Prayer and Divine Response — Luke 21:36

We will look at something really important now. This is a question on the lips of almost everyone who knows about God and prayer. Most people dare to ask this, and for the few who do not, they don't ask because they have an answer, but simply because they believe that God must never be questioned.

The question is, why don't we get answers to most of our prayers? And again, what exactly is the purpose of prayer if immediate answers are hardly guaranteed? The first thing you must know is that God has a will as much as we do, and not everything falls within His will.

Also, whatever does not fall within God's will would never be approved by God. But, terrible things happen all around us on earth, things like accidents, violent deaths, sorrows in the lives of godly people, and all kinds of very terrible things. now on earth, most people ask questions like, if God is truly loving, why does He allow bad things to happen? But the actual question should rather be, who actually decides what happens on earth?

Take a look at the passage below: Matthew 6:10 (10) Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. On earth, the will of God has to be "done", which shows action.

However, in heaven, the will of God "is", this shows identity. According to the passage above, action is required to make God's will happen on earth, but nothing needs to happen for the will of God to be done in heaven. If action is required for the will of God to be done on earth, then, that means that the will of God can be challenged and resisted within the earth realm.

Also, if the will of God can be challenged and resisted on earth, then, that means that the will of God might fail on earth in certain situations. The implication of this is that God can say you will not die young, but you end up dying young; God can also say you will become financially successful at a certain time and you, instead experience the greatest retrogression of your life at that time. God can say something and instead, something entirely different happens.

But why can't the will of God happen automatically on earth as it does in heaven? Take a look below: Psalms 115:16 (16) The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD'S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. The passage above tells us that after creating the heaven and the earth, God gifted the heaven to Himself, but gifted the earth to men and women.

This however did not change the fact that the earth still belonged to God as seen below: Psalms 24:1 (1) A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. So, the earth was like a pseudo gift to man from God.

It's like when the Nigerian government issues a Certificate of Occupancy to you for a piece of land that was actually acquired by you, this certificate would however expire in 99 years according to the Nigerian constitution. In this case, the land belongs not just to you, but also to the government. The earth belonged to God but was handed over to man in terms of running.

This handover was expressed in the passage below: Genesis 1:28 (28) And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. The instruction was: 1. Increase.

2. Multiply. 3.

Replenish. 4. Subdue.

So, you see that even though man received the earth as property from God, something must have been wrong with the earth else, God wouldn't have used the word, "subdue" to define a part of man's assignment. The word, "subdue" shows that something stubborn, rebellious, and sinister existed somewhere on earth. This sinister thing proved to be Satan and his demons, and Satan many years later said something to Jesus during the later's temptation.

See below: Luke 4:5-6 (5) And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. (6) And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. Satan boldly boasted to Jesus who created the earth that all things on earth including the power on earth belonged to him(Satan) and he could assign them to anyone he chose. So what might have changed?

When man fell, Satan took over the running of the earth and began to determine outcomes in it. This is why the world progressively went bad outside God's control till God was fed up enough to destroy it in Genesis chapter 6. As the current landlord, Satan determines outcomes on earth according to what he desires.

Think of a scenario where a government exists and has a constitution determining events within its jurisdiction, any event to the contrary is termed rebellion or better still anarchy. It's just like insurgency as we know in Nigeria, an insurgency is a very practical example of anarchy as it involves activities that are in direct contrast to national laws.