Every farmer who wants a good harvest must follow certain basic rules. First, harvest begins with planting, and planting begins with clearing the field. Miraculous answers to prayers are a harvest from good, biblical praying. When a church or believers experience poor harvests from their prayers it is directly linked to failure to properly clear the spiritual field and preparing the soil. Here are some major blocks hindering our churches today.
1. SIN - The church is soft on sin. Believers live on the phrase: “that does not matter.” Or we misquote the scripture: “His grace is sufficient for me” instead of confessing, forsaking and resisting sin. Psalm 15:1-5, Psalm 66:18; Isaiah 59:1-2; John 9:31, Prov. 28:13 are clear on the devastating effect of sin on prayers. Praying with defilement or pollution is a recipe for failure. When you have an emergency or crisis pressing on you but find your heart and hands dirtied by sin, ignore the crisis and cry to God for mercy. First repent your errors honestly, confess them thoroughly plead the blood of Jesus, and forsake them resolutely. The crisis will dissolve faster than all the fasts and sacrifices you wanted to go through.
2. OFFENCES UNRECONCILED - A praying heart cannot move heaven when it carries grievances against its fellow man. That praying voice cannot be heard in heaven when aggrieved voices from fellowmen are also crying in pain at the wounds received from the person praying Matt.5:23-24; Mark 11:25-26. Christ commanded that we first seek reconciliation with aggrieved persons AT ANY COST in order to clear the way for miracle prayer-answers. The church today is paying a terrible price because of grievances, judgmental attitude, uncharitable spirit, hateful criticism, penchant for creating disharmony. These things are killers in themselves. They are prayer-stoppers.
3. UNGODLY MOTIVES IN PRAYING - Simon the “repented” sorcerer, prayed for spiritual power like others (Acts 8:15-22) but his motive was impure. He wanted to set up shop and re-sell power at a profit. He got a curse instead. Our carnal spirit and agenda often set us on a collision course with God (I Cor.2:11-12). Instead of miracle prayer-answers our lives are endangered. That is not God’s loving purpose. A believer must grow in the spirit, must allow God’s Spirit to purify and mould up his desires into God’s.
4. SELF-CENTRED PRAYING - Much of believers’ prayers are what one may describe as “me… me… me…” prayers today. As you read James 4:1-3 it will dawn on you that such prayers do not get God’s attention. No one is condemned for asking God for his needs. But prayers that show blindness to the needs of others, of the church of God, the poor, the sick, the needy, the problems of our wider society fall short of God’s priorities. Such self–centred praying does not get divine attention and so our problems harden! God says “seek first my kingdom”. Get involved with the cries of other needy, even if you are one. (Matt. 6:33; Prov. 21:13)
5. UNBIBLICAL LANGUAGE - “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34). That is why we need to examine our prayer language and face up to what it reveals about our heart’s condition. In Luke 9:54-56 it is recorded that James and John, Christ’s close disciples, wanted to pray down fire on certain hostile villagers “like Elijah did,” but Christ rebuked and stopped them. An Old Testament man may have rightly prayed a vengeance prayer because he lived in the dispensation of “an eye for an eye.” But Christ in this new dispensation of grace cancelled all that. Matt. 5:38-39, 43-45. When a modern day believer regularly prays with expressions strange to the spirit of Christ, he does not have Christ’s Spirit and cannot validly claim to be a Christian – whatever miracle he or she may perform or receive. You must make sure you receive your breakthrough from God, not from demonic spirit of violence or spirit of miracles. Spiritual ignorance or shallowness is responsible for the errors and mix-ups pervading the prayer language we hear in the modern church. Let us get this right – the Spirit of God will give us only the language of God when we pray (Rom. 8:26-27) and that will harmonize with the Bible. Anything less is unbiblical!
YOUR PRAYER LIFE COULD DETERMINE YOUR HEAVEN OR HELL
These major errors are like the weeds, stones, tree stumps and bad soils in the church’s prayer life today. They cry aloud for attention so that we can reap greater harvests in our prayer life. Otherwise we shall continue to hear many explosive prayers but little to show for them. That is not God’s plan for you.
But there is something worse. That is when “believers” leave these truths to hunt around for miracles by all means. In the end they may boast of miracle answers to “prayers”, not realizing that Satan is the source. We are already in the season of the miracle-working anti-Christ (2 Thess. 2:8-10). He is described as “the mystery of iniquity”, and since God cannot father iniquity, that miracle is not of God. Such people risk verse 12 of that chapter: “that they all may be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness”. That shall not be your portion in Jesus’ name!
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