Wrestling with Doubt: Does Prayer Work? | October 12, 2025

As we continue our series on  Wrestling with Doubt, Finding Faith, we’re looking this week at the question of prayer. “Does Prayer Work?” Jesus invites his followers to pray, yet often, we wonder if our prayers are heard. Is God even listening? Or are we just talking to ourselves? Why aren’t our well-intentioned prayers always answered?

There’s a lot to wrestle with this week, and this sermon doesn’t have clear-cut, satisfying answers. Nevertheless, read along as I dig into the purpose of prayer, and wrestle with how we faithfully go to God in prayer. Today’s Scripture readings are 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10; Psalm 22:1-5, 19; and Matthew 22:18-22.

Here’s the livestream from Christ the King and the sermon podcast audio:

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I have based this series off Adam Hamilton’s book Wrestling with Doubt, Finding Faith—and by the way, you’re welcome to borrow the book and read the whole thing, just let me know—but I don’t like the title he gave this chapter.

In the book, chapter 5 is titled “When Prayers Go Unanswered” and I’ve changed it for this Sunday to “Does Prayer Work?”

I wanted to change it because I think prayer gives us two questions to wrestle with.

First, does God hear us at all? That’s basically the same question we talked about a few weeks ago, about whether or not God exists, and that’s something we can’t prove. We can look at evidence, but eventually it’s a question of faith, and we have to decide what we believe.

But assuming God exists, I still don’t like the question of whether God answers prayer, because what we’re really asking is why God doesn’t always say “yes” to our prayers. But “no” is an answer too!

My kids ask all the time for things I don’t say yes to. We’ve talked many times—many times!—that sometimes when you want something, the answer is no, even though you really want it.

The problem isn’t usually that I didn’t hear or understand the question; I just have other plans. Or what they want isn’t good for them. I’m the adult; I have a wider perspective. Not getting what we want from God isn’t the same as our prayers going unanswered.

Of course, even the question “Does prayer work?” is tough, because what do we mean by “work”?

If the question is “Do our prayers make God act the way we want?” the answer’s no. God is not a vending machine. There’s no secret code to prayer, where if you put in the exact change and your dollar bill isn’t too wrinkled and then you push the right buttons, you get what you want.

I’m not a baseball fan, but I do live in Wisconsin, so I’ve been rooting for the Brewers this week. And by rooting, I mean checking the score occasionally and sending my kids to school dressed in their secondhand Brewers t-shirts. I even watched most of last night’s game.

But I know we have people here who care a lot more than I do. A couple weeks ago, we even had a prayer request (at Living Hope) for the Brewers to win.

That’s fine, I’m a firm believer that we should take all our concerns to God in prayer.

But I have a strong suspicion there were people praying for the Cubs to win too. Whose prayers were answered? Did the people in Chicago just not pray hard enough? Did they use the wrong language?

Adam Hamilton talks about a man who was applying for a job, and when it got down to him and one other person as the last two candidates, he asked the prayer chain at church to pray for him.

“What if the other candidate was praying too? How can Jesus’s words [about receiving whatever you ask for in prayer] be true for both candidates? And even if the other person is not praying, would God force an employer to choose the less qualified candidate for a job, solely because one candidate and his church’s prayer team were praying?”

I don’t wrestle very hard with why God might not answer a prayer about a baseball game. That doesn’t bother me. Even if you’re a passionate Brewers fan, I hope it doesn’t cause a crisis of faith for you when they lose.

But obviously, many of our prayers are much more serious. I’ve stood in a hospital room with a wife praying her husband would wake up after he fell on a walk and hit his head, and he didn’t wake up.

I’ve prayed for an ECMO treatment to work for my aunt, for her lungs to get stronger, and even as we prayed, we could see monitor showing the O2 sat numbers going down.

I trust God heard those prayers, and I don’t understand why the answer was not yes. And I don’t expect to understand.

And yet when Jonah was in the NICU in Grafton, I prayed he’d go home soon and be fine, and it happened. Does prayer work?

Psalm 22, the Psalm Jesus cried out from the cross, asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer; by night, but I find no rest.” We don’t know the exact situation the Psalmist is talking about, but it’s a pretty passionate cry for God’s help.

Maybe you’ve gone through seasons when it feels like God has forsaken you.

After Mother Teresa’s death, letters were found revealing she had suffered for decades from a sense God was hiding from her. She wrote, “Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me?
The Child of your Love—and now become as the most hated one—the one—You have thrown away as unwanted—unloved. I call, I cling, I want—and there is no One to answer—no One on Whom I can cling—no, No One.”

Why would God not answer that prayer?

Sometimes, we can come up with answers. Sometimes we can look back and see how if some prayer had been answered, if something had gone the way we thought we wanted, something else good later wouldn’t have been possible. If every prayer was answered, we’d never learn the lessons that can come from hardship.

We can say Mother Teresa’s prayer was answered eventually when her life ended.

When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane for the cup of suffering to pass from him, we can see the necessity of his sacrifice, the eternal good that came out of it for the world.

God certainly brings good out of tough situations; God makes a way where we can’t see a way. Sometimes, adversity builds character. In our reading from 2nd Corinthians, Paul talks about a thorn in his flesh that tormented him.

He prayed to God to remove it, but the answer was no. And in his weakness, in his inability to make God do what he wanted, he came to a new understanding of God’s grace. “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” He learned how to rely on God.

And yet, even when our prayers are good, when we’re aligned with God’s will, when there’s no reason we can possibly comprehend, the answer may still be no. And I don’t have a satisfying answer for that.

No later good is possibly worth the suffering of children killed in a bombing. I can’t believe in a God who’d allow a mother to die just so her son might eventually become a doctor, or so I could use her story as a sermon illustration.

So does prayer work?

Was Jesus right when he said, “If you have faith and do not doubt…even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.”?

I will say, it doesn’t solve everything, but I think it’s pretty clear Jesus is using hyperbole in this story, as he so often does in Scripture. Moving a mountain from one place to another seems like a poor idea with unforeseen consequences. We’re human beings; many of our prayers are not thought through and should not be answered.

It’d be a disaster if everyone got everything they prayed for. We take Jesus’ words about prayer seriously, which means we recognize when he might not mean something literally.

So why do we bother praying?

First of all, we pray because Jesus tells us to. Jesus models prayer in his own life, and he even gives his followers an example of prayer, which we’ll pray together in a few minutes.

We pray because we need God’s help. Prayer is a confession of our own limitations, and an expression of faith in God.

When my kids stub a toe or trip and bang a knee, they climb into my lap for comfort. They don’t need me to do a medical miracle; they need to know I’m there holding them. Prayer is turning our burdens over to God, resting in our Creator’s arms. (See? That’s a metaphor – I’m serious when I say resting in God’s arms, but I don’t literally mean God has arms!)

We pray because when we spend time in conversation with God, God answers by forming us to be more like Jesus. Prayer gives the Holy Spirit room to work on us, to make us more loving, more compassionate, more gracious.

Prayer changes us—like Paul—to be strong in Christ in our human weakness, to trust God’s grace is sufficient for us.

Sometimes, God answers prayers with miracles. Maybe you’ve experienced God intervening in a situation, seen something you prayed for that could only come from God. Please don’t hear me as saying God doesn’t say yes in answer to our prayers, even miraculously! Don’t stop praying! (A reference to a song by Matthew West, which we sang in worship today at Christ the King. Watch a music video with lyrics here.)

There are Christians who believe when they don’t get the response they want to their prayers, it must be because not enough people were praying, or maybe they didn’t have sufficient faith.

But again, there’s no formula to manipulate God. God is not bound by what we ask for. God uses us to work in the world; God invites us to participate in God’s work; God works through us.

But our doubts, our lack of faith, our failure to pray does not stop God from accomplishing God’s will. We do not have the power to stop the Holy Spirit from blowing where she wants. Our call is to ask, and the answer is up to God.

And most often, “God’s ordinary way of working is through people and natural processes” rather than miracles.

We pray for one another as a community, in the same way we help each other in more physical ways. There’s a peace that comes with knowing others are praying for you, even if you don’t receive the physical healing.

And sometimes, you get to be the answer to other people’s prayer. We get to do God’s work with our hands, with our voices, with our actions.

In times of tragedy, people often complain “thoughts and prayers” is just an empty phrase to avoid doing something useful. But as I heard Pastor Yolanda Denson-Byers say last week at a synod event, “Prayer is neither inaction nor the only action.”

Benedictine monks have a Latin motto “Ora et Labora” which means “pray and work.” They go together.

Adam Hamilton says, “When we pray, we are lifting up to God those we are praying for and sharing our spiritual strength with them, but we’re also inviting God to use us to do more than pray…we pray and work.”

They go together. We pray for people, and we send them quilts/kits/hats. Not as a magic talisman, but as a symbol of God’s care. A quilt doesn’t fix everything, but it’s a tangible way of praying. We pray for our neighbors, and we feed them big bowls of chili.

Matthew West wrote a song we sing occasionally at Christ the King called Do Something where he describes shaking his fist at heaven, saying “God, why don’t you do something?” and God responds, “I did. I created you.” God works through us.

Does prayer work? Prayer isn’t a magic trick. It’s not a formula, or a tool for manipulation. It’s an invitation for God to work, both in a situation, and in and through and on us.

Prayer is a declaration of trust in God and a plea in a time of need. It’s a gift as impactful as moving mountains.

Let’s pray.

Loving God, you invite us to pray, and you promise to hear our prayers. When we don’t understand the answer, give us peace. Use us to be answers for the prayers of others. Conform our will to yours, and in all things, may your will be done, in Jesus’ name. And even when we don’t understand, help us to trust in you.
Amen

Read more of this sermon series:
– Part one: Is There a God?
– Part two: The Good Book?
– Part three: Who’s In and Who’s Out?
– Part four: Why Do the Innocent Suffer?
– Part six: Why Do the Innocent Suffer?