Daily Devotional Aug 12, 2026: HOW TO GET YOUR PRAYERS ANSWERED

Welcome to today’s episode! If you are dealing with stress or overthinking, start with our main Daily Devotional for Morning Anxiety practice to find instant peace and grounding.

Table of Contents

Daily Devotional August 12, 2026: THIS IS WHY SO MANY PRAYERS GO UNANSWERED.

Today’s episode of GoOD Mornings is held in honor of Sister Cody of ArtofLovingNow.com. If you want to surround a loved one with prayer, dedicate a show, or share your heart’s work with this community, you can do so at CurlyNikki.com/sponsor.

Good morning. God morning to you.

I went to the car wash yesterday, and there was a woman there, you know, that takes the card and asks you if you want wax and all this stuff, all the extra stuff. And I’m like, “Nope, just clean the bird poop off my car.” And she had a sticker that said, “Jesus loves you,” and I pointed it out, and I’m like, “Yes, He does, you know.” And she smiled and said, “Look at this one,” and pointed to the other side of her chest, and it said, “Remain calm.”

And I laughed out loud, and she’s like, “That one is even harder to remember.” And I said, “Yes, that is. If there’s nothing else that you take from what I share with you, it is to not be fooled into losing your cool.” And I’m speaking to both of us because I still get fooled into it, too. Like, I could be holding the line, holding His hem so tightly, and then the one thing, that one button, that one lever gets pressed, and then old Nikki is like, “Let’s go. We’re back.” But no, we have to see it. You have to catch it.

I caught it this morning upon awakening, feeling completely aware of Nikki’s thoughts and concerns and remembering it’s all taken care of because it’s not really there. And in that peace, the illusion was like, “Yeah, sure,” and it gave me something new. It gave me something new. There’s always something to bring you back into that familiar way of being you, into that drama, into that stomach pit, that knot, that chest tightness.

Remember I said there’s times when, like, maybe you’re in the kitchen and you’re trying to remember what you were worried about a few moments before? Like, “What was I worried about? I was feeling uneasy about something, but it slipped my mind.” And you’re literally trying to remember, trying to think again in that same pattern so that you can protect yourself, protect that ego. You know, it seems helpful. It seems productive, but it is not productive. It is not normal, even though it is normal for 99.99999% of society.

You have been tasked with looking around at your circle. I had a call with one of your other selves who’s in a new relationship that they’re not very sure about, and I said, “Ask yourself if you want to be more like them. If you want to be more like them, keep them around. If you do not want to be more like them, don’t keep them around.” Like, it’s that simple. You must surround yourself with Love, with people—seeming people, because it’s really just Love here—seeming people that are connected consciously to this Love and want to talk about that, want to expand upon that, want to be… they want to be that.

We don’t want to shrink. We don’t want to vibrate low and do low things, things that keep us stuck. You don’t want to be around complainers. You don’t want to be a complainer. You don’t want to be a gossiper. You don’t want to be around gossipers. You have to let them know that you are unavailable for that. You may have relationships that are based only on gossiping. I know I did in the past. Family members—our whole relationship was who did what, what happened.

And eventually, it was just me listening. And then I had to graduate to saying, “How are you? Let’s talk about your life. You know, what’s going on with you, how I can help, how I can serve,” just shifting the conversation. And some people shifted completely out of my life, and that’s okay, too. I love them from here. They have different lifestyles, and there’s no judgment. You’re not better; it’s just different. It’s different. You focus on what God gave you to focus on.

There’s a quote I saw on Rumi’s Facebook—like, he got a Facebook page, on someone’s fan page about Rumi—and it said, “I said to Allah, I said to God, ‘I hate life.’ And He replied, ‘Who asked you to love life? Just love Me and life will be beautiful.'” For me, Love is life, is beauty, is truth, is silence, is this presence.

I hung out with the birds yesterday at the park for a little while. I walked the track, breathing in, “Only You exist,” exhaling, “None of this is, none of this exists, none of this is real,” inhaling, “Only You are real, only Love is real, only Love is here.” And I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through my experience when there was only the experience. Like that mantra, if you can even call it that, that remembrance, that powerful prayer, that oneness that you get into… there was only the track.

And then the awareness that the track isn’t here. No Nikki, no track, no lake, no ducks, no ducks to have in a row, nothing but Love and the sound of combat boots on gravel. And then there were two Jehovah’s Witnesses with signage with literally no one out there, just me and them. And speaking and more walking, knowing walking, but not walking, speaking to them, seeing them, but not speaking, knowing that there is no them.

It is more powerful than any affirmation that you could take with you. It is the same as if you were saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” because you are declaring that only His presence is here. It’s the same as taking the name, any name, revealed name of God, repeatedly, every breath, every step. It happens naturally. And then you’ll be watching that body, knowing that it’s not yours, knowing that it’s not you, knowing that you’re not here as you thought you were, that the presence is here, that “here,” as we perceive it, is just another name for the presence.

I pray you can hear what I’m saying, how you know you’re here right now. That’s the presence. That’s God. The worrying gets papered over that, gets stapled onto that. Joel Goldsmith said we’re all out here like branches with no fruit, trying to find oranges to staple to ourselves, trying to get somebody to staple some cherries onto us to give us some of their wealth, some of their opportunity, some of their money, some of their fruit. You must produce your own. It comes from within.

That sap becomes fruit. And in your life, in your calling, you must feel the sap. You must feel the connection. You must be one with Him, with it. You must recognize that you are Him, that only He is.

And everything else, anything else short of that—you chanting, affirming, practicing, even with the most beautiful intentions—will get you nowhere. Prayers go unanswered every day, every hour, every minute, not because God is not listening. As soon as you speak, inwardly, outwardly, God is hearing you. The speaking, the listening, it’s all one.

You don’t have to even say it. You don’t have to articulate it. God planted that seed, but you perceive it as out there, as not yours, as separate from you. You will express it, but you must feel Him. You must hold the Light inside like Mother Mary, and you can’t continue to let it be dispersed by anyone, by any seeming one, by people around you, energies around you, attitudes around you, moods, people’s moods, you trying to adjust and help and walk on eggshells. Stop and just hold the Light in your belly. It’s a very practical way of saying it.

While you still feel like you have a belly, hold the Light in it. Breathe the Light into yourself, and then hold it there. That’s alchemy. You eat Light. You digest Light. And then life gets lighter. It gets easier. Your load, your yoke—there isn’t any.

The illusion, which felt so powerful and so scary, it’s there, seemingly, but you know it’s not. It quiets down. It smooths out. It turns from a nightmare into a good dream, but you don’t get lost in it. You don’t go off on some side quest where you are that body again, fully bought in to the dream. You’re listening to me, so you were never fully bought in, but you still have a tendency to get lost in the world. But even that coming and going, awareness and seeming loss of awareness, all of that comes to an end in Him.

Clarity is your future. Abundance is your future. More life is your future. Worship blog says there’s some things that only the Holy Spirit can remove from your life. I said only the Holy Spirit can take away the guilt that keeps you from starting over. Only the Holy Spirit can remove the anxiety that paralyzes you. Only the Holy Spirit can remove the anger that seeks to take control of you. Only the Holy Spirit can remove the evil thoughts that seek to take control of your life.

You place yourself in the Spirit, and then you forget yourself. You forget that you’re there trying to be aware of the Spirit, and then there’s only Spirit looking like you, living a beautiful life. The life that has been promised cannot be lived by you. It can only be lived by Him. By Love. You must become transparent. We must be two holes in the lampshade. That’s a Persian saying. There’s only one Light, and you and I are holes in the lampshade. That’s it. You just have to let the Light out. That’s not a doing; that’s a being. That’s an already happening.

Think about that the next time you’re like, “How am I going to fix this? How am I going to get out?” The only way I got out of St. Louis, out of Ferguson, was every time the thought came, “How am I going to get out?” I would feel the awareness come in, like turn on, and the shoulders would come back down and be like, “I already did. I’m already out.

I don’t have to figure it out.” The figuring it out is keeping you stuck. It’s keeping you there. It’s keeping you in whatever it is. It feels counterintuitive, and I know the anxiety is high and strong, but you have to remain calm. You have to keep remembering that it’s already done. It’s already happened. Nothing is happening, but we can also say it’s already happened. You’ve already happened. Your story is great. You’ve happened. You’re watching her. You’re watching him. Watch that body like it belongs to someone else. Watch those thoughts like they’re not yours, because they’re not.

Let the Holy Spirit remove everything from you that is not you so that you can see, so that you can enjoy. You enjoy Him, and then you enjoy life.

I love you, and we’ll chat soon.

I know what it feels like to wake up with a pit in your stomach and thoughts that are racing. I also know how to turn God up, and that automatically turns the thoughts down. It turns the anxiety down. You don’t have to carry this anxiety today. You don’t have to carry it alone. Every week, I hold space for private one-on-one spiritual direction intensives where we go straight to the heart of what’s keeping you from peace and pray through it together. If you’re ready for a personal breakthrough, tap the link in today’s episode description or reserve your space right now at the top of CurlyNikki.com.