Hindrances to Answered Prayer - Part 1

Friday, July 5, 2019 3:54:22 PM

Prayer is technically one of the core building blocks of leading an effective Christian life. When we study the Bible, one of the main subjects that keeps on coming up is prayer. This is consistent all through the Old and New Testament.

What is prayer? Prayer can be easily defined as any type of communication that we have with God. There are different aspects of prayer. It can be a simple conversation with God. It can involve worship, supplication, intercession and/or confession. As believers, we should hopefully be familiar with the different types of prayer and their importance.

While we can spend a lot of time talking about the different aspects of prayer, my focus for the next few months is on talking about the key hindrances to answered prayer. Since there are many problem areas that can cause God to not answer our prayers, I will break up this discussion into several teaching sessions.

Why Doesn't God Answer Prayer?

Do you ever wonder why God is not answering your prayers? Do you sometimes feel that your prayer life is simply ineffective? The scriptures in the book of James 5:16b say that “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective”. If our prayers are not powerful and effective as the scripture says, we need examine our lives in order for us to determine the cause of the problem.

Even though it may be difficult for us to exactly pinpoint what may be causing God to not answer our prayers, we can use the scriptures to look at the common prayer problem areas. Based on the insight we get from the scriptures, we can then search our lives and let the Holy Spirit point us to the problem areas in our lives that may be hindering God from answering our prayers.

Based on my study of the scriptures, I (with the help of the Holy Spirit) have been able to identify 14 different problem areas in our lives that can hinder answered prayer. These problem areas include; 

  1. Pride
  2. Offences
  3. Self Dependence
  4. Sin in our lives. 
  5. Failure to pray in faith.
  6. Lack of Persistence In Prayer
  7. Unforgiveness
  8. Failure to ask with the right motives
  9. Failure to ask according to God’s will
  10. Bitterness
  11. Disobedience to God’s will
  12. Discord in the home
  13. Idols in our lives
  14. Not Surrendering to God’s will

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list by any means. I will be covering these problem areas in the next few teaching sessions.

Please join me next month as we tack the first problem area, which is Pride.