When I meet someone for the first time, the conversation is generally normal until they discover that I’m a Pastor at Bethel Chapel Church. If I ask anything about their religious background, the typical response goes something like this, “Oh, I believe in God, and I pray all the time.”
I don’t have any reason to doubt what they are saying, but I have to wonder if they know for sure that God is really listening. After all, when we’re talking to someone on a cell phone and the call is dropped, we don’t just keep talking. None of us would continue the conversation if we knew that the person on the other end of the call wasn’t listening.
The Bible talks a lot about prayer, but did you know that God does not promise to listen to every prayer? Here is an example. At one point God said this to the Jews: “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, Why would God turn a deaf ear to your prayers? “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but they will not find me” (Proverbs 1:28). Let me show you three reasons why God may not be hearing your prayers. The first roadblock to prayer can be how we feel about what God hates. “If I regard wickedness [“look at sin with pleasure”] in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (Psalm 66:18). God is not fooled when we love our sin at the same time we are asking Him to help us. This is true even when we are performing strict religious actions. “Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13). When God withholds His blessings from us, it is not because He cannot bless us. It may be because we love our sin more than we love Him. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear” (Isaiah 59:1–2). Selfishness is another barrier to effective prayer. Like any good father, God wants us to ask Him for the things we need. God is not impressed, though, with self-seeking requests. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:3). We exist to serve and glorify God—not the other way around. “Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing” (Psalm 100:2). Lastly, before we can be sure that God will answer our prayers, we must have a genuine relationship with Him. A careful reading of the best known passages in the Bible makes this clear. For example, the Lord’s Prayer begins with, “Our Father…” and the 23rd Psalm says that “The LORD is my Shepherd.” Sin separates us from the God who made us, but Jesus came to remove that barrier! In Jesus “we have boldness and confident access [prayer] through faith in Him” (Ephesians 3:12). Jesus made that possible because He “bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness…” (1 Peter 2:24). A relationship with Christ brings a whole new aspect to prayer. Any good relationship thrives on time spent together. Prayer is not just a time to ask God for things. it is also a conversation where a Christian can share his or her life with God. Paul said that he considered his worldly benefits “to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). Pastor Tim Keller explains it this way: “It’s not enough to turn to Christianity simply because it meets some perceived needs. Christianity is not a consumer good. You should turn to it only if it is true.” If your prayer life is dull and routine, then maybe you need to surrender your life to Christ. When you do that, prayers will never be a waste of time.
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