7 Things that Hinder Prayer

Introduction

Last week we looked at why sometimes God delays in answering our prayers. The implication there was that nothing on our end is keeping our prayers from being heard, but God in his sovereignty has chosen not to answer them yet. Tonight, we are going to look at 7 things that hinder prayer. As I studied this past week I came across an illustration that was so good.

We all know that when we got saved all our sins were forgiven and we were granted access to God; so why is it that sometimes it feels like God isn’t listening to my prayers. Sometimes its just me feeling like God isn’t listening, but the consistent teaching of scripture is that there are times when something in my life hinders God from listening to my prayers. It isn’t that my relationship with God has been destroyed but something stands in between me and God.

Imagine for a second, a man and a woman who fall in love. They spend every moment of their lives together, enjoying life. They get married and the first couple years are great. After two years, the wife begins to drink a lot. One night, the man is looking for his wife and finds here drunk passed out on the sidewalk by a bar. He swoops in and picks her up. She doesn’t know who he is or whats going on and in her drunken stupor tries to kiss him. Her breath stinks and she is practically unconscious. He is even a little upset that she would let this happen to herself; so he turns away. The quote I saw this week is that Jesus doesn’t kiss his drunken wife. Though it may be odd for the wife to be the one in this position, I use this example in this way because we are the bride of Christ.

He loves us. He forgives us. He cares for us, but in that moment, he can’t be close to us. Parents understand this feeling. There kids may do a lot of hurtful things and maybe they can’t be as close to each other, but they still love their kids. Unfortunately, sometimes our relationship with God is affected as well. I don’t believe God can’t answer our prayers when these things are present, but they are hindered. God is sovereign. He can show mercy and hear those desperate prayers. But somethings do interfere with our prayers being answered.

Unconfessed sin

I start here because everything else is really just a subcategory of sin. The bible highlights some that are specifically nauseous to God but any sin that I treasure in my heart will hinder my relationship with God and my prayers.

Sin that is treasured- Psalm 66:18 “If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear me:” The point of this verse is that sin becomes a focus of my heart. The problem is one of divided loyalty and focus. Is sin going to take priority or is God. What is it that consumes my thinking throughout the day? Jesus said “No man can serve two masters” I believe imbedded in this statement is an assumption of an unwillingness to give up that sin. We are all sinners; so if we took this in its strictest sense, God would never hear our prayers. The issue isn’t do you ever sin, but does sin have you heart. A Christian who sins, but sin doesn’t rule his focus confesses and forsakes his sin.

2. The problem is not with God- Isaiah 59:1–2 “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; Neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, And your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” God’s hand is not withdrawn. He still reaches out to us, but we have turned our backs on him. His ear has no deficiency keeping him from being able to hear our prayers. Whenever there is a distance between us and God, most of the time it is us who moved away. I say most because I believe there are some cases where God purposefully hides his face to grow our faith.

1. Our sin puts up barriers. separated between you and your God

2. Our sin is like a cloud that hides his face. It makes it harder for us to see God’s active hand in our lives. We can struggle with ingratitude or bitterness because we think we have been forgotten.

Selfish Motives

The next reason our prayers are hindered is selfishness. One of the main purposes for prayer is intimacy with God. A love toward God and a love for others, but when our love gets turned inside, it distracts us from loving God and others.

James 4:3 “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”

James says we ask amiss or with wrong motives. These motives are not just misplaced motives but evil motives. I don’t know what is in your hearts when you ask, and to be honest most of us don’t know whats truly in our hearts, but there are some prayers that are merely because we want to make ourselves happy. And according to James that motive is evil.

The word consume here speaks of using it up completely. So there is no concern for others or what remains being used for God. We want to be satisfied completely. The word lusts here is not the normal word for lusts either. In this verse it refers to hedonism. These people are consumed only with pleasure.

Ignoring the Word of God

Proverbs 28:9 “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, Even his prayer shall be abomination.”

The third reason our prayers are hindered is ignoring God’s word. Next week when we talk about answered prayer we will notice a connection between abiding in God’s word and having our prayers answered. But let me ask you this: what does it say about the heart of a person who never wants or makes time to spend with God?

The word turn away means that he causes himself to face another direction. The key word is causes here and it comes from the fact that this word uses the Hifil stem. This isn’t even forgetting to spend time with God although there is still a problem there. This is outright choosing to ignore the word and turning my heart to something else.

Every day you have a choice: are you going to spend time with God or are you going to just go about your business. I know there are a million excuses you could give, but all of us have the same amount of time in a day. It all comes down to a choice of priorities. We often sacrifice the important on the altar of the urgent. We feel we have a lot of things that urgently need to be done, but we let them take over the most important thing.

In surgery, doctors follow a concept called triage. Triage allows them to prioritize what needs to be done. Let’s say, we are in surgery and someone had a heart attack and when they fell they also broke their arm. Both are serious problems. How do I know which one to treat first? What if I ignored the heart problem and set about to splint the broken arm, would that be a good decision? No the heart attack is a life and death issue it is more important than the broken arm. Later I will take care of the arm.

Is it possible we don’t spend time in God’s word because we don’t see it as a spiritual life or death situation. There is no experiencing a relationship with God without it. If you forsake this, your relationship with God will lie dead on the table.

Injustice

Proverbs 21:13 “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, He also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.”

This one is serious because I think many of us have developed hard hearts toward those who are needy. We all have in our minds an idea about the worthy needy and the unworthy needy, but scripture doesn’t seem to make that distinction. God says if we will not listen to their cries, he will not listen to ours.

At root of this is the fact that God is a God of justice, he wants to see people treated right, mercy, he has compassion even on those who deserve to be where they are and love, he reaches out to help those in need. God even sent his son to die for his enemies, imagine that. We can talk about the wisdom of helping the poor, but we must not ignore the character of God when having that discussion.

Family Disfunction

Another hinderance to prayer is family disfunction. In 1 Peter 3:7, Peter focuses on one specific disfunction in the home: Husbands who don’t treat their wives right.

1 Peter 3:7 “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.”

In this verse, husbands are told to:

dwell according to knowledge- learn about your wife, her wants, desires, likes, dislikes, dream and then let that knowledge impact how you interact with her.

honor her- Biblically the husband is the head of the home, but that does not mean he is more important. Peter tells the husband he is to honor her. Respect and show it.

treat her carefully- weaker vessel- the focus here is on treating her with care like you would an expensive dish. We don’t play frisbee with antique plates from the 1800’s.

treat her as an equal- Though the husband is the head and a leader, God says we are heirs together. We both are heirs. I believe the grace of life emphasizes the fact that we share a life together.

How does this practically affect our prayers?

1. The relationship is going to be undermined, and therefore the partnership in prayer will be threatened. Husbands, we should be partnering with our wives in prayer. If we are on bad terms that isn’t possible.

2. His own heart will begin to grow cold, and his own prayer life will dry up. If I am treating her like this, it will have an effect on my own heart.

3. The answers to his prayers may be withheld because he’s not showing mercy to his wife. Knowing that God is a God of justice, he will not stand by and ignore the way you treat your wife.

Unforgiveness

Mark 11:25 “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

Another sin that hinders our prayers is unforgiveness. Jesus told a parable about a man who had a great debt. He was going to be thrown in prison by the ruler whom he owed, but when he pled for his life, the ruler showed mercy. Which he didn’t deserve by the way. Immediately, he went and found someone who owed him money and threatened to throw him in jail if he didn’t pay.

Jesus point was that we have all been forgiven a great debt so we should be willing to forgive others. When we refuse to be willing to forgive, we shut ourselves off from forgiveness.

Doubt

Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

James 1:6–7 “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.”

Unbelief was probably the greatest sin that Israel faced coming out of Egypt and it isn’t a sin that God will put up with. After all, he made them wander in the wilderness for 40 years. They didn’t get to enter the promise land because of it. Do we believe God when we ask him for things?

Conclusion

There has been a lot in this message tonight, but how many of us are wasting our time in prayer because we have not dealt with sin. This is why I always include a time of confession in my private prayer time. Tonight can be a point where you decide, “I am not going to let sin get between me and God.” Won’t you spend some time making things right with him tonight.