Every day I continually ask God a question. I ask and ask, then I ask some more. I’ve been asking him this same question for a very long time now. Despite endlessly pleading for an answer, I never seem to hear back from God. I pour out my heart, pleading for an answer—but to no avail. God never responds. He never gives me an answer.
I would like for everyone to please pray to God and ask him to answer my question. I really need an answer, because if I don’t hear from him my life will continue falling apart, and I'll turn out to be an abject failure in everything.
Hi Nora, I have a very close catholic friend, and we often talk for hours, and one evening, late, he told me he prays the Our Father (the Lord's Prayer, from Matthew chapter 6), 3 times a day. To me this was truly surprising, because the words say "give us this day our daily bread", and to me it just seems to mean to pray it once in a day,
with faith (Mark chapter 11: pray with belief).
And I thought: if I prayed the Lord's Prayer 3 times a day, it would...be extremely difficult for me for it not to become just a recitation too often. But praying it once a day, I feel like I'm grabbing a life preserver, to keep me from sinking. (to say that would be more hyperbole on some days, but closer to not hyperbole on occasional days). In this perfect prayer that is perfectly aligned to God's will, with perfect words that we can know with total and perfect certainty are exactly what we most ought to pray for (just look at the words, from Christ Himself), I think anyone reading Christ saying them in Matthew chapter 6, with their own eyes, can have total confidence in them, and pray with the faith He says to pray with. I mention that because it's a powerful step, to really pray this perfect prayer with full faith. Now, the way I found prayer in the most profound way was as a prodigal praying to God "God...make a way from me to you.... ...Bring me to you", and that prayer I prayed in that moment with faith, and He responded, dramatically, and here I am now restored, and I did once pray a question, a crucial one, about a relationship, where the answer was very high stakes, and that prayer was answered, but I was praying it in fear of the Lord (Christ even instructs us to fear the Lord), and with faith He would decide the issue, as I could not, wasn't competent to, and I was praying it from a very surrendered place, where I was going to do whatever He decided (though I don't know this is required, but it helps show that I believed as I prayed that He would answer somehow, which is faith that He will do what is right to me, that His will is the right way). I'm just mentioning some things, because of how if we pray fully the ways Jesus said in the gospels, doing all the 5 or 6 things He said about prayer, then we can really believe, even if the answer isn't immediately clear (though sometimes it is!). In the Lord's prayer we pray "Thy will be done", and it's a certain amount of being truly surrendered, yes, to that, because consider: He might will something we didn't expect, but it helps so much, so very much, to read and dwell on the word's Christ said in the gospels, because of how that already is already making us more aligned to His will, just to truly listen and hear, and remember His words, day by day. I mention this because when I finally got to the place of asking that crucial question in prayer, I'd already been in years of praying the ways Christ said, such as from the Gospel of John, and Matthew, and Mark, so I was asking for God's will to decide what I could not.
