There was a pastor who was approached by a woman from his church, and this woman asked him to go and pray for her sister. She said her sister was very sick with a virus in the membrane of her brain but didnt say any more than that. She knew he was a stubborn man.
The pastor went to the hospital at the womans request, and found out that it was much worse than the woman had let on. The woman's sister had been in a coma for a year I think, it was a long time I don't remember exactly, and the brain infectrion was not simply a virus in the membrane of her brain, it was literally infused with and covering her brain. The doctors said it was completely hopeless.
God told the pastor to pray.
He prayed for her.
Nothing happened.
God told the pastor to pray.
He prayed.
Nothing happened.
This continued for 6 months, an hour a day 5 days a week the pastor stood at her bedside and prayed weekly, and nothing changed.
He began to lose hope and faith, asking if God had really asked him to go and pray for this woman, after all it had been 6 months now, daily, and had even invade his home life where he was led to pray the same prayers having him lose sleep, skip meals with his family too busy praying, etc.
Still no signs of change at all,
This continued for a year and a half, the pastor was stubborn, God had asked him to pray.
The woman's sister, the one who had asked him in the church to visit her sister, called him one night. She said he had better come quick cause the doctors had just called her and somehow her condition had worsened and she was not going to make it, and they were moving her and she was dying.
The pastor was furious.
He went to the hospital, even after being ridiculed all these years and now this woman was pretty much pronounced all but dead, and the doctors and nurses had berated him and called him a fool this whole time.
He stood there with this woman and in his heart he was angry, stubborn, and prayed again, proclaiming that his God would not give up and they were NOT going to be defeated, and he prayed. The woman was being wheeled out to her new room, he was walking beside her not giving up as they tried ignored him, and the woman woke up and the first thing she said was praise Jesus.
It took a year and half of praying, stubbornness, hopelessness, unanswered prayer, unreasonable faith, broken faith and continued obedience, sleeplessness, and missed meals and one stubborn pastor. She woke up a year and half after the first day he prayed.
So just because it doesn't LOOK like your prayers are answered, you don't know always.
Other times, the answer is simply no but since you don't know the mind of God, sometimes, the mind of God is more to develop something in you than to heal someone else, that pastor learned a LOT about standing on his faith through that.