December 29, 2019
All Scripture from NIV unless otherwise indicated.
Today, as we conclude the year, I want to get back to our series on prayer. I don’t know if it has been helpful to you or not, but I hope that in some way you have gained a greater understanding about prayer than you had before we began. I did write a series of articles on prayer for the paper based on a couple of these sermons and have received some positive feedback from the community about them. This week I want to explore the topic, “Hindrances to Prayer”, and I hope to conclude next week with the topic of “When You Should Pray.”
Today’s sermon, in my opinion, is one of the most important topics we will have examined concerning prayer. The previous topics have all been positively stated in that they tell us how we should pray. Today we will look some of the negative things that we associate with prayer, things that Torrey calls, “Hindrances to Prayer”. Torrey lists seven, and I have added an eighth because I have noticed something in my life that has hindered my own prayer life.
The first hindrance to prayer mentioned by Torrey is our own selfishness. I don’t suppose any of you ever ask God for something selfishly, do you? You ask for something just because you want it, even though deep down you know you don’t need it. James wrote: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James 4: 3 Jesus told a parable that illustrates James point very well.
He said: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. ‘”Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry. But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” Luke 12: 16 – 21
Although this parable isn’t related to prayer, do you see how God views our selfishness? We have been talking about God giving us what we ask for, Jesus said, ask for anything in my name and it will be given. But we must first examine our lives and see if we are the kind of person who when we receive something from God, tends to hoard our riches for selfish reasons, or are we one who uses the riches God gives us to glorify Him. In other words, are we rich toward God, or are we selfish towards God? Torrey said; “The true purpose in prayer is that God may be glorified in the answer. If we ask any petition merely that we may receive something to use for our own pleasure or for our own gratification in one way or another, we ‘ask amiss’ and need not expect to receive what we ask.”
A second hindrance to prayer is un-confessed sin in your life. The prophet Isaiah wrote: “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God.” Isaiah 59: 1 & 2 Sin separates us from God. When you became a Christian, all your sins were forgiven, and you were reconciled to God. But if you have un-confessed sin in your life it can still have an impact on your spiritual life, and one area that it impacts you is your prayer life. There are many Christians who are powerless in their Christian walk, in their service, in their worship of God, and in their prayer life because un-confessed sin causes a separation between you and God. And it can be such a separation that God can’t hear your prayers.
God wants to hear you. God wants to answer your prayers. God has untold riches in heaven waiting to pour out unto you. But the more you sin and either forget, or refuse to confess it to God, the more hard hearing God becomes toward you. 1 John 1:9 tells us that God forgives our sins when we confess them. Ask Him to reveal any un-confessed sin in your life each time you go to Him in prayer, confess it, and then ask what you will of God.
A third hindrance to prayer is relegating God to someplace other than first in your life. God spoke to Ezekiel and asked him: “Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all?” Ezekiel 14:3
What is an idol? The second of the Ten Commandments refers to any graven image of any created thing. God has no visible form, so to create something that could be looked upon and bowed down to and called God, was an idol.
But here Ezekiel refers to idols in the heart. We set up idols in the heart when we put anything in our life before God. It might be our spouse or children. It might be our jobs. It might be our material possessions. It might be money, or power, or fame. It might even be our religious traditions.
Anything that has a higher priority in our life than our relationship with God, becomes an idol, and we must subject it to a lower place of importance in our life than if we are to expect God to answer our prayers.
A fourth hindrance to prayer is being stingy toward those in need. Solomon, who was the richest man in the world wrote; “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.” Proverbs 21: 13 How easy it is to shut our ear to the poor. We are becoming more and more callous toward those who really are in need because of what we perceive to be people who play the system. But that doesn’t excuse us from helping those who truly are in need.
God has made each one of you a steward of His resources. He has promised to meet all your needs. Matthew 6: 33 And He promises that those who are generous in giving will receive generously. Luke 6: 38 He even challenges you to test Him to see if you can out give Him in Malachi 3: 10.
One of the defining characteristics of pure and faultless religion is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress” James 1: 27 I don’t think James is saying that you should check in on them from time to time, but to help meet their financial needs. Are you stingy toward those in need? It could affect your prayer life.
Another hindrance to prayer is that of having an unforgiving spirit. Mark 11: 25 says that forgiveness of your sins is dependent upon you forgiving others. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus tells His disciples to pray, (in relation to forgiveness of sins), “Forgive us our debts (sins), as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
In other words, when we pray this prayer, we are asking God to forgive our sins in the same way that we forgive those who sin against us. That may be one of the hardest teaching of Jesus, and for us, it is especially hard because we repeat this prayer every Sunday. When someone does you wrong, what is your attitude toward them? Do you wish bad things for their lives? Do you fantasize about some kind of revenge that you might take upon them? Do you just determine to try and avoid them so you don’t have to deal with them? Do you hold a grudge against them and maybe tell yourself, “I will never forgive them for what they did to me!”
Yes, this is a hard lesson, and it may be the hardest one area for you to reconcile in your life in relation to prayer, but it may also be the one that is the most important. Earlier I mentioned that un-forgiven sin is a hindrance to prayer. How can you expect to be forgiven of your sin if you have an unforgiving spirit toward others? Jesus says you can’t. Forgive others if you expect God to hear your prayers.
This next hindrance is directed primarily toward husbands, but I believe in application today, we can infer that it deals with the marital relationship. Peter said “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” I Peter 3: 7
The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians related the marriage relationship to that of the relationship that the church has with Christ. He told husbands to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. If you’re marital relationship is not what it should be because of sin, selfishness, strife or any other number of issues that attribute to problems in your marriage, then your prayers
to God may be hindered.
A seventh hindrance to prayer is to ask God for something, and then doubt that He will answer. James wrote concerning asking for wisdom, “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord.” The opposite of faith is doubt. The opposite of belief is unbelief. Many of our prayers are hindered because we ask God, not really believing that He will answer. We must develop a confidence that God will answer our prayer. I think that might include having the understanding that He might not say yes, and/or that He might not answer right away. But we need to have confidence that God will answer according to His will and in His time.
Finally, I have discovered another hindrance to prayer in my life. That hindrance is a negative attitude. Philippians 4: 4 says “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Likewise, James 1: 2 says “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds”.
I have found that when a negative attitude gets a foothold in my life, whether planted by myself or by someone else’s negativism, that it pervades into every area of my thought life, including my prayer life. It is like yeast. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5: 6 concerning the working of yeast, “Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?”
When I try to pray, and I have negative thoughts in my life, I cannot focus on praying, rather I keep straying to the negative thoughts.
When my thought life turns negative, I need to go to God’s Word and be reminded to think on good things, and one of the verses I tend to go to is Philippians 4: 8 which reads in part; “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, etc.” If you want God to hear your prayers, get rid of that negative attitude. I don’t know about you, but I struggle enough with prayer on a good day. If I don’t address these hindrances to prayer in my life, I cannot begin to have a good prayer relationship with God.
If you have listened to the positive things that I have shared with you concerning prayer over the course of this series, but still find yourself powerless in your prayer life, maybe you need to examine those things I have mentioned today, to see if you might have one or more of these things standing in your way of answered prayer. If you find any of these hindrances, “Selfish prayers, Unconfessed sin, Not putting God first, Stinginess toward those in need, Unforgiving Spirit, Bad relationship with spouse, Doubt, Having a negative attitude, then confess them to God, and begin to claim His promises of answered prayer.