• Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life. Of all the Spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.

  “To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.”
  Richard Foster

• Psalm 22:1-2

• Why does God answer no?

“The desperate need of our time is not for successful Christians, popular Christians, or winsome Christians; it’s for deep Christians.”
Tyler Staton

• Because of World, War, Sin, and Satan.

• Ephesians 6:10-11

• Because of God's will.

• Because of wrong motives.

• James 4:3

• Because you didn't ask or you didn't have faith.

• Mark 11:22-24

• Because of unforgiveness.

• Mark 11:25

• Because of work.

"God is in charge of everything that occurs - our prayers could not possibly wrest control of any part of the universe away from God. However, it is part of God’s goodness and appointment that he allows the world to be susceptible to our prayers. How he does this - How he maintains control of history and yet still makes human prayer and action responsible within history - is one of the most practical mysteries of the Bible."
Tim Keller

• 1 Peter 1:7

• These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold.

“The purpose of the dark night of the soul, as St. John of the Cross shows, is not simply to punish and afflict the heart of man, but liberate, to purify, and to enlighten in perfect love...To reach the divine, one must pass through the darkness where all senses fail, all reasoning collapses, and the soul, blind and stripped of its own light, is guided only by love's luminous fire, which burns away all that is not God."
Thomas Merton

• Sometimes suffering is just suffering.

• Sometimes God's no is a no for now, but not forever.

• Revelation 21:4