Most of us believe that when we “cry out” to God—that is, appeal to Him through prayer—He always hears those prayers. “Ask,” we read in Mathayo 7:7, “and it will be given to you.” But what about Bible passages that suggest that sometimes God doesn’t listen to our prayers?

Consider Psalm 66, in which the author gives thanks that God answered his prayer, but suggests that God might not have done so in certain circumstances:

Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

Blessed be God,
because he has not rejected my prayer
or removed his steadfast love from me! — Zaburi 66:16-20 (ESV)

And in Jeremiah 11, God warns a wayward people that He won’t listen to their cries:

So now I, the Lord, warn them that I am going to bring destruction on them, and they will not escape. And when they cry out to me for help, I will not listen to them. — Jeremiah 11:11 (GNT)

What are we to make of such passages? Will God always hear our prayers or not? What, if anything, might result in God rejecting a prayer?

God sees, hears and knows everything—including our prayers. Nothing escapes his attention. Why then did God say he would not listen to the people’s cries for help? There are several possible reasons.

In this case, God did not respond because judgment was unavoidable. Judah had disobeyed God’s laws and ignored his pleas for so long that judgment was, in effect, already on the way. Their cries were too little, too late. God even told Jeremiah not to pray for the people (see Isa 14:11–12)—that not even Moses and Samuel could have persuaded him to offer further compassion to them (see Isa 15:1).

It’s also possible that people sometimes sabotage their own prayers. The Bible mentions several attitudes and actions that can short-circuit our prayers: bila (see Zaburi 66:18; Isa 59:2; kwa sababu 14:10–12), disobedience (see Pr 28:9), hypocrisy and insincerity (see Isa 29:13; wakati 1:7–9), wrong motives (see Mt 6:5–6; Lk 18:11–14; Jas 4:3), lack of faith (Kuwa 11:6; Jas 1:6) and even marital problems (see 1Pe 3:7).

hatimaye, what sometimes appears to be no answer to prayer may actually be a delayed answer (see Da 10:12–13). Other times God may deny our request in order to give us something better than what we knew to ask for.