How effective are your prayers? What things can harm the prayers you pray? All of us want our prayers to be answered. Why else would we pay them.
God always answers. We just get troubled when His answer is contrary to our request. His answer is sometimes no.
1 John 5:13-15 says,
“And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him.“
God definitely answers prayers. The key here is “according to His will.” That’s when He hears and answers our prayers.
The Bible says our prayers can be hindered by several things. So there are prayer blockers.
The first prayer blocker is unforgivenes. When we harbor resentment, offense, bitterness, or anger toward another person it blocks our prayers.
In Mark 11:25 Jesus says, “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions.
We are to forgive if we want to be forgiven.
The second prayer blocker is unconfessed sin. Asking God to move on your behalf when you knowingly continue to sin leads to our prayers going unanswered.
Psalm 66:18 says, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”
Doing bad things never earns good things. Sin is a barrier that always separates us from God.
Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death,but the free gift of God is eternal life in Messiah Yeshua our Lord.”
The third prayer blocker is selfishness. James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” We don’t get our prayers answered because our motives are impure and wrong.
God always answers prayers according to His Will and desires. If it isn’t His will or goes against His will, you can be sure it won’t get answered.
It isn’t selfish to pray for ourselves, but we can be unselfish about it.
Jesus prayed to His Father, “Not my will but Yours be done” in Luke 22:42.
Another prayer blocker is ignoring Scripture. James 4:17, says, knowing what to do and not doing it is a sin.
Proverbs 28, 9 also says, “If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer will be an abomination.”
Luke 6:46 says, “Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and don’t do the things which I say.”
Hope can we call Him Lord if we don’t know what He says. How can we pray something contrary to God’s Word and except God to answer us. I have found one if the best ways to get my prayers answered is to pray the scripture itself.
“For the Word of the Lord is right and true. He is faithful in all He does” – Psalm 33:4.
From Pity to Praise 