God is no cosmic Santa Claus or fairy godmother standing by to grant any and every wish that comes His way. No, God is holy and in many ways does have expectations about what prayers He will answer and why. Fortunately, He has told us what to do.
Perhaps somewhat obviously, we must be directing our prayers to God—the one true God of the Bible. It does us no good to pray to false gods, a god we construct in our own image, angels, dead people, or a higher power we assemble from the stuff we like from many worldviews. First Corinthians 8:5–6 says,
"For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from who are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."
There is one God who is true and only He is able to answer prayer. We have access to God only through Jesus Christ (John 14:6; Hebrews 4:14–16; 10:19–22; 1 Timothy 2:5). In part, it is for this reason that we are told to pray in Jesus' name (John 16:24). In fact, Jesus sits at God's side, making intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25).
In Matthew 21:22 Jesus said,
"Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith."
James 1:6 also talks about this. Having faith is a condition for answered prayer. Of course, even the act of praying to God and believing He hears your prayer takes a certain measure of faith. Our faith is in God, not in how we want Him to answer our prayer or in the amount of faith we have. The faith to which God responds is faith that believes Him and trusts Him to do what is best. Faith is essential to pleasing God (Hebrews 11:6).
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