Have you ever wondered if God hears your prayers? Even the strongest Christian finds themselves asking “Does prayer change anything?” Today, I’m sharing what to do when you are praying and not getting any answers.”

Resources Mentioned:

Power of Prayer Workbook: https://ashleyvarner.com/prayer
Renew180 (formerly 180Confidence): https://ashleyvarner.com/mastermind

Highlights From The Episode

Even someone who’s been a Christian for a long time can start to ask themselves and wonder, does prayer even change anything? Today that’s what we’re gonna talk about in today’s episode of The Renewed Mind.

Hey there, welcome back to The Renewed Mind, whether you are listening to this on the podcast or you’re watching the YouTube channel, I just wanna say a thank you for being here. If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe, what that tells me whenever you subscribe is it lets me know that this is content that you wanna hear. And it really encourages me to know that there are women out there who are striving to grow and really change their thinking to match that of Christ.

Because whenever we have success in our lives but we’re not translating that into our thinking, we’re not finding our identity in Christ. It’s not going to be long-lasting. And so that’s really what I focus on here, is teaching women how to grow their confidence, how to cultivate a better mindset so that they can have more emotional balance in their lives and grow closer to the Lord in the process.

So today’s video is gonna be a little bit different. I really want it to feel like we are sitting across the table, having coffee, chatting. And this is something that really came out of some questions that I’ve had from clients and even personal friends who ask me, does prayer even really change anything.

You know, if God has a plan why do I need to pray about things? You know, it’s gonna happen regardless. What should I do? Like they really wanna pray and they wanna experience that prayer time but there’s still something in their hearts that’s feeling a little bit like it’s not really moving anything. It’s not really changing anything.

I talk a lot about taking your thoughts captive and learning how to handle your emotions but really the number one thing that is going to help you with that is to spend some time in prayer. I’d like to think of it as our thoughts being either a thermometer or a thermostat.

So are you someone who the things around you cause you to change? So you are just reacting to the things that happen around you. Are you a thermometer that you’re just really taking the outside influences and that’s what’s raising your temperature up or down, or are you a thermostat where you are the one controlling the things around you? Are you the one is allowing your thoughts to be taken captive so that you can influence your outward world, right?

We wanna be Christians in a world that we look different from the world. We don’t want to react or respond the same way whenever someone disagrees with us, we don’t want to be hurtful or even just going after things on our own without going to the Lord first.

Prayer Changes You

That’s the first thing that I wanted to share about if prayer even changes anything, the first thing it does is it changes you.

Whenever you are constantly in prayer, whenever you are seeking the Lord, and you’re saying, God, I know that I am not perfect. I know I’m far from it and I want to be more like you, you’re doing that through your prayer time. You’re allowing God to speak to you. You’re talking to him and he begins to change your heart.

I don’t know how many times I’ve come into a prayer time feeling angry or upset at a person, and I leave knowing that God has spoken to me saying, use the fruits of the spirit. Be loving, be kind, be gentle. And whenever, if I hadn’t gone to that prayer time, if I hadn’t spent that time praying and asking the Lord to help me, it wouldn’t have changed me. I would’ve gone through my entire day angry and bitter and upset, but instead, I spend that time with the Lord in the morning and he changes me throughout the day.

Prayer Changes Our Relationship with the Lord

The second thing that prayer changes is our relationship with the Lord.

I want you to think about all the different kinds of ways of communication that there are now, we have telephone, we have DMs, we have texting, we have email, we have Skype, we have FaceTime. We have all these things where we can communicate with other people. And they all have so many great benefits. We have letter writing. There’s so many things, right?

But they’re also are some drawbacks to every kind of communication. A letter takes a long time. Email, you might not get a response right away. Phones, you have to actually have a phone that texts or be around your phone or have it plugged in and charged if you wanna get a phone call, there are so many drawbacks to any kind of communication, except a prayer.

Prayer can happen anytime, anywhere, no matter what, he is always listening. And I think about the friends that I have. There are people in my life with who I communicate on a regular basis. And those are the strongest relationships in my life. I have friends who I’ve been friends with for a long time that I only talk to once in a while. And I love those people, they’re great friends to me but they don’t know what’s going on in my daily life.

Recently, we adopted a child a couple of months ago and I remember posting that, I don’t post very much on my Facebook, but I did post a photo of the courtroom. And I just said, it’s finally here. And I had so many people comment, that they were so happy that everything was going through and they were happy for our family. And there were a couple of people who commented and said, hey, I must be out of the loop. What’s going on? The reason I hadn’t posted about the adoption beforehand is because of some foster care rules regarding social media. So there were people who are my friends, who I love, who didn’t know what was happening because they weren’t communicating with me in any other way.

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But whenever we stop communicating with the Lord through prayer, sometimes we miss the things that he’s gonna do. And whenever you are constantly in prayer, first, it changes you. But also it changes your relationship with the Lord. You’re able to see what he’s doing. You’re able to be aware of all the things that he’s doing around you, in your life, in the lives of other people.

I really believe that the more that we are connected to the Lord, the more that we’re aware of what his will for us is. If you are not spending time in prayer, if you are not seeking the Lord on a regular basis it’s gonna be really hard to know what his will is for your life because you’re not talking him about it.

And so if you really find yourself in a place where you are struggling to know if you should take a job or you should move, or you know, any of those big and small decisions that you have to make, if you are struggling to know what God’s wanting you to do then can I suggest that you maybe evaluate your prayer time a little bit more, make sure that you are spending time talking to him, that you are making it a priority every day, but also that you’re taking time to listen.

Prayer Moves the Hand of God

The last thing that I wanted to share about prayer and really how, if it even changes anything, is I personally believe that through God’s word, we see that prayer moves the hand of God.

It makes a difference in the spiritual warfare that’s going on around us. I’m not someone who sees a devil behind every corner. I’m not someone who really focuses a lot on the spiritual warfare aspect of the Christian life, but it is real. And whenever we have been praying, seeking the Lord. The Bible says to pray continually.

I just did a Bible study a couple of months ago with my sister-in-law where we were studying the armor of God. And the very first thing that they talked about was prayer. You know, it’s not part of the actual pieces of armor that Paul talks about but afterward, it says, prays about everything. In everything pray, pray, pray, pray, always be praying because that is what keeps us strong. And I believe that that’s what moves the hand of God.

There’s a story in Daniel where an angel comes to Daniel and he says I was delayed except for the prayers, except for your prayers. And I love that because what it says is, we have power through communicating with the Lord, through our prayers, through the hand of God, on us, our prayers have power. The Bible also says that a prayer offered in faith will make a sick person well. It says to pray over one another, the Bible is continually telling us to pray and seek the Lord.

And so I have to believe if that is such a strong word over and over in God’s word, that it makes a difference. Your prayers change things. So keep on praying my friends.

All right, that is all I have for you today. It’s a little bit shorter. I just wanted to jump on and really give a heart-to-heart talk about how prayer makes a difference.

If you really want to be someone who is a prayer warrior then I wanna make sure that you check out the free workbook that I have. It’s five steps to being a prayer warrior. And it really helps you break down how to make your prayers effective. How to be a woman, a mother who prays and seeks the Lord. It’s completely free. I’ll leave a link in the description in for you.

Power of Prayer Workbook: https://ashleyvarner.com/prayer

It is something that is going to impact your mindset completely. I know that this channel is a lot about mindset and confidence and things like that, but really all of that is under the umbrella of prayer. And so if you can solidify your routine, if you can have a relationship with the Lord that is constantly in communication with him, you are going to see things change in your life. As you pray, you’re going to be pleasing the Lord. You’re gonna be making changes in the world around you because of your prayers.

All right, that’s all that I have for you today. Thank you so much for watching, for listening and I will see you next time.