussing and fighting with each other? And in the same way, that's kind of how God sees us. We're fighting and fussing, and we've got these broken and severed relationships. And, and, and God, and we're asking God to do something for us.

And He's like, you need to fix this relationship first. Some of you are like, Pastor, I can't fix this relationship that I'm having a hard time with. You may not be able to reconcile the relationship. Now, listen to me here. Because, because reconciliation is a two-way street.

To reconcile, both parties have to come together and agree to forgive each other. But you can forgive. You can forgive. Just forgive and move on. That's all you have to do.

That's all God asks you to do is forgive. Don't hold on to it. Don't make it worse than it is. Don't, don't walk around. Just let it go.

Forgive. Give it to the Lord. Lay it in His hands. Because you let that thing sit in your heart. And it, it, it roots evil.

And we don't need evil. It causes division. And God wants to answer your prayers. He wants to listen to you. But you've got this thing in your life that you can't break.

This relationship. Reconciliation is a, is a two-person thing. But forgiveness is your part. You can forgive. Secondly, it could be your motives.

It could be your motives. James 4.3 says, when you ask, do not, you do not receive. Because you ask with the wrong motives. That you may spend what you get on your own pleasures.

Because our motives are wrong. Some of you single guys in here are like, I want to marry someone. But God, please let me marry somebody good looking. Somebody hot. You know, you're like, just let me.

Yeah, I know. Is that the right motive? Some of you are praying, can I win the lottery, God? Help me win the lottery. Help me find a bag of gold on the side of the road.

You might as well pray that, right? I mean, just, I want to, you know, I promise I'll give to the church. Maybe you're asking for the wrong motives. You just want to get rich. You know?

You're asking with the wrong motives. Maybe it's for the applause. Maybe you're praying and asking for this, like, build me up, God. And the Pharisees did this. They prayed, and they cried, and they looked around, look at me.

You know, they stood by the wailing wall, you know, doing their thing. Oh, God! You know, is Jim over there looking at me? Because I need to, you know, he needs to get his act right, you know. And he needs to look at me because I'm that good, you know.

And sometimes we pray for those reasons. Lady Gaga wrote a song, I do it for the applause, right? And some of us, we do it all for the applause. Look at me. Look at what I can get, what I can do.

Maybe that's you. It kind of reminds me of my daughter. I know I'm picking on my daughter a lot today, but she's just so easy to pick on. She's going to hate me one day when she's older. She says, Daddy, I listened to your recordings of old sermons.

I can't believe you said that about me. But when she hurts herself, it's like... I mean, it could be a little bump. Max does it too, a little scratch. They just act like, oh, yeah, because I want attention.

God, help me, you know. I'm hurting, and I'm doing this. And instead of praying to God for the right motives, we pray for the wrong motives. And some people never pray until they really need something. Have you ever met those people?

Like, oh, God, you know, hallelujah, God. I need, you know, God's great. God is good. But I really need this, God. And I need that, God.

And I'm short on my finances, God. And my kids are running, you know, all over the place. And my wife wants to leave me. My husband wants to leave me. And they come in and this and that.

And then they pray to God. And when God fixes it, which He does, He fixes it often because He's a good God, we go right back to doing what we did before. I don't talk to God anymore. I don't pray to Him anymore. And then we wait until that bad time comes back around.

And then we're back like in church and giving money in the offering and doing all that. Because I want God to do something for me. And we live with those motives. We do those motives. And I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation with somebody.

Man, I'm in. I'm in. I was in and out, in and out, in and out. And now I'm in. And I'm on the straight and narrow now.

And, you know, because God, God just saved me. But they're going through hard times usually when they say that. And then when the hard times come, they're like, they're out, you know. You just said you were in and out, now you're out again. Is that not, that's not the God you should serve.

That's not how you serve God. That's not how you pray to God. Maybe you're doing it for the wrong motives. Proverbs 16, 2 says, All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord. And I can't know, you know, I don't have any kind of magical formula, because I put pastor on my name, or God put pastor on my name, that I can detect your motives, because I don't know your motives.

When I see you praying, I'm like hallelujah. They're praying. Hallelujah. They're seeking God. Hallelujah.

They love the Lord. So, you know, that's not my job. To kind of enter into your prayer life, are you doing it for the right motives? That's not my job. But God knows.

That's between you and God. God knows that. So, perhaps we're not praying with the right motives. Or it could be you don't believe God will do it. This is a big one.

Let me just deal with this for a second. I want to be careful how I handle this, because there's a lot of different mixed views about this. But in Mark 9, 22 and 23, there's the context of this man, this dad, who had a son who was demon-possessed. And he goes to the Lord, and he says this, But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us, as any father would do if their child was sick. If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.

If you can, said Jesus, here's what he says, Everything is possible for him who believes. And some of us just don't believe. We don't believe God can do it. But your faith matters when you pray. It does matter.

Faith matters when you pray to him. You have to have faith, because without faith, it is impossible to please God. Jesus said, and on many occasions, he said, It will be done according to your faith, right? And then he said, If you have the faith of just a small mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, be moved. So he preached faith quite often.

But it surprises me that we can read these scriptures, and we can say these things, and say these good godly Christian things, things, but yet, we don't believe in the power of prayer. We don't believe God can do it. There's a story, an old story you hear over and over again, and I have to just say it again, because some of you are probably like, I've heard the story a million times from other pastors or whatever, but I've got to say it again. Some of you haven't heard it. But there was a pastor that was praying for, there was a bar, and there was a church, and you know, it's kind of rowdy at the bar at night, and sure, you know how it is.

And the church is like, the pastor says, We're going to pray that God closes down that bar, because it's just doing evil things, and this and that. And they pray, and Lord and behold, just a few days after the prayer, a lightning strikes the bar, blows it up, does something. The bar has to go out of business, lost money, this and that. So the bar owner takes the pastor to court before the judge, and the bar owner's like, He prayed for that to happen, and it happened. It's his fault.

He needs to pay every cent back to me. And then the pastor's like, That's ridiculous. I didn't do that. It was a natural disaster. It was a natural thing.

How do you do that? And the judge kind of leans over, and he says, I can't believe this. The bar owner believes in the power of prayer, and the pastor doesn't. And it's so true. Now here's what I'm not saying, okay?

Here's what I'm not saying. There's this teaching out there, and I want to be careful how I handle this, but there's a teaching out there. We call it the Word Faith Movement. And there's this theology that says, If you don't have enough belief, if you don't have enough faith, your words create reality. And if you don't have enough faith, or your child died because you didn't have enough faith, your dad died because you didn't have enough faith, and they put power in faith itself rather than attaching it to Jesus, who is the object of faith.

And they do this name it, claim it thing. You need to name it. You need to claim it. And they make God out to be this cosmic genie. And I can tell you, God is not a cosmic genie.

You do not force God to do things. They teach this teaching that you can force God by the power of your words. And I'm telling you, I have a righteous hatred for that theology. And if you ever hear any of that teaching take place, I ask you to run, okay? And there's a lot of teaching out there on that.

Listen for the red flags. So, I'm not saying that that faith in an ending of itself creates or moves God or creates something that's not there. But this doesn't excuse us from not believing in the power of prayer, that God does move when we pray. And man, if we could just have a church, I'm telling you, here's the real, look, if just everybody in this church came together and believed in the power of prayer, and we started praying like we really believed that heaven was going to come down and change things and do things, I'm telling you, this building would explode. Not literally explode.

People would come in. People would be getting healed. People would be getting saved. If we believed in the power of prayer, if all of us stopped doubting and believed that God can and God will, we would see God move mountains. And we can believe that.

The problem is we don't believe. The problem with the church is we don't believe. We don't have any belief in prayer. James 1, 6, 7. I love how James always, like, beats me up.

But he says this, But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt. Because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. See, when you doubt, you're just kind of all over the place. You don't know what you're aiming for, what you're doing. You don't believe.

That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord. If you don't believe, why do you expect to receive anything from the Lord? So, in transition, maybe you meet all these categories. Maybe your relationships are good. Maybe your motives are right.

And maybe you believe. But your prayers still aren't answered. So you still have these questions. You still have these things in your heart. Why is this not happening for me?

So most importantly, and last point, it could be that God has something different. Maybe God has a different answer than you expect. 1 John 5 says this, This is the confidence we have in approaching God. That if we ask anything according to His will, there's the secret word right there. According to His will.

If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of Him. We must believe that God knows what's best. And even when we know what's right, or we think we know what's right, and we've done everything, and it just makes sense, the formula should work, just stop for a minute. Maybe God knows something more.

Because He loves us enough not to give us something that is outside His will. He loves us enough not to... Even have us go through the questions of life, the hurt, the confusion. He loves us that much. Why?

Because He is that good. He is that good. Even the things we can't see and things we can't know and the questions that are not answered for us. He is good. The Apostle Paul is a great example of this.

Man, this guy, if you don't know anything about Paul, all of us strive to be like Paul outside of Jesus because he was like Jesus almost, you know? He was like this perfect guy who gave everything. He wrote Romans, 1st, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the way down. He wrote all these books in the Bible, man. This guy was full of power, full of anointing.

He raised a guy from the dead that fell out of a building and died, you know? He did all this amazing stuff. And he was actually taken to the third heaven. He said, I don't even know if I was in my body or outside my body, but I heard things that I can't even talk about because it's beyond the capability of talking about. But I'm telling you, it's good.

It's real good. He said that. He did all these things. But he also faced something in his life. He had this affirmity.

He prayed to be taken away from him. In fact, three times, three times he prayed. This thorn in the flesh is what he called it. We have no clue what this thorn in the flesh was. Some people say it might have been eyesight.

Others think he may have had epilepsy. And all these commentators say different things that they think it might be. But we have no clue. And I think it's on purpose. Because the Bible is trying to tell us something.

God's trying to tell us something. His words trying to tell us something that when we're faced with affirmity, sometimes those things aren't going to be taken away. In fact, I don't know if I have this in your notes, but 2 Corinthians 12, it talks about this. If you want to write that down, 2 Corinthians 12, 7 and 10, you can see it. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger.

It was so horrible, he called it a messenger from Satan. A messenger of Satan to torment me. And three times he didn't just pray a little quiet prayer. He pleaded with God, take this away from me. Lord, take this away from me.

But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in your weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight. I'm hurting, but I delight in Christ, in weaknesses, in insults, in hardship, in persecution, in difficulties.

For when I am weak, then I am strong. When I am weak, I am strong. Let me just give you some personal examples of when I started this church. It's kind of interesting. There's lots of different little stuff.

And I was sharing a story with one of our guests in a little bit. But I just kind of give snippets of the story. But when I first left school, obviously my wife went to law school afterwards. She did more than three years after I finished my seminary. And we stayed in the area.

And it was really, really hard. Like, I thought I was going to come out firing. You know, like, I'm going to, you know, take a church. And we're just going to save a lot of people because I have this evangelism gift. I love, you know, telling people about Jesus and helping people find their purpose in life and just this excitement.

And I prayed and prayed and prayed, God, just put me in the right place. But for a long time, I kind of felt like I wasn't in the right place. And I interviewed for this church. And it seemed like a good fit. Now I realize it wasn't necessarily a good fit.

I'm glad that God didn't do it. But, you know, they didn't want me. You know, I was too young and crazy, I guess. I don't know. I had all these wild dreams.

And they're like, nah, we're not ready for that, you know. And then another church was offered to me, a financially strong and stable church with a good amount of people. And I could have moved there and took this church. And then Miranda said, no, we're not moving there. So then I started asking God, what do you have for me?

So, you know, we worked in the local church here, a part-time job. And I worked and I had two jobs going on at the time. And it just seemed like, God, when is, you birthed something in me. I want to do something, God, real for you. I know you have something in me and for me and for this community.

And in that process, God began to give me more of a vision for Salt Church. And if it wasn't for that time, if it wasn't for that unanswered prayer time that I couldn't see at the time because I was whining and bickering and blah, blah, blah. God, you know, what is, I came to seminary. I moved, you know, I did everything. I gave up a successful job moving up the ladder.

I was doing all this and I went and all this time God was developing me and showing me what things to do and not to do and shaping my life and shaping my heart and making me stronger so that I can even endure this. And now I'm here. And here we are. And I don't know if I could have done it. I don't know if I would have made it through the first few months, guys.

We were meeting in a house and nobody was showing up some nights. And I was like, does anybody even care? We could do so much. Right. Alex is back there laughing because God showed him that I needed help and he came to my house.

Right, brother? The Lord spoke to him directly that Leon needs help. But God was doing something in the process. I don't think I could have made it through. And we're still on that journey.

And every week's different. And I don't know if I could have made it through and I could tell you some of you can even come up here. If I gave you the opportunity to come up here and share what Charles Church has done for you, I think you would say, Leon, I'm so glad for the unanswered prayers. Because I don't know where I would have been. I wouldn't have been plugged into a church.

I wouldn't have been saved. I've had people to, I mean, just these comments and I don't know if they're just emotion or whatever. But I've had people tell me, I don't know where I would be if Salt Church wasn't here. Salt Church saved me. You know, you just hear these things and I'm like, wow, if I had never done this.

And even if we close tomorrow. If I, you know, the things that have happened in people's lives. People being delivered from drugs and alcohol and, you know, relationships. Even marriages healed and things are happening. I mean, it's just amazing.

And what if I had never done that? What if I just, oh God, you're just not answering my prayers. I don't know why you're not doing it. So, I'm just done, God. You know?

Last year was a really hard year. We lost two people to cancer. And I prayed. And I prayed. And I said, God, demonstrate your glory.

Heal these people. One of them was a four-year-old boy, Wesley. Please heal him, Lord. Please heal him, Lord. Please bring him through.

Unanswered prayer. Wesley passed on. Within the same week, Dwayne Duvall. We developed such a close relationship. In the last few years, one of my dear friends loved him to death, miss him every day.

Close, close, close. God, deliver him. God, heal him. God, why aren't you listening to me? Past.

God, you do these miraculous things in your word. Why aren't you doing it now? But I can tell you through their testimony, and let me just deal with Dwayne. Dwayne had a memorial service on the beach. And I haven't told a lot of people that because I don't want to, you know, spook people out or anything, but a few years before then, I had a vision of being out on the beach in front of a few hundred surfers and beach communities sharing the gospel.

And that day, I had the opportunity. I saw it. And if Dwayne only knew, he's just jumping for joy, right? Now, I mean, he's like, Hallelujah! And even today, we see people coming in.

Every, Dwayne, Dwayne, I was Dwayne's friend. I was Dwayne's friend. Some of you, you, I know, I would point some of you out right now. You, you, just a number of you are here because of Dwayne, right? Because of his testimony.

His testimony continues to live. I don't, I think if he was here, he would say, I would do it all again to see what's happening. But while he was alive, he's like, I don't understand why people don't know Jesus. It just changes everything about our lives. Look, look what he's doing through you, even, even as you're with the Lord.

He's with the Lord. To live is Christ. To die is gain. He's got, he's gained his reward, but his reward is still coming in. God doesn't always answer our prayers.

Some, this is just a side note. John Wimber, power evangelism. He, he wrote a book about power healing and power evangelism and how, you know, he was, he was a faith healer and started the Vineyard Church back in the 80s. And, and he writes this whole book about praying for, about praying for people to be healed. And then it comes to a chapter in the book.

And it asks, what if people aren't healed? And it goes right back to this same thing. Sometimes people are healed, sometimes people aren't. And John died of cancer. Faith healer dies of cancer.

He saw great things happen in his lifetime. Miraculous things. And sometimes God doesn't answer. God didn't answer him, but he's received his reward. And now you have a Vineyard Movement that's gone well past him.

Churches planted, churches put out there. I mean, just well past him. It's not our plan. It's his plan. Can I just tell you this?

He's so good. He really is good. Amen. When you're in your hurt, when you're in your trials, and when you're praying, you don't feel like he's really talking to you. It's just because he's that good.

He really is that good. He's a good God. He really does care about you. He really does know. He knows things beyond what you're capable of understanding.

He wants you to trust in him. He wants you to have faith in him. I do listen to country music once in a while. Okay. I'm more of a rocker.

I grew up in punk and grunge and stuff like that. But I always had a Garth Brooks album in my album case. Because he technically was a rocker. I mean, we can give him credit for that, you know. And he wrote this song, Unanswered Prayers.

And I just had to kind of put the lyrics down to this. Sometimes I thank God for Unanswered Prayers. Remember when you're talking to the man upstairs, that just because he may not answer doesn't mean he don't care. Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered. Some of God's greatest gifts are all too often unanswered.

Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Prayer isn't so much about what I want or what I should get. More about who God is. Prayer reminds me that he is in control. That's really what prayer is.

You know, God can answer and do anything. And he doesn't really need us to pray. But it's for us to know that he is in control. And he has it all. And it's about him revealing his glory through us.

Throughout the earth. He is that good. At one time in my life, I sensed God's closeness when I was on the hilltops. Man, God is good. God is doing good things.

He's given me a job. He's given me this. He's, you know, he's done all these things for me. But I can tell you with complete confidence, I feel and I experience and I know God is speaking. And I feel I better communicate with God when I'm in the valleys.

In the deepest parts of life. In the heaviest places in life is when I really know that he is there. You never know he's all you need until he's all you have. Until he's all you have. Until he's all you have.

You never know he's all you need. Outside of his goodness to me, I have nothing to contribute. So, in closing, what do I believe about prayer? What do I believe about prayer? Well, I love this statement from Daniel.

Daniel 3, 17 and 18. It says, and this is the Hebrew children. You know, the three Hebrew guys that were thrown in the fiery furnace for not honoring, serving another god. It says this, if we are thrown into the blazing furnace. This is how he responded to Nebuchadnezzar.

This is how these three guys responded to Nebuchadnezzar. This is faith. The God we serve is able to save us from it. Right? And he will rescue us.

Even if he does not. Even if he does not rescue me. I believe he will. I believe he can't. But even if he does not, we will not serve your God.

So, I want to leave you with these three things. And this is in your notes. I believe God can. I believe God will. But even if he doesn't, I still believe.

Because he is that good. And I will pray with boldness. And I will pray with power. And I will pray believing that he will make, he can make anything happen. He will make anything happen.

But even if he doesn't, he's still my Lord. He's still my God. He's still in control. And he's still sovereign. He is that good.

And there is nothing better than walking with him. I can't imagine life walking with him. Because the truth is, trouble will come. But it's better with Jesus. Put on Jesus is better with Jesus.

It's always better with Jesus. There is hope. There is hope. So, let's bow our heads. Some of you here today are having serious problems trusting in God because your prayers haven't been answered or you haven't experienced His presence in a while or bad things happen and it seems unfair.

I want to pray for you. If you're here today, if you could just gently raise your hand. If you're one of those people that's in a place where you're just like, I just need you. I see your hands. I need you.

I need you. I see your hands. I see your hands. I see your hands. Let me just pray for you.

I pray that the Spirit of God would rest upon you and give you peace and give you truth that He has overcome. That it's not over. There is something better on the other side. He's leading you into something greater. Jesus, lead them into something greater.

Give them joy. Give them joy and hope and peace beyond their circumstances. That this is not the end. This is just a part of the journey and there is something greater on the other side. God, God, I pray that over the people today.

For some of you, you've never surrendered your life to Christ. Can I just tell you that it's no mistake that you're here today. God wants a relationship with God wants a relationship with you. And you're like, well, I'm not good enough. I need to get some things fixed.

No. God just wants a relationship with you. And that thing that's pulling your heart. God is just so real here right now. His power's here.

That thing that's pulling you towards Him. That you're fighting. That you're fighting. I don't want to. Come to me.

Come to me. All who are weary and heavy laden. For I will give you rest. Because I'm a good God. I died for you.

If that's you. If you would just raise your hand. I want to pray for you. Nobody's looking. Just lift your hand.

Lift your hand. Say this is. Just make that decision. Amen. I see that hand.

Amen. I see another hand. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. If you would just pray this with me.

Jesus. I admit that I have gone the wrong way for a long time. I believe that you are the Son of God. That you deeply love me. And you gave your life for me.

Come into my heart. Come into my life. Change me. Change me. Make me new.

Walk with me. I live in for you from this day forth. In Jesus' name.