Sometimes God Needs to Give You Some Tough Love.

The Word at the Table

I'm Neal Reyes, The Entrepreneurs' Pastor, and I'm glad you're at the table. This week I'm bringing you two distinct words again. One for your faith and one for your leadership. Both are going to ask you to look inward before you look outward. Let's get into it.

This Week's Word

The Opening: Sometimes God Needs to Give You Some Tough Love

This very morning, before I recorded this week's Champion's Walk episode, I was having a conversation with my wife Katie. And she told me straight up that I needed some tough love from her.

Now, we were bantering back and forth about it. I was laughing. She was laughing. But the truth is, she was right.

And as I sat with that moment, the Lord reminded me of something I want to bring to you today. Because we talk a lot about prayer being a conversation with God. A real, honest, two-way conversation. And one of the things that means is that sometimes He needs to give you some tough love too. He will be honest with you if you are honest with Him. But here is the part that not everyone is ready for.

Sometimes the reason your prayer feels unanswered is not because He cannot hear you. It is because He is trying to get something through to you that you have not been ready to receive.

That is exactly where we are going today.

Part One: Why Isn't God Answering My Prayer?

We are in Part 2 of our series When Prayer Feels Hard: Honest Conversations With God on Champion's Walk. And this week we are tackling one of the most honest questions a believer can ask.

Why isn't God answering my prayer?

Now before I go any further, I want to say this clearly. I am not here to tell you that every time you feel like God is not answering, it means something is wrong with you. That is not the teaching today. But I do need to show you that there are things we can do, sometimes unknowingly, that can hinder His response. And if we address those things, the flow opens back up.

Let's start in the Book of Matthew 7:7-8 NKJV. Jesus is speaking here and He says, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

He did not say wait, wonder, and worry. He said ask, seek, and knock.

Faith Anchor #1: Ask, seek, and knock. Not wait, wonder, and worry.

Those are the actions He instructed. And they are the exact opposite of what most people default to in a difficult season. When the answer has not come yet, when the silence stretches on, it is so easy to slip into waiting passively, wondering if He is even listening, and worrying about what happens if He does not show up. But God never gave us those instructions. He gave us three actions. Ask Him. Seek Him in His Word, in His voice, and in fellowship with Him. And knock. Keep showing up at the door of relationship with Him.

Now I want to take you somewhere a little deeper. Because if the answer to your prayer has felt stuck, there is something you need to examine honestly. The motives of your heart.

God does not judge by outward appearance. He judges by the intentions and motives of the heart. When you pray with your mouth, He knows what you are asking in your heart. And sometimes, what is coming out of your mouth and what is living in your heart are not aligned.

James 4:3 NKJV says it plainly. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Now stay with me here, because this is not meant to condemn you. This is meant to set you free. Asking amiss simply means that sometimes we pray out of the desires of our flesh instead of the will of His Spirit. Maybe you have been pursuing something you already know deep in your heart is not His best for you. Maybe there has been a relationship you keep returning to that you know is not right. Maybe there is a financial habit that relieves pressure in the moment but makes the situation worse over time. Those are the things He is waiting for you to address. Not so He can withhold from you. But because He sees what you cannot see yet, and He knows that what you are asking for is not going to take you where you need to go.

And there is a second layer to this. Psalms 66:18 NKJV says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.

The word regard here does not mean to simply recognize a weakness. It means to honor it. To serve it. To act on it consistently. If there is something you have been honoring in your life over God, whether it is a habit, a mindset, a relationship, or a behavior, that is the thing between you and a clear line of communication with Him.

And I want to say this gently but directly. If there is something you have been hiding from God, the very thing you have been holding back from Him is the thing that is holding you back. Surrender it. Because He is waiting to meet you on the other side of that surrender with the answer you have been looking for.

Faith Anchor #2: Surrender is not weakness. It is the key that unlocks His voice.

Now I want to close this section with something that I believe is going to shift the way you think about unanswered prayer forever. Isaiah 55:8-9 NKJV. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Sometimes you have been praying for this, and God wants to give you something so much bigger than this that it requires more time, more preparation, and more character development than this would have. Sometimes what looks like an unanswered prayer is actually a prayer that is being upgraded on the way to you.

He sees the end from the beginning. And when you ask for something and the answer has not arrived yet, the question is not whether He heard you. He heard you before you even started speaking. The question is whether you trust His character enough to wait for His answer instead of settling for your version of it.

Faith Anchor #3: When you cannot see His answer, trust in His character.

God is good all the time. Not just when things go the way you planned. Not just when the breakthrough is visible. All the time. And when you cannot see the answer, trusting in His character is not passive resignation. It is an act of the highest faith.

Part Two: Stop Waiting for Life to Drop You Somewhere. Choose Your Destination.

Now let me bring you the second word for today. This is the third and final part of our personal agency series on The Executive Perspective, and I want to close it out with something that ties everything together.

We have talked about what agency is. We have talked about why it changes everything. Today I want to talk about how you develop it. How you actually build your personal power.

It starts with something that sounds simple but is actually one of the hardest things for high achievers to do consistently. Identify your goals with clarity.

Vague goals produce vague results. Every single time. If you are believing for something specific, you have to be specific about what it is. Because clarity always drives direction. And if you are unclear, you will hesitate. You will hesitate with your decisions, your commitments, and your actions. And hesitation is where momentum goes to die.

Here is what I have found coaching leaders and executives. Most people do not have a clarity problem. They have an honesty problem. They have not been honest with themselves about what they actually want versus what they feel they should want. And that gap between those two things is where most people get stuck.

Leadership Truth Bomb #1: If you don't choose your destination, you'll keep ending up wherever life drops you.

Let me give you a personal example of what I mean by defining success on your own terms. When Katie and I got married, we both came in with influences from both sets of parents about what a marriage was supposed to look like. And those are people we love. People who love us deeply. But there came a moment where Katie and I had to have an honest conversation and recognize that our marriage was not their marriage. We had to take their wisdom, honor their input, and then make our own decisions about who we were going to be together.

That is defining success on your own terms. Not rejecting wisdom. Not closing yourself off from guidance. But ultimately choosing your own direction from a place of clarity and conviction. And the moment we did that, the friction in our marriage decreased significantly.

You can do the same thing in your business, your leadership, and your life. Stop measuring your progress against someone else's highlight reel. Define what success actually looks like for you, in your season, with your resources, toward your calling. And then execute against that definition. Not theirs.

The second step to developing agency is to break the big stuff down. Because overwhelm is the enemy of action.

Leadership Truth Bomb #2: Small wins stack fast and create unstoppable momentum.

You do not have momentum. You generate it. And you generate it by stacking small wins consistently over time. Break the big goal into clear, winnable steps. Take the first one. Measure what it produces. Make a small adjustment. Take the next one. That process, repeated over and over, is how ordinary people produce extraordinary results.

The third step is to practice self compassion. Because agency is not about being perfect. It is about staying in the game.

When you make a misstep, and you will, the way you treat yourself in that moment determines how quickly you get back up. If you berate yourself, you are training yourself to be afraid of trying again. If you learn from it, adjust, and get back up, you are training yourself to be resilient. That is the difference between people who eventually break through and people who stay stuck at the same ceiling for years.

Leadership Truth Bomb #3: The way you treat yourself after a setback determines how quickly you'll bounce back.

The fourth step is to seek support that builds you up. Agency does not mean going it alone. It means choosing who you allow to speak into your life. Surround yourself with people who can edify you, which means build you up, and exhort you, which means lift you up. Words are containers of power. And the voices you consistently let into your life are shaping your beliefs, your confidence, and your capacity.

Leadership Truth Bomb #4: You need people who remind you of your power when you forget you have it.

And the fifth step is to embrace challenges as fuel for growth. The hardest seasons of your life have the potential to build the strongest version of you. But only if you let them teach you instead of defeat you.

Reframe failure as feedback. Study what did not work. Make the adjustment. And get back in the game. Because every obstacle is a mirror. It reflects your growth and exposes your next lesson.

You do not have to have it all figured out. You just have to stay in the game. Keep choosing your destination. Keep stacking your wins. Keep getting back up. That is how personal agency develops into personal power.

Take This With You

This week I want you to do two things, one for each word we covered today.

On the faith side, sit with this question honestly: is there something I have been holding back from God that is holding Him back in my life? If the answer is yes, surrender it today. Not next week. Today. And once you have, start looking for Him in the small things. The gratitude that builds in the small places is what creates the faith to receive the big answers.

On the leadership side, write down your most important goal right now in one clear, specific sentence. Not vague. Not general. Specific. Then identify the single next winnable step you can take toward it this week. Just one. Take it. Measure it. Adjust. And do it again next week.

From the Table Last Week

On Champion's Walk, my faith show that teaches Real Help For Real Hope, I brought you Why Isn't God Answering My Prayer? Here Is What You Need to Check First. This was Part 2 of our series When Prayer Feels Hard: Honest Conversations With God. I took you through Matthew 7:7-8, James 4:3, Psalms 66:18, and Isaiah 55:8-9, and I showed you three faith anchors that will change how you approach unanswered prayer. Plus the honest conversation about motives of the heart that nobody else wants to have but that every believer needs to hear. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC18BfniZHg&list=PLMPDSgKkGZNvHLzeBuhqHvZhuCSMEQEgV

On The Executive Perspective, my leadership and business show that delivers Real Help For Real Success, I brought you Developing Agency: How to Build Your Personal Power. This was the third and final part of our personal agency series, and I closed it out with five practical steps to develop your agency and build your personal power. Four leadership truth bombs included. If you have been running hard without getting traction, this episode will show you exactly what to adjust. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sryCN1RpBJc&list=PLMPDSgKkGZNuJ-dNFVFCWc3lb7BmJ07mM

Until Next Time

He hears you. He is still working. And you already have what it takes to take the next step. Trust His character on the faith side and choose your destination on the leadership side. Both require the same thing from you: honesty about where you are and courage to move from there.

This Wednesday on Champion's Walk, I am bringing you a fresh word that I believe is going to meet you exactly where you are. Do not miss it.

Then Saturday on The Executive Perspective, I am starting a brand new series. Be there for the beginning.

I'll see you at the table next Tuesday.

Neal Reyes, The Entrepreneurs' Pastor