What Happens When We Pray?

READ: Esther 4:15-17

Is divine petition through prayer and fasting powerful enough to change the course of human events or does God merely use these things to align our hearts with His unalterable will?

Consider the Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-8). The unjust judge does not grant her request on her first petition, but after many appeals he gives her what she asks. How much more so our Father in Heaven!

Consider also what God says to Jeremiah:

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. (Jeremiah 18:7-8)

And what Jesus says in Matthew:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8)

"Why don't I get what I pray for?"

Is scripture then suggesting that God is like a magic genie, eager to grant our every wish if we will just humble ourselves in divine petition? Not exactly …

You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:2b-3)

The God who requires our obedience and wills our sanctification will not be granting our sinful desires or prematurely ending the trials that strengthen our faith, but He will grant us the desires of our heart that rest within His permissive will -- if we ask.