Even when we accept the premise that God hears everything, including our prayers, another question arises: is it reasonable to expect a response?
Somehow, people have the idea that their prayers deserve a response that will be the fulfillment of that prayer.
In our world, however, everyone knows that a petition may be received and read, and the answer may still be "No."
So, too, it may happen with prayer; there is a possibility that the answer to a prayer—even if prayed fervently and with all goodwill and sincere intentions—will just be "No."
Often people have an expectation that whenever they ask for something–or at least when they ask God for it–they must get it.
This may be called "the spoiled brat philosophy."
In prayer, too, one pleads for an answer, or for an explanation, but the response may not satisfy the request.
Only very occasionally does one get a direct, explicit answer.
Sometimes a partial answer comes to us many years later.
Something I once did, which at the time seemed pointless or wrong, in retrospect may turn out to have been a very important and successful action.
I may expect lightning to strike me whenever I do something wrong, but the lightning may come in God's good time, which is, most probably, when I least expect it.
Many times, the answer–which is the most appropriate one–is silence.
And we may very well go through life—at least life in this world–without getting any answer whatsoever.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From Simple Words, p. 93., by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz