Can you really trust God when your life is shaking? Most people answer that question long before they say a word in prayer. Whether you believe God answers prayer shapes the way you pray, how often you pray, and what comes of it.
A.W. Tozer put it this way: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Not what you think about yourself, your job or the people around you. What you believe about God.
That is why the names of God matter. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught us to begin with “hallowed be thy name.” Before we ask for anything, we remember who we are talking to. Three Hebrew names speak directly to whether God can be trusted: El Sali, El Ne’eman and Elohei Kol Basar.
Why the Last-Minute Prayer So Often Falls Flat
Many people only pray in the final moment, when everything is falling apart and they cry out, “God, help me.” Often the problem is not that it is a bad prayer. It is that it is the only prayer. When you have never sought God, you don’t know who He is, so you don’t know how He responds. If you truly believed He answers prayer, you would have been talking to Him about it all along.
The good news is that God has told us who He is. And each of these three names gives you a reason to trust Him.
El Sali: God My Rock
El Sali means “God my rock.” The name comes from Psalm 42, one of the most honest prayers in the Bible.
The psalmist is in anguish: “My tears have been my food day and night” (Psalm 42:3). People keep asking him, “Where is your God?” He is in the middle place, where things were good and now they are not, and nothing has turned around yet. He describes it “as with a deadly wound in my bones” (Psalm 42:10). It is the kind of trouble you wake up with and go to bed with, the kind that follows you to work and fills every quiet moment.
Watch what he does with it.
He pours out his soul. “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul” (Psalm 42:4). He does not try to impress God. He tells God the truth. If you want to pray honestly, tell God what you would not tell anyone else.
He remembers the house of God. He recalls going to worship “with glad shouts and songs of praise” (Psalm 42:4). When you are low, get to church. You may not have a song that day, but someone beside you does.
He talks to his own soul. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God” (Psalm 42:5).
He calls God his rock, even while he questions Him. “I say to God, my rock” (Psalm 42:9), and in the same breath he asks, “Why have you forgotten me?” (Psalm 42:9). Faith does not mean you stop feeling. It means you bring your feelings to the One who does not move.
Your life is not steady. Honestly, you are not steady either. But God is. Hebrews 12 says God is shaking everything that has been made, “the removal of things that are shaken” (Hebrews 12:27), so that what cannot be shaken will remain. And we are receiving “a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Hebrews 12:28). When everything around you is shaking, El Sali is the rock that is not.
El Ne’eman: The Faithful God
El Ne’eman means “the faithful God.” It comes from Deuteronomy 7:9: “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9).
Faithful means God does not waver, falter or shift. He is the Father of lights “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17), and “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
That consistency is deeply practical for your prayer life. Because God does not change, you can learn His patterns.
Yes, His ways are above ours: “so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). But God still has ways, and He still has thoughts. Psalm 111 says, “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2). “He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered” (Psalm 111:4), so that His people can study them. The more time you spend with Him in prayer and in His Word, the more you begin to recognize how He works. And because “all his precepts are trustworthy” (Psalm 111:7), what He says, you can build your life on.
What to Do When Your Prayer Isn’t Answered Yet
Knowing God’s faithfulness helps most when the answer has not come yet. Suppose you pray for healing and nothing changes right away. Instead of deciding God doesn’t care, ask a different question: what is the Lord’s normal pattern? Scripture shows a God who heals. So keep seeking. Keep asking. Keep responding. You never know when the breakthrough will come.
Elohei Kol Basar: The God of All Flesh
Elohei Kol Basar means “the God of all flesh.” In Jeremiah 32:27, God says, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27).
God Over Every Person
First, it means God is God over all people: nations, leaders, teachers, bosses, doctors and pastors. No one who makes a decision about your life has the final word. If a doctor says there is no hope, if a teacher says you will never amount to anything, if a boss says you will never be promoted, you have a higher appeal.
As a believer, you can take any decision that affects you to God the Father and pray it in the right direction. Sometimes you have to pray your employees straight, pray your boss into the right decision, pray your kids into the kingdom and pray your spouse out of their own way. If it doesn’t change, you can thank God that He is wiser than you are. And sometimes the thing He changes is you.
God of the Whole Person
Second, it means God is God of the whole person. Jesus said, “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30). If God keeps count of something that small, He cares about your family, friendships, career, finances, emotions, hobbies and even the things that seem silly to everyone else.
Nothing you bring to the Lord is too small or too trivial. He will either change the situation, change you, or teach you patience through the process.
How God Answers Prayer
A simple saying sums up how God answers:
- No. Sometimes the answer is no.
- Slow. Yes, but not today.
- Grow. Yes, but first you need to grow into it.
- Go. A fast yes.
Whatever the answer, you can trust the One giving it. When we pray, God hears, He cares, and He can change things.
He is El Sali, God my rock. He is El Ne’eman, the faithful God. He is Elohei Kol Basar, the God of all flesh. Pray His names, and pray like you believe He will answer.