John K. Jenkins Sr - Unanswered Prayer

Father, we thank You for the privilege and the opportunity of being in the House of Prayer. We are grateful for Your loving kindness towards us. We pray that You take these next few moments and speak to us today. Challenge us, encourage us. We pray for any person who is unsaved, backslidden, unsure, or unchurched. We pray for the saints to be edified and strengthened, that Your name gets all of the glory and honor. In Jesus ' name, Amen.

All right, you can be seated. I want to talk to you today about unanswered prayer. Why does God not answer your prayers? How many of you know, or how many of you need to know the answer to that? Let me ask this: how many of you have some prayers that have not been answered? One, two, three… There are many reasons that the Scriptures teach us about why God might not answer prayer. There are lots of reasons, but I’m not going to try to give them all to you; I’m just going to give you four today, just four that come from a single passage of Scripture. However, there are a multitude of reasons throughout the Scriptures as to why God doesn’t answer your prayers.

One reason might be that your motives are not right. You come to God, and the Scripture says in James that if you ask amiss- and that word «amiss» means for selfish reasons-some of you are asking God for things, and it’s not about God’s kingdom or His glory; it 's about your own selfish agendas. How many of you know that God created you not for your agenda but for His agenda? The Scripture says God might not be answering your prayer because it’s not in His will; it’s outside of His will. It’s important to understand that whenever you talk to God and make a request of Him, you’re asking for something that falls within the parameters of His will. I don’t care how much you pray; God’s not going to give you somebody else’s husband or wife.

Another reason could be that God might not be answering your prayer because you have marital conflict. I know you didn’t think that the tension in your marriage might have something to do with your prayers, but in 1 Peter chapter 3, the Scriptures say that a husband ought to dwell with his wife with understanding so that your prayers are not hindered. Some of your prayers have been hindered for a long time. You’ve got to learn to dwell with her in understanding. I know that’s tough at times, but you 've got to hang in there and endure. Listen, nobody is saying " Amen» on that point right there. Anyway, I just throw that out there for you to be aware.

Another Scripture says in Psalm 66 that you might not like this, but the truth is, it says if I regard iniquity in my heart… Let me tell you what that means: If you can see it in your mind, if you can picture it in your mind, you don’t have to do it. If you can just imagine it, I feel tension in the room right there. That can create a problem with God answering your prayer. But I’m not talking about all of those today; I just don’t have time to cover everything. I want to talk about Isaiah 59. Let me ask you to open your Bibles to Isaiah 59. It’s 12:33; I' m going to try to get through by 2:30. Can you all hang with me until 2:30? There you go lying again; you all know you' re not going to stay until 2:30.

I want to go to Isaiah 59, and I want you all to just hang with me through a few verses in Isaiah 59. Can you do that? Now, let me give you a heads up; nobody has shouted today during this message, nobody has danced, no music has played, and nobody has brought any money to the altar. I’m not expecting any of that. But what I am after is challenging you to ensure that you have these things in place in your life so that when you do talk to God and make a request to Him, He will answer your prayers. Lean over and tell your neighbor, «You ain’t going to like this message; it’s a tough pill to swallow .»

Now, I need to give you some background information about this particular passage in Isaiah 59. Let me tell you about the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is a prophet that God has given the assignment of ministering, preaching, and prophesying to Judah. Judah is one of the tribes of Israel, one of the twelve tribes. He 's given this assignment during a time when Judah is divided from the nation of Israel, during a time when the Kingdom of Israel was divided. So God uses Isaiah to speak to Judah, and he’s addressing them because in the first part of Isaiah-let me slow down-the first half of Isaiah, God is rebuking Judah because of their sin. He’s telling them that they are in a place of sin and God’s judgment is coming. So the first section of Isaiah talks about and warns about sin. The second part of Isaiah is God telling Isaiah that even though …