My book, Taking No for an Answer: How to Respond When God Says No to Our Prayers, recently released. I wrote this in hopes that Christians would move beyond the Why? question of unanswered prayer and begin asking How can this make me more like Jesus?

Below is a list of 10 quotes from the book.

1. “So, Christian, do you have room in your theology for unanswered prayer? Do we understand God does, in fact, say no to many of our prayers? Even our earnest and heartfelt ones? Even the ones that sound too spiritual not to be answered with a resounding yes? Or do our prayers resemble more of a wish to a genie than a prayer to a sovereign God?”

2. “We know he hears us because the Bible is crystal clear in that regard. But when life gets rough, when the swim of life is upstream, when the waves crash in on us, do we believe it? Or do we resort back to trying to carry ourselves?”

3. “As God’s child, I can know he is listening to me. His ears aren’t merely open; they are focused on what I am saying. That is so comforting; to know the God of the universe—the Creator and Sustainer of all things—is listening to my prayer. God listens to my prayer no matter how mumbled, how repetitive, or how messed up it is.”

4. “When your knees are wobbly, God will hold you up. As your heart grows faint, God will strengthen your faith. When you simply want to give up, God will not let you go.”

5. “We should receive just as much comfort from Jesus’s humanity as his deity, because, at the most fundamental level, Jesus knows what we’re going through. Jesus knows our pain because he experienced the worst of it. Jesus knows our tears because he wept over Lazarus ( John 11:35). Jesus knows our heartache because he felt that on the cross when God laid his wrath upon him.”

6. “Is Christ enough when you can’t seem to find a job that supports your family? Is Christ enough when it feels like everybody is out to get you? Is Christ enough when a loved one died unexpectedly? Is Christ enough when you are on your deathbed?”

7. “God, as our sovereign, good, holy Father, reserves the right to distinguish between what we want and need. But we shouldn’t think he is abandoning us if he doesn’t answer our wishes.”

8. “We must see our sin in order to truly repent. If we neglect to notice it, then repentance is impossible. We will never see the need for repentance if we never see the insidious nature of our sin.”

9. “Praying for the same thing habitually doesn’t guarantee God will eventually answer it, but it does mean God sees our faithfulness in prayer. It shows we truly believe him to be sovereign, to be in control, to be God.”

10. “When God tells us no, he’s not scolding us or angry with us. He is beckoning us to come to him. He is drawing us closer to himself, pleading with us to trust him even amidst unanswered prayer. We will not grow closer to the Lord by conjuring up some image in our head or having some mys- tical experience. We get closer to the Lord as his children by saturating ourselves with the means of grace.”