Why God Doesn't Answer Prayer | Pastor Allen Nolan Sermon

In this clip from his series, "Since You Asked," Allen talks about the primary reason why God doesn't answer our prayers. Thanks for watching this Allen Nolan sermon clip! Leave a comment and let us know what you thought of this video.
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Welcome to the Cornerstone Fellowship with Pastor Allen Nolan YouTube channel! It’s all about Jesus! On our channel, you’ll learn about the Bible, faith, and practical Christian living from Pastor Allen biblically based sermons. We cover topics such as the end times, angels & demons, Jesus and his role in our lives, Christianity vs. other faith traditions and many other in-depth studies of Scripture!

[cherriebrown]

Ive been praying for years for the Lord to break my sons drug addiction

[marydecroteau]

Pastor Allen - You are truly an awesome teacher of God’s Words! Thank You so very very much for your hard work studying the Bible! You are so easy to listen to & you helped me understand exactly what you are teaching! Thank You so Very Much!! God Love You & Lisa and your whole Family ( your two girls !)

[nznnwer]

Lord Jesus Christ.
I think everyone will agree that this is Your good will for all men ; thus to have mercy on men . Therefore have the mercies that I have desired of You written in Your Word; And if there is anything hindering my prayers, then show me. Amen

[DLando]

Ask not what God can do for you but ask what you can do for God!

[KhrustalevVideo]

1 John 5 14-15: And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us,

[narrowroad-traveler]

it is plain and simple, a majority of the people couldn't pray their way out of a paper bag...it requires faith...and faith is the ability to bring a hope or desire from the unseen realm to the physical realm...and some have that faith, BUT lack love...

[SandraLily]

I'm taking this as God wants me to continue in the suffering caused by years of narcissistic abuse. Depression (and all of its components), CPTSD (and all of ITS components). It's been over 3 years since I left him, 9 months divorced, married 14 years. Perhaps I'm not saying the magic prayer?

[jamesbryan]

Almighty God Always answers prayer’s He Just Waits sometimes and a lot of The Time He Just Says No ! Because in a lot of cases we aren’t Worth A Yes !

[mikefinley]

God -"Ye are beggars before me." - old testament

[jamesstrickland]

What happened to the latest sermon? It was awesome!

[donnamealor]

I don't know if im doing what Im created to do

[philipgrobler]

Notice that the Bible's author is not "all-knowing"
Why, when you read the Bible, are you not left in awe? For example, look though this small collection of Bible verses:

Deut 25:11-12
Genesis 38:8-10
Deut 21:18-21
Ex 35:2
Lev 20:13
Isaiah 13:13-16
Exodus 21:20-21
1 Tim 2:11-12
Col 3:22-23
Luke 14:26
Deut 22:13-21
Isaiah 40:8
These verses feel like utter nonsense, don't they? We can find thousands of verses like these in the Bible.
So we are forced to ask a question: Why doesn't a book written by God leave you with a sense of wonder and amazement? If you are reading a book written by the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe, wouldn't you expect to be stunned by the brilliance, the clarity and the wisdom of the author? Would you not expect each new page to intoxicate you with its incredible prose and its spectacular insight?

Instead, opening the Bible inevitably creates a feeling of dumbfoundment. Have you ever noticed that? Instead of brilliance, much of the Bible contains nonsense. Several of the issues, for example where the Bible's advocates slavery, is an excellent example. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. You can open the Bible to almost any page and find nonsense instead of wisdom.

Why, in other words, is the Bible so useless? Why does the author of the Bible, who is supposed to be God, who is supposed to be all-knowing, know so little? Why is the knowledge of the author limited to the knowledge of the primitive men who wrote the book? If you think about what you are reading in the Bible in the context of an all-knowing God who supposedly wrote it, none of it makes any sense. But if you think about the Bible as being a book written by primitive men like you would find in the remote regions of Afghanistan today, it makes complete sense.

The reason is because God is imaginary. "God" had nothing to do with the Bible. The Bible was written by primitive men, many of who were obviously insane.

[moonstruck]

God is a better protagonist than Goku !

[rangoon]

Awesome as usual, but in regard to the protagonist I agree it is God, yet I am NOT a servant of His,
I am
A Son! It is a delight to serve Him, yet He loves Serving Us! Why? Because can you imagine asking God ( Your Father ) Daddy Daddy what can I do FOR you NOW? Gods answer maybe this: Son, don’t you know that I love you, so could you stop asking me what I want you to do for me? I do my work in & through you, while your walking with me, abiding in me, …I am your life!

[philipgrobler]

Notice Jesus' myopia
If you think about Jesus, you realize that his biggest problem is an incredible case of myopia. We can see this myopia quite clearly as we look back at Jesus' time on earth. The obvious question that any intelligent person is forced to ask is this:

If Jesus is God, then why didn't Jesus use his omniscience and omnipotence to actually do something magnificent and beautiful on earth rather than squandering his "power" as he does in the Bible?
Think about all the problems that Jesus could have solved. At the very least, Jesus could have transcribed passages into the Bible that would have ended sexism, racism and slavery forever.

As the simplest example, think of all of the suffering that slavery has caused. Millions upon millions of people have suffered through the bondage and the remarkable brutality of slavery because Jesus and his Bible fully support it. If Jesus had simply made a clear statement -- "Slavery is forbidden, free all the slaves" -- he could have prevented all of that suffering. Yet Jesus did nothing of the sort. Instead, Jesus endorsed slavery.

In the same way, Jesus could have chosen women to be six of his apostles and made several speeches on the topic of women's equality. By doing that, he would have put a huge dent in sexism. Because Jesus did not do that, we still see the effects of Jesus' sexism in our society today.

At a larger level, if Jesus were God, he could have performed so many real miracles. He could have, for example, eliminated smallpox and a host of other diseases that science is busy eliminating today. Jesus could have given the people of Israel the knowledge that they would need to start a technological society and raise themselves above the primitive living conditions of the day. Jesus could have taught the Israelites about metallurgy, chemistry, biology, physics, manufacturing, mathematics, medicine and engineering. He could have also taught them how to responsibly use these technologies to solve the problems of pollution and habitat destruction that so often accompany them today.

Jesus could have made clear statements to deter nuclear proliferation.

The argument could be made that Jesus did try to solve poverty when he said that you should sell everything you own and give it to the poor. However, in saying this, Jesus showed a complete misunderstanding of human nature. Do you know of anyone who has sold all their possessions and given the money to the poor? As a result, half the people on planet earth today live in abject poverty, supporting themselves on less than $3 per day. Instead, Jesus could have taught mankind to effectively share wealth so that the immense problem of global poverty that we see today would have been solved long ago. Jesus could have also laid down a template for governance that would have ended monarchies, dictatorial regimes and warlords forever.

Most importantly, Jesus could have made his message so clear, and the proof of his godliness so obvious, that all six billion people on the planet would have aligned with him, rather than fragmenting into dozens of bizarre and often warring religions. By doing this, Jesus could have completely prevented the Crusades and 9/11, among many other things.

Jesus, if he actually were God, could have done so much. He could have prevented massive amounts of human suffering with his words and deeds. Instead, he did none of this. To any rational person, these problems make it painfully obvious that Jesus was a normal human being. The fact that Jesus was a normal human being renders the entire New Testament of the Bible meaningless, and in the process shows us that the God of the Bible is completely imaginary.

[philipgrobler]

Ask why religion causes so many problems
If God were to exist, wouldn't you expect there to be a huge benefit to those who follow and obey him? Why, instead, do we see the opposite?

For example, there is growing evidence that the delusion of religion causes significant social dysfunction. Statistical research is revealing the problems that go with religion. For example, a recent article in the Journal of Religion and Society points out that religion is correlated to the significant social difficulties that we can see in America:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a shining city on the hill to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health.
The prevailing view is that religion is harmless even if it is delusional. That turns out not to be the case. America is the most religious country of those studied in the developed world. America also has the biggest problems in terms of things like homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion.
This article by Sam Harris puts it this way:

While most Americans believe that getting rid of religion is an impossible goal, much of the developed world has already accomplished it. Any account of a “god gene” that causes the majority of Americans to helplessly organize their lives around ancient works of religious fiction must explain why so many inhabitants of other First World societies apparently lack such a gene. The level of atheism throughout the rest of the developed world refutes any argument that religion is somehow a moral necessity. Countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on Earth. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest in terms of human development are unwaveringly religious. Other analyses paint the same picture: The United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious literalism and opposition to evolutionary theory; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, STD infection and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious superstition and hostility to evolutionary theory, are especially plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causality--belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing to ensure a society’s health.
Countries with high levels of atheism also are the most charitable in terms of giving foreign aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is also belied by other indices of charity. Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.

In other words, religion is harmful, not helpful. The reason is because God is imaginary and religious delusion is hurting all of us.