Two different things get called unanswered prayer. One is a no: you asked for something specific and it did not happen. The person was not healed, the marriage ended, the job went to someone else. "Perhaps the greatest unanswered prayer? Healing for my grandma, but after a week of rushing her to the hospital, she died," one person wrote on Reddit (r/Christian, 2026). The other is nothing: no answer either way, only, as one Reddit post put it, "the same quiet that was there before" (r/BGodInspired, 2026). "This silence is deafening," wrote another Reddit user (r/Christianity, 2020).
They hurt differently, and naming yours can help. Either way, the passage offered here is Psalm 13:1-2, a prayer that is still waiting for its answer in its opening lines, and it is in the Bible.
In short
The passage
Psalm 13:1-2, a prayer that asks and asks and has not yet been answered.
Others who were refused
David praying for his son, Moses asking to cross the Jordan, Paul and his thorn, Jesus in Gethsemane.
A psalm with no turn
Psalm 88 ends in darkness, and it is Scripture too.
Why it happened
Traditions give different explanations, and none of them can see into your particular no.
Psalm 13:1-2
How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me?
In the World English Bible. The King James reads:
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?
Nothing in those lines has been answered. The speaker is praying the prayer you may have been praying, and the next verse keeps asking rather than reporting a reply: "Behold, and answer me, Yahweh, my God." The psalm does not pretend the silence is a message. It asks God to break it.
If "how long" is the part that fits, the page on waiting on God's timing stays with those four questions. Here the point is simpler: a prayer that has gone unanswered is itself a kind of prayer the Bible keeps.
What you can do with it
You can pray it exactly as it stands. Psalm 13 gives words to somebody who is still asking and has nothing to show for it, without making them add a hopeful ending they do not feel yet. Some people find it easier to say an old prayer than to find new words for the same request.
You can also simply read it and stop there. Whether you keep praying, and how, is not a question this passage settles for you. You can read Psalm 13:1-5 all together.
Sometimes the asking goes on long after the words have run out.
Why this passage rather than the one for doubt
The site's passage for doubt is James 1:5: "But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach; and it will be given to him." The next verse asks for that request to be made "in faith, without any doubting".
For somebody whose asking brought nothing back, that promise is the very thing they are struggling with. It is a real passage and it helps many people, and the Doubt topic holds it. For this particular hurt, a prayer that is itself unanswered may be the gentler place to begin.
Others in the Bible asked and were refused
It can matter a great deal that refused prayers are in Scripture, told plainly.
David pleaded for his sick infant son. "David therefore begged God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night on the ground" (2 Samuel 12:16). On the seventh day the child died. David said afterward, "I will go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:23).
Moses asked to cross the Jordan into the land he had spent his life leading people toward: "Please let me go over and see the good land." The reply was, "Speak no more to me of this matter" (Deuteronomy 3:25-26).
Paul writes that he "begged the Lord three times" for something he called a thorn in the flesh to leave him. It did not. What he reports hearing instead is, "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).
Jesus, in Gethsemane on the night of his arrest, prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire" (Matthew 26:39). The cup did not pass.
What those texts mean for your own no is yours to weigh. They do show that asking and being refused is not new, and that the people who were refused are not presented as having prayed wrongly.
A psalm that ends in the dark
Psalm 88 is a prayer from somebody whose "life draws near to Sheol", the grave. Many laments, Psalm 13 among them, turn toward trust before they finish. This one does not. Its last line is: "You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness."
That is how it ends, and it is in the Bible as it stands. If you have been told that every honest prayer should end in praise, it may be worth knowing that one of the Psalms does not.
Psalm 88 stops before morning.
"God always answers, and sometimes the answer is no"
That sentence is often offered as if it were a verse. It is not a quotation from the Bible. It is a modern way of putting a belief that some Christians hold. GotQuestions, for example, says "God answers every prayer" and that sometimes God answers "no" or "wait".
Other traditions put it differently. The Catholic Catechism acknowledges plainly that "some even stop praying because they think their petition is not heard", and asks what we are really seeking when we pray. Reformed teachers, such as John MacArthur writing for Ligonier, say that God does not grant a prayer that is "inconsistent with His will". The Greek Orthodox writer Danielle Xanthos, writing for her church's archdiocese, says that questions of suffering and death require that we "experience and reflect upon mystery and the idea of not knowing". Those are real disagreements, and they are not settled here.
If you have been told it was your fault
Some people are told, or tell themselves, that the no was their doing: not enough faith, hidden sin, the wrong motive. Some teachers say this directly; GotQuestions writes that "often, but not always, prayer is unanswered because of unconfessed sin", and lists wrong motives and unbelief too. Others reject that kind of explanation, as the Orthodox writing on mystery above does.
Why your prayer went the way it did is not something anyone outside it can see. David fasted and lay on the ground, and his son died. Jesus asked for the cup to pass. Neither is described as a failure of faith.
If you prayed for someone who died
Then you are grieving as well as asking why. The grief pages on this site, starting with Bible verses for the loss of a parent, may be the better place to begin tonight. In the UK, Cruse Bereavement Support gathers what grieving people say helped, including simply that "listening is just as important" as anything anyone says.
A Cochrane review of ten trials of prayer for people who were ill found intercessory prayer "neither significantly beneficial nor harmful" for the people prayed for, and noted that the trials had real limitations. Studies like that measure clinical outcomes. They cannot say whether a prayer was heard.
Questions people ask
Should I keep praying for the same thing? Traditions answer differently, and the decision is yours. Scripture includes people who kept asking, like the speaker of Psalm 13, and people who were told to stop, like Moses.
Is it wrong to be angry at God about an unanswered prayer? Psalm 13 and Psalm 88 both speak to God with open complaint, and Scripture kept both.
Why did God say no to Paul? Paul reports only the reply he heard, "My grace is sufficient for you", and does not give a further reason.
Where to go next
If it helps, pray Psalm 13 as it stands tonight, or read the Doubt topic, or talk to someone you trust about what happened. Bible Nudge also takes a sentence about what happened and comes back with one passage. Find a passage.
If the despair has turned into thoughts of ending your life, please reach a person now. In the United States, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In Canada, call or text 9-8-8. In the UK and Republic of Ireland, Samaritans is on 116 123. Anywhere else, Find A Helpline lists services by country.
Words that come up here
Tap a term to see what it means.
Lament. A prayer or poem of complaint and grief addressed to God. Many psalms are laments.