Why didn’t God answer my prayer?

Prayer can be a tricky subject for children. Not tricky because they don’t pray, but tricky because they do. I’m always amazed at the number of children who pray regularly. But prayer is very often a shopping list and sometimes these can be deep and huge issues like a sick relative, and sometimes these prayers can be less selfless but still heartfelt.

On this occasion the actual question I was asked was,

‘How can you pray to God and tell him to do something, when after you try it doesn’t happen?’

I wonder how you would answer this. It may be easy to dismiss the prayer request for a new bike or a sportscar as trite. Its not trite to a child and God loves it when they bring their requests before Him, however mixed the motives may be (Phil. 4:6). As with the other big questions that I have covered, the key here is to listen carefully to the child and not to dismiss their concerns lightly. There may be a deeper and bigger prayer request coming down the line.