Donna Braman
1 of 2 series teaching
HINDRANCES TO ANSWERED PRAYER
If you can understand what causes prayers to not be answered then you'll be in a better position to have a more successful prayer life. There are certain things that can hinder our prayers. We're going to look today at what those hindrances are. You can be sure that if there is strife or sin in your life, answered prayer will be non-existent. Look at what David says in Psalm 139:23-24, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
The first major hindrance I want to identify is pride. Let's go to 1 Peter 5:6, and God said, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. James 4:6 adds to this line of thinking, "But He giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."
So God can resist your prayers! When we approach Him with a proud heart, don't expect Him to move for your benefit. We think that we can live like the devil all week and then come to church and approach His throne thinking that He is going to move on our behalf. If you've got something in your heart that has caused bitterness, anger or strife toward another, get your heart right before you pray, otherwise don't expect it to get past the clouds.
Where did pride come from? Isaiah says it perfectly in chapter 14:13-14, "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High."
You notice all the I's there? When we have the "me thing" as the focus pride is lurking in the midst. Satan was the most beautiful angel, his whole body and voice reeked of the 7 perfect musical notes. That's why he hates it when we sing from our hearts to God Almighty. Satan is the author of pride. So let's look more closely at it.
1. PRIDE
Jesus said, "I am meek and lowly." He is telling us that he is opposite of the haughtiness of pride. He is showing us here the way to approach God. You see, Satan lied to Adam in the Garden of Eden when he said, "if you will eat of the tree of knowledge you will be like God." Adam was already like God because God had given man His spirit and nature. So don't believe Satan's lie because all it will get you is a deaf ear from God. We live in a humanistic world today where it is full of self will, self righteousness, and all the works of and for self. But if you want real strength, it comes through humbleness toward God. These are the issues that keep prayer from being answered. We have to let go of the haughty spirit that the world says is okay.
This kind of spirit goes before a fall. Man fell into this fall nature of Satan's. He says, I can do it on my own, and we don't need God's sources or direction. All gifts come from God so we shouldn't think too highly of ourselves. That is why there's no prayer in the church today, because of lack of needing God. Self reliant people think there is no need to fast and pray. Proverbs 29:23 says, "A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble spirit."
God wants us to seek His will for our lives. Be careful not to allow pride to enter your heart. It got Satan thrown out of heaven quicker than lightening, and it will take YOU from the presence of God just as quickly.
2. SIN
Psalm 66:18-19 clearly tells us, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me: But verily God hath heard me; He hath attended to the voice of my prayer." Now, God hears repentance when it comes before Him with a contrite heart. But I'm talking about willful sin after you've been saved, where you ignore His word on sins to not commit.
God will not answer the prayer of those who live contrary to His word. Does the Lord have to deal with you over and over about an iniquity? He will not answer your prayers until you get this thing out of your life. You have got to allow Christ to free you from the law of sin and death. If we keep practicing sin we become a slave to it. Look at Romans 6:16, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?"
Whoever you yield your life to that's who will control you. Who does your church members yield themselves too? Grace is not a license to sin. 1 Peter 3:12 says, "For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
God is Holy and His nature is Holy. There is no test or temptation that God will not make a way for you to escape from. 1 John says if you do sin, "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." Jesus is our family lawyer in the Kingdom. And in verse 6 it says, "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as He walked."
If we repent, He restores us, but He will not answer the prayers of the unrighteous. He restores us to righteousness and positions us with Him for fellowship with Him. The pure in heart seek God. A pure heart understands the Word, and seeks understanding from the Lord.
3. STRIFE
There is a lot of different ways we can have strife in our life but for the sake of defeating Satan, I want to talk here about the strife between a husband and and wife. That is strife that corrupts the marriage union and covenant with the Lord as well.
Look at what 1 Peter 3:7 has to say about prayers of the husband being hindered, "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered."
So you can see here that you cannot have your prayers answered if you have continual strife with your spouse. That is because you have hurt the balance and have become out of the spirit with oneness with your spouse and with the Lord.
When there is strife in a marriage, it is a dark spiritual force attacking. When there is tranquility, answered prayer abounds. You have to understand that the marriage covenant is like our covenant with the Lord. Ephesians 5 shows us this clearly. You can't show me a marriage that has strife and then try to convince me that they are all pleasing and walking in covenant with the Lord. It is impossible. If you are displeasing in the marriage covenant then you are going to be displeasing in your relationship with the Lord, and it's going to show up in unanswered prayer.
We are to give to each other and love each other in the marriage covenant as Christ loved and gave himself to the church. The husband is to carry the heavier load, and God holds him accountable for how he provides for his family and he is to be the spiritual leader in his home. That means he prays over his family, he takes his family to church, he sets guidelines as to how his house will serve the Lord, he reads the word together with his family. Read 1 Corinthians 7. The devil doesn't come up into a man's home that serves the Lord like this. We have lost truth in this nation of what a Godly home is. That's why you see depressed wives, the devil attacking your children, parents turning against children and children against parents. Because we said, prayer is not important anymore in our homes and schools.
You can take one righteous spouse and change things in your home. Your unbelieving spouse can be sanctified through you because the marriage covenant is Holy and undefiled. Your children are blessed through the undefiled marriage covenant.
Everybody wants the church to be Holy again. But it starts in your home and when we have covenant marriages again, we will see our churches come back into covenant. We have dissention in our churches and strife because we've lost the truth of the word and what it means to live a righteous life. We have a form of it but our hearts are far from it.
You see, the devil will use small things to create division. Pastor Nelson tells of how the devil worked him up one time in the middle of dissention over a jar of Coffee Mate. He said he and his wife hadn't been married long and they would hold these once a week bible studies in their home. Well, they had one coming up that night and so they stopped by the store to pick up a few things. As they were driving home his wife asked, "Did you get everything on the list?"
"Well almost," he said, "all except the Coffee Mate", because it had gone from .89 cents to $1.89 and he just wasn't going to pay that. Well, his wife kept looking at him and saying, "I just can't believe that you left the coffee Mate off all because of a dollar." Well she kept on until finally he looked at her and said, "Right now I would pay $20 for a jar of Coffee Mate."
Sometimes we allow the little foxes to destroy the vine. His wife was a detailed person when having guests over and didn't want the company to have coffee without the creamer. Well, like always with disputes, he said, "and ah ha, nobody there even asked for cream because I was just going to give them milk for their coffee."
He said, "later I realized that strife like this is what causes a cancer to begin to grow in your marriage, and I thank the Lord for showing me this revelation early in my marriage as I was driving to Duke one day to pray for a little boy with cancer. I touched this little boy and he was healed but and as I did I could see this cancer growing that you couldn't see with the natural eye."
You see, we don't think these little divisions in our communication is hurting anything but one day we wake up and our marriages are eaten up with the cancer of division by the devil. Families love one another but when a crisis happens you can see how they say hurtful things to one another. But that is the time when we need to bridle our tongues until the high emotions are settled down.
4. UNFORGIVENESS
In the model prayer that Jesus gave us in Matthew 6:12, "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," we can see how he repeats the forgiveness part a second and third time on down in verses 15.
I forgive, is more than words, but it is an act of doing. It is an act of love and it comes from Christ's spirit
in you. A forgiving heart flows out of the recreated spirit.
Joseph could have been bitter at Potipher's wife, or the Butler, or the brothers for selling him into slavery. But what Joseph said was, "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good." Joseph is a foreshadowing of Christ, and Christ said, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they are doing." Powerful words right there. Had Jesus not forgiven you and me, we would be in a devil's hell right now.
Let's take a look at unforgiveness in 2 Corinthians 2:10-11, "To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also: for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ: lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. So, it is clear here in this scripture that unforgiveness is a device from Satan. Satan will get an advantage over you if you harbor bitterness and unforgiveness. That's why I guard my heart from any contamination of Satan's entering it, because it will stop your prayers from being answered.
You hear a lot of people say, I forgive them but I will never forget. Well, that's not a spirit or the mind of Christ. It's the first cousin to unforgiveness. Hosea 5:15 says, "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offense, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early." This is why some people cannot get their prayers answered because of these types of offenses. You don't kill giants with offenses in your heart. Sometimes Satan puts division in your marriage just so he can throw you off from doing something else the Lord has for you to do, a distraction from the Lord, or to steal your blessings.
This lesson was written under the teaching of Rev. Jerry Nelson at Westmoreland PHC. If you would like this teaching series on CD or taught at your church please contact djbraman@gmail.com or contact Westmorelandphc.org
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