Have you talked to someone and noticed they weren’t listening? I hate that—especially when what I am saying is important. Nothing makes you feel worse than the indication that your cares are not significant.

Sometimes we feel that way about God. Recently I’ve received a handful of emails or Facebook messages from those of you who feel like your prayers are bouncing off the walls of heaven. God doesn’t listen, you think. God doesn’t care. Then you begin to wonder if He’s even real.

I’ve had my own unanswered prayers. Some I’m grateful for—like the fact I didn’t marry the guy I had a crush on when I was fifteen. Others still break my heart—like the time God didn’t heal my grandpa when he was dying.

In the emails I receive from girls I’ve noticed a pattern. Many of you pull out a verse and use it like a trump card. Jesus says in Matthew 18:19, “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.”

Then you cross your arms in defiance and say, “I had all of my friends praying with me about this and God didn’t answer. So He must not be real.”

Now, what you are trying to do here is good. You are looking in the Bible to see what God says He will do and you’re holding Him to it (just like we talked about on Monday). Great. But there is a problem.

In most books of the Bible (Proverbs excluded) you cannot just pick one verse without consulting the verses around it and assume you know what it means. Context is everything—it’s true in all written correspondence and even in our speech. I once had a girl write to me to say my book Being a Girl Who Loves inspired her to stay in an abusive relationship because it would give her an opportunity to be more loving.

When I read that I couldn’t respond fast enough to tell her that was not the best conclusion to draw. I then encouraged her to love the person by leaving him and reporting him so he could get help. Imagine if she never wrote to me and kept getting beat up thinking it was what Jesus wanted her to do! The thought makes me sick.

We always need to read in context. Matthew 18:19 is couched between verses on church discipline and how the leadership should handle a member of the church living in habitual sin. They need to pray and come to an agreement on how to proceed. As they do God will be with them and do as they ask.

Unfortunately that verse isn’t a free pass to ask for anything we want and get it. If it was there would be far more millionaires and no more starving people. People would probably never die either. A world where everyone could pray for whatever they wanted and get it would be impossible too since someone’s prayers would most likely contradict someone else’s.

So you can’t call God a liar or non-existent because He doesn’t answer every prayer the way you want Him too. But you should still pray. Why? God invites us to.

Philippians 4:6 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

What’s the point?

Oswald Chambers says it best: “Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means for getting something for ourselves; the Bible’s idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.”

Get to know God. Pray. And trust Him to answer in the best way possible.