Many sincere people arrive, often quietly and without drama, at a moment where prayer no longer seems to work. They have asked earnestly and waited faithfully, trusting the words they were given, only to find that nothing has changed in the way they hoped.
Over time, this can produce confusion and even a subtle erosion of trust, not only in prayer itself but in the one to whom prayer is addressed. If this experience feels familiar, it does not mean something has gone wrong with you. It may mean that you are standing at the edge of a deeper invitation, one that asks not for more effort, but for a different understanding altogether, which may touch upon why prayer doesn’t work.
For a long time, human beings have been asking and yet not receiving what they believe they have asked for by way of prayer. In almost any other area of life, this would prompt a careful re-evaluation of the approach, yet prayer is often protected from such inquiry by habit, tradition, and fear of questioning what has been handed down. Still, the promise remains, and it deserves to be taken seriously. The difficulty is not the promise itself. The difficulty lies in what is being asked for, and from where the asking arises.
To receive, one must be aligned. What is given is not determined by personal preference, urgency, or fear, but by attunement to the Divine. Within right relationship, as known through mystical revelation, it becomes clear that nothing is being withheld. All is already being given. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give the Kingdom. Yet the Kingdom is rarely what is being asked for, because the asking usually arises from a sense of lack rather than from truth.
The Divine does not need to be persuaded, informed, or convinced. Asking is not for God’s benefit; it is for ours. It reveals the state of the one who asks. Asking, in its true sense, is willingness, and genuine willingness requires emptiness. It asks that personal desires, beliefs, expectations, and conclusions fall away, leaving only the longing to KNOW God aright. To KNOW God aright is life eternal, not as a future reward, but as a present recognition. It is the discovery of God not as an external authority, but as the very essence of our Being, the source and substance of all that is.
The Master’s instruction to pray in secret and to be rewarded in secret points directly to this interior movement. Prayer is not performed outwardly, nor is it aimed at producing visible outcomes. It is entered inwardly, through stillness, into the unknown. When prayer seeks a specific, predetermined result, it arises from the separate sense of the personal self, which is precisely what obscures communion with the Divine. God is not a person responding to requests. God is Spirit, Oneness expressing itself as form, life, and multiplicity.
When Jesus says, “Ask and you will receive,” he is not describing a mechanism by which human thoughts are delivered upward for approval. He is pointing toward a reversal, an inward turning in which human consciousness becomes receptive to Divine knowing. This is why the instruction to give no thought is so central. Emptiness is not passivity; it is availability. When thought loosens its grip, Divine intention is free to fulfil itself through us. This is the ground from which the words “Your Father KNOWS what you have need of” arise, not as reassurance, but as fact.
Why most prayer doesn’t work , as commonly practiced, is because it centres on asking for health, security, success, or companionship. Such prayer is understandable, but it arises from the experience of separation rather than from AT-ONE-MENT. To ask rightly is not to ask as someone who must assert themselves, but as one who consents to disappear as the centre. This orientation runs counter to much of what has been taught about achievement, control, and self-definition, yet it belongs to an entirely different order of reality, one not bound by time or form.
To receive is to turn around, to turn within, and to trust the silence that appears to be nothing, yet is the NO-THING from which everything is made manifest. True asking is not expressed in many words. At its deepest, it resolves into a single consent, the quiet surrender expressed as “Thy will be done.” Any asking that arises from the separate self, however sincere, subtly implies either that God does not know what is needed or that God knows and withholds. Neither is true.
The deepest need of every human Being is not improvement of circumstance, but union with the Divine. This is the experience that liberates, the KNOWING that dissolves fear at its root. If anything is to be asked for in prayer, it is this. Revelation. The knowing of who you are. This is not something God must be persuaded to give. It is what God already KNOWS you have need of beyond all else.
This is the knocking spoken of in the teachings, but it is not casual or half-hearted. It is not maintained out of habit or inherited obligation. It is central, wholehearted, and consuming, because it asks for nothing less than the surrender of the false self. Asking, in this sense, is not an attempt to manage life, but the release of management altogether. Control gives way to receptivity, and what has always been waiting to be given can finally be received.
To ask for revelation is to store treasure in Heaven, not as a future compensation, but as a present raising of consciousness into the Mind that was in Christ. This revelation is not lost when circumstances change or when form dissolves. It is carried beyond time and becomes an outpouring. As the personal sense of self fades, life is no longer hoarded or spent, but poured out, and in this pouring there is abundance.
This is the meaning behind the saying that to those who have, more will be given. It is not punishment or reward, but recognition. When life is lived through effort and control, energy is consumed in the attempt to secure oneself. When life is lived through grace, life gives itself away and finds itself inexhaustible. This is why striving to accumulate more never satisfies, while surrender releases a fullness that cannot be depleted.
When Jesus speaks of asking and receiving, he is speaking of alignment, not entitlement. When asking flows from the depths of Being, receiving is already underway. The caution against storing up earthly treasure is not a rejection of comfort or beauty, but a warning against mistaking these for identity. The true treasure is the KNOWING of the TRUE SELF. This is the pearl of great price, not offered through argument or instruction, but through Presence.
If prayer has stopped working for you, it may be because it has reached the end of what it was never meant to be. This is not a failure of faith, but often the beginning of awakening. Prayer does not fail when requests go unanswered. It only fails when it remains trapped within separation. When prayer becomes willingness, silence, and surrender, it fulfils its true purpose, and from this place, life adds what is needed without strain. This reflection belongs within the unfolding vision of Christianity Without Fear, where prayer is no longer a negotiation with God, but a return to the Divine Presence that has never been absent.