What Hinders Our Prayers?

August 18th, 2026
by Lance Waldie

James 4:2b-3 You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Prayer is always the solution to the problems Christians face—asking God for the right things and for the right reasons. Jesus plainly exhorted us to “Ask, and it will be given to you” (Matt. 7:7). James warns, however, that our prayer requests, if motivated by selfish desires, will be denied. Our prayers must be for the will of God, not our own (Matt. 6:9-10), praying for things in Christ’s name (John 15:16), that is, things for which He would pray (cf. 1 John 3:21-22; 5:13-14). Prayer for the right things results not only in God’s gifts but the enjoyment of those gifts. Jesus and His apostles exhort all Christians everywhere to pray, for God says He will answer:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened (Matt 7:7-8).
Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you (Mark 11:24; cf. Matt 21:22).
Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it (John 14:13-14).
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (John 15:7).
Dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have confidence in the presence of God, and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing to him (1 John 3:21-22).
This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him (1 John 5:13-14).

As to why not all our prayers are answered, James blames selfish motives in 4:3. In these instances, God is actually unable to give us what we pray for since our requests are contrary to His will. Other reasons why prayers go unanswered are habitual sin (Ps. 66:18; cf. 1 Pet. 3:7), weak faith (Mark 11:24; Jas. 1:6-8), or a simple lack of perseverance (Luke 11:5-8; 18:1-8).

But God has still other purposes for not granting our requests. Paul for example, prayed three times that God remove a thorn from his flesh. Yet God, perfecting His power through Paul’s weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:7, 9), told Paul that His grace was sufficient. Later, when Paul asked for rescue from the Jews in Jerusalem (Rom. 15:31), God allowed him to be arrested and beaten (Acts 21) for the sake of His will being worked through Paul’s ministry.

What does praying for the right things look like? Paul prayed for the Ephesians that God would “give them a spirit of wisdom in the knowledge of Christ and that they would know the hope to which they had been called… the riches of God’s inheritance… the greatness of God’s power.” That the Philippians’ “love would increase, coupled with knowledge and discernment so that they would approve what is excellent and be pure and blameless at Christ’s return, filled with the fruits of righteousness.” That the Colossians would be “filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom so that they would be fully pleasing to God.” And for the Thessalonians, he wanted them to “increase and abound in love toward one another and toward all men, so that they would be established unblameable in holiness at Christ’s return.”

Food For Thought
If God gave us everything we asked for, our character would suffer because we would pray away all our trials. We would then be like spoiled children. We must draw near to God through study and prayer in order to know His will and be able to pray in Christ’s name—praying in accordance with God’s will (1 John 3:21-22; 5:14) shelving our own. Since God’s will is revealed in Scripture, let us pray Scripture—“Thy will be done” (Luke 22:42), not our own.