Another reason why prayer doesn’t work for everyone, It’s a lack of faith for one of three reasons:

Faith comes by hearing the truth (Romans 10:17) and many refuse to hear the truth or rejects it. Faith has become shipwrecked (rendered inoperable; powerless) by continued sins and rebellion against God, against His Word and against His anointed minister’s (1 Timothy 1:18-20). Or you don’t know what faith is in order to operate in it.

What is faith to the righteous born again believer and follower of Jesus Christ? Faith isn’t blind because it always thrives on absolute evidence in the truth. And faith is more than just “believing.” And without it, we cannot be saved, pray in Gods’ Holy Spirit nor operate in His gifts.

We can trivialize faith. We can doctrinalize it to death, waste time and confuse a lot of people with an analytical, hermeneutical, philosophical explanation. But there is a simpler way to understand faith.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

The word “now” tells us faith is always active now in the present continually. “Substance” is what you are believing and hoping God will give, when we pray without doubting. And “evidence” is what we are believing for, yet have not seen it, but knowing God will answer and it will manifest.

Abraham is our perfect example in this: God spoke to Abraham concerning the promises of a Nation whom God has chosen to be His special possession (talking about Jews and the Nation of Israel in Genesis chapters 12-25). Yet Abraham did not see any of these promises come to pass. But He continued on believing without doubt or wavering.

Furthermore The Holy Book of Hebrews 11, further shows us other great examples of active faith such as Abel (v:4) Enoch (v:5) Noah (v:7) and Sarah (v:11). But it concludes that none of these has ever seen the promises of God come to pass, but knew that God will answer.

Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them,

Now this is not to say, all that your praying for in the perfect will of God, you’ll never see it come to pass in a lifetime. There are many, many prayers you will see answered in faith. But there may be some prayer’s you may never see come to pass in a lifetime.

Even so, we wait patiently knowing the answer is on it’s way and that’s active faith in action. Especially prayers for salvation, because there’s a lot of moving parts involved for God to bring family members, a loved one, friends or enemies to the salvation of Jesus Christ.

So the point is simply, faith is knowing, having unwavering confidence that God will answer prayer in Jesus Christ’s name, even though we may not see it now, it will manifest. If we ask according to His perfect will, without doubting (James 1:6-8) or giving up (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

1 John 5:14-15 And this is the confidence that we have in Him (God), that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us: And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desire of Him