Does God Answer Our Prayers?

My last article was about the question of "Why Won't God Heal Amputees." It's become a popular apologetic point for the new atheists, and it deserves to be answered. Expanding on that topic, I'd like to address the misconception that many people have about the Christian conception of prayer. The word prayer really just means to speak. Over the centuries it has developed the connotation of talking to God, and that can obscure that God loves us and wants to be intimately connected to us. When we speak to him, it is in the intimate and loving manner of a child speaking to his father. Praying isn't throwing wishes over a wall and hoping that God will read them. But the wishes model is justified by quoting the following passage, Matthew 7:7-11.

"Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are 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!"

If you take this to mean simply that God gives us everything we ask for, then it certainly seems that there can't be a God. Plenty of wishes aren't granted. But this passage raises the question, what if the son asks for a serpent? Would a loving father give his son a serpent and hope for the best? Neither does God allow our every whim to be his command. Even Jesus Christ, the Son of God who is God, doesn't order God the Father around. In John 5, Jesus tells us, "I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me."

And that is the key to understanding the role of prayer. Our will must be united to God, so that we may share in His Life. No matter what we think we need, God knows that He is what we truly desire. Even something like a lost limb, which seems so essential to our happiness, is worth nothing if it does not bring us closer to our God. And so, while we keep asking for snakes and stones, God gives us Himself. Never think that God doesn't answer your prayers. He does, even before you ask Him.