Some thoughts about Unanswered Prayer: Habakkuk 1:2-5

Today we turn to the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, who we find struggled with God over prayers that had not been answered (Habakkuk 1:2-5):

“2 How long, Lord, must I call for help,

    but you do not listen?

Or cry out to you, “Violence!”

    but you do not save?

3 Why do you make me look at injustice?

    Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?

Destruction and violence are before me;

    there is strife, and conflict abounds.

4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,

    and justice never prevails.

The wicked hem in the righteous,

    so that justice is perverted.

5 ‘Look at the nations and watch—

    and be utterly amazed.

For I am going to do something in your days

    that you would not believe,

    even if you were told.”

How many times have we, like Habakkuk, stood before a silent God and wondered why our prayers were not answered?

Why do our prayers go unanswered?

On September 11, 2001, hundreds of men and women were trapped in planes and buildings, praying that God would rescue them so that they might live. But they died. A man finds his wife has cancer. He prays for healing for her, but it never comes. The cancer grows. The life fades. She dies. Why were the prayers not answered?

But look at the Bible, and you will find many times when prayers were answered. We remember these stories so well:

• Abraham’s servant prayed for God’s direction in finding a wife for Isaac, and God led him to Rebekah (Genesis 24:12+).
• Moses, standing before the Red Sea, prayed for Israel to cross over on dry land (Exodus 13 and 14).
• Hannah prayed for a son and the result was Samuel (1 Samuel 1).
• When Elijah prayed for a manifestation of God’s power, the fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. (1 Kings 18)

But there are many times in the Bible that prayer was left unanswered.

Once in a while we read in the Bible about those saints of God whose prayers simply didn’t seem to “get past the ceiling”:

• Moses begged God to let him lead his people into the Promised Land. Moses died on Mt. Nebo, his prayer refused. (Deuteronomy 24)
• Paul prayed three times for the removal of that “thorn in the flesh.” He never tells us exactly what that meant, but whatever it was, he prayed earnestly that it would be removed from his life. (2 Corinthians 12) But it wasn’t. Instead, he was compelled to make the best of it for the rest of his life.
• Even Jesus prayed a prayer that was left unanswered. Jesus cried out in the garden, “Take this cup of suffering from me.” (Luke 22) He prayed that he would not have to suffer death on the cross. Instead, he had to suffer the pain of it.

Habakkuk opens his short message with a struggle over unanswered prayer. In 1:2, the prophet is pleading with God:

“How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?”

In v. 13, Habakkuk tells God in prayer: 

"Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”

Getting personal for a minute...my own prayer for the healing of my brother on did not heal him; he died. But on the bright side, God answered our prayers for his salvation. He accepted Christ the day before he died on his VA hospital bed. An even more personal example...I prayed just this week for a good result of my own cardiology tests, but the result is that I will have to have surgery to replace a heart valve in the next few weeks.

How do you deal with unanswered prayer? God sometimes seems so silent, and we wonder why.

Here are some of my thoughts:

1.  Sometimes, we misunderstand prayer

We pray out of selfish motives, but we should think of praying as God-centered and not self-centered. The apostle James deals with this (James 4:3):

“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

James was pretty blunt when he wrote his book. He deals not just with unanswered prayer, but also deals with sins in the church—like favoritism, gossip, and faith without good deeds.

The object of our prayer must be that God might be glorified. It’s not like Aladdin’s magic lamp, and God is not the genie ready to grant every wish.

Of course, we can pray for ourselves. The Lord wants prayer that is not self-centered. but Christ-centered as we seek to conform to the will of God.

The Bible promises that God will hear our prayers. It never says that God will obey our orders.

2.  Unbelief results in unanswered prayer.

That’s another reason prayer may go unanswered. The prayers of someone who does not believe are simply an empty ritual or motivated by superstition, like wishing on a falling star, reading a horoscope, or the attitude that thinks “What’s the harm; I might as well try it.”

In the New Testament book of James, we read in 1:6 that when a person prays, he or she must believe and not doubt:

"...when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."

3.  Our sin blocks answer to prayer.

Proverbs 15:8:

“The Lord detests the sacrifice of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases him..”

Proverbs 15:29:

“The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.”

Answered prayers are preceded by a genuine confession of sin by which the barriers are broken down so that God’s message can get through.

We must work to make our entire spiritual life healthy to have an effective prayer life. We must not harbor grudges or hatred to be a part of our life, and we must be forgiving.

4.       Sometimes the answer to prayer does not come as soon as we want.

God governs the timing, and what we interpret as unanswered prayer may be that an answer that is delayed.

There is a great example in Jeremiah 42. The people ask the prophet to pray for the Lord to give them direction (42:1-3): 

“…all the people from the least to the greatest approached ² Jeremiah the prophet and said to him, ‘Please hear our petition and pray to the Lord your God for this entire remnant. For as you now see, though we were once many, now only a few are left. ³ Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.’”

Jeremiah prayed for them, and 10 days later the answer comes (vv. 7-12). Sometimes the answer comes far longer. It might be years later. I prayed for my brother’s salvation for 33 years, and he accepted the Savior in 2013. The same for my father-in-law and mother-in-law, who came to Christ in 2011. I still pray that my older daughter will believe.

David, in Psalm 40, gives us assurance about answered prayer:

“¹ I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. ² He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. ³ He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.”

Whether God answers our prayers literally and strictly, or seems to do as he did with Habbakuk and seems to be silent, we are given an excellent promise in Paul’s letter to the Romans. He tells us in his New Testament letter to the Romans (Romans 8:28):

“In all things God works for the good of those who love him...”