Ecclesiastes 11:5

When his children pray to him, God does hear and he does answer. Simply because God does not answer all of our prayers in the way we would like them to be answered does not mean that there has been no answer. We must remember that, just as a parent must sometimes say "no" to a child, so must God sometimes say "no" to us. While this may cause us grief (as our own "no" does to our children), yet this negative answer is for our good, whether we understand it or not. As C. S. Lewis has said, "I must often be glad that certain past prayers of my own were not granted." Who, if they are honest, cannot say "Amen" to that? I recall how Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of world-famous evangelist Billy Graham, once said, "If God has answered every prayer of mine, I would have married the wrong man seven times." Author and pastor Don Baker has suggested there may be at least six reasons why our prayers seem to go unanswered:

I have learned through my struggles that after I have brought a matter to God in prayer, I can release it and know that he is in charge of it. I do not have to worry about it anymore. Oh, I will continue to pray for that concern - Jesus taught us that we "should always pray and not give up" (Luke 18:1) - but the answer, whatever it may be, is in his hands.