In the past I have asked the same questions. It is my experience that we receive our answers from The Father on an as needed basis. The spiritual walk with Him is different for everyone as each of us has renewed our mind to His Truth at different levels of understanding. Your desires of what is needed for your life or someone else may not be what is needed regardless of what we think, our ways are not The Fathers ways. As we mature in Christ and have a higher level of understanding of His Word we eventually find that we are not to ask for what has already been given to us. For example, The Word says that by His stripes we are healed, not might be or will be at a later date but we are healed. What keeps us from walking in healing? Understanding of the price that was already paid and knowing that everything that Christ accomplished on The Whipping Post and The Cross is a completed work. By faith a believer can now lay hands upon the sick and they will recover. Some believers are walking in greater levels of truth and revelation than others but it does not change the fact that by His stripes we are healed. I may pray for the sick and it take months for the manifestation of healing to come as other believers with a greater revelation of who they are in Christ are able to pray the same prayer and not hinder the move of The Holy Spirit's power in manifesting healing and see the sick recover immediately. I was sick for years until I stood on Gods Holy Word and continually spoke His Truth over my life and in God's timing I was completely healed of major heart problems, hypertension and Diabetes. I found out that I was praying wrong in asking God to heal me when Jesus already paid the price for my healing. I then took hold of the authority that I was given since I believed in Christ and I started to command sickness and disease to go and spoke healing to my body as I would speak to a man. I started telling parts of my body to be healed and to start performing the way that God made them to perform. I spoke to high blood pressure and commanded it to function normally, I spoke to diabetes and commanded it to leave my body. I saw myself healed and my health normal then spoke and believed that I had what I said until it was manifested to me. I released faith by thanking The Father for my healing long before I felt healing in my body. Why did it take months of believing and proclamation of His Word before I was healed? Why do some people who have never desired the things of God, they get prayed for and are healed instantly? I believe that God knows what you need and when you need it to develop the kind of faith in you that you will need to complete the walk and ministry that He has called you into and we have all been called into some kind of service to The King. I know that for me to train my children, sometimes one needed a little more persuasion than the other. Sometimes just a certain look could get results and other times nothing seemed to get the point across.
My best advice is to find God's promises in His Word for a matter and claim it as yours or for who so ever that you are praying for, then don't let go, don't give up and then continually speak that promise regardless of what you see in the physical and regardless of what people with no understanding say to you until you get results. You must see what you are hoping for in your minds eye no matter what you see with your natural eye. Unless you can see it in the spirit, unless you believe you have it in the spirit, you won't see it manifest in the natural. I do hope this helps, I speak in love and with no judgement. Blessings to all who read and have ears to hear what The Spirit is saying.... Peace