If someone has been praying for something for extended periods of time with no positive answer.

It is a form of condemnation to tell them they don’t have enough faith or that they haven’t prayed hard enough or they haven’t prayed in the right way yet. It’s basically saying “God is NOT in charge of this situation, YOU ARE, you or your faith or your prayers, or maybe your attitude is not enough, so your suffering is your fault.” That way of thinking itself is as bad as the attitude of the faithlessness.

This way of thinking is a fruit of legalism, a cruel and condemning legalism. It accuses people who struggle financially emotionally or physically of faithlessness.

Jesus on the other hand exposes real faithlessness not our bad circumstances as proof of faithlessness. Many times he commended the faith of people who were experiencing terrible situations of their great faith.

It is undeniable that sometimes God responds to our faith by saying “no, I want you to endure this”, and sometimes God says “not now, wait for me”.

When he does say this, bible verses taken out of context don’t override him. We can’t control him with bible logic. And that is not him letting us down. It is us not getting what we want.

Jesus even prayed to escape the cross, the Fathers reply…”I want you to endure this”. Jesus then responded “not my will your will be done.”

Job prayed for relief and to understand why he was suffering …result , “not yet, endure it for a while”. All the apostles were persecuted and most were murdered as well as countless Christians through the centuries. Did they not pray hard enough? or in the right way?, was their faith poor?

When every human dies of old age and God doesn’t answer their prayers to avoid death, is it their fault? Are they not in faith? Are they not praying properly?

To believe this way is to ignore a good portion of the New Testament and most of life’s circumstances and situations.