Hindrances to Effective Prayer

Hindrances to Effective Prayer

“This effort to discover the reasons for our leanness in prayer is intended not to discourage praying, but to find the causes underlying our ineffectual prayers and remove them. There is no virtue in continuing grimly to pray on when there are factors present that make our prayers of no effect. We should pray on, but we must pray aright, or our prayers will continue to be fruitless.” A. W. Tozer

Have you ever felt a hindrance in your prayer life? Have you ever felt like your prayers were merely hitting the ceiling and not getting through to God? Because prayer and intercession are so important, each of us must be alert to possible hindrances in our personal prayer lives. We need to be aware of the numerous ways our prayers can be diminished because of personal sin in our lives. We must war for our prayer lives, as a mighty warrior going to battle. You and I are in the greatest of wars against the powers of evil. We must lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us so that we might be the glorious warriors who conquer in the mighty strength of the Lord with great spiritual power released for His glory. We need to ask God to search our hearts and show us personally anything that can hinder our intercession. We read in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”

“One of the clearest truths in Scripture regarding prayer - yet a truth that is all but forgotten by believers - is that when we have sin in our lives, the lines of communication between us and God are cut. So many of our prayers are never heard because we have not dealt with our sin first. Psalm 66:18 tells us that ‘if I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.’” Jonathan Graf

Possible Hindrances to Prayer

“When we pray for God to cleanse our hearts and our motives, it is important to yield the search-and-destroy mission to Him. He is perfectly able to bring wrong motives or any other sinful pattern to our attention and to lead us into repentance.” Janet Leighton

What are some of the things that can block our prayer lives? It is wise for us to carefully consider the following hindrances and meditate on the corresponding Scriptures. Evaluate your own prayer life, answer these questions, and ask God to make you a cleansed vessel so that His life can flow through you unhindered.

* An unforgiving spirit - Is there anyone I haven’t forgiven? “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins” (Mark 11:25).

* Mistreatment of family members - Have I mistreated my wife, children, brothers or sisters or have I been unloving? “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).

* Neglecting the poor - Am I neglecting the poor in any way? “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered” (Proverbs 21:13).

* Idols in the heart - Is there anything in my life that is taking the place of God? “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)

* A wrong motive and selfishness - Are there any wrong motives in my prayers? “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).

* Disobedience - Have I disobeyed God in any way? “If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable” (Proverbs 28:9).

* Sin in the heart - Is there sin in any area of my life? “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer” (Psalm 66:18-19).

* Unbelief - Am I believing God to answer my prayers? “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like the wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does” (James 1:6-8).

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:10).

Lord, I pray that you would search my heart and see if there is any offensive way in me. Show me any possible hindrances to powerful and effective prayer. I want to be your channel of blessing. Reveal to me any sin in my heart and life. Show me any area of disobedience or unbelief. I choose to believe in the mighty power of prayer every day. Help me to forgive every person that has hurt me. Show me any way that I may have hurt any family members, and give me the grace to make it right and ask for forgiveness. Reveal to me any idol in my heart and anything that I may be putting ahead of my relationship with you. I choose not to neglect prayer but to grow in my prayer life. Make my prayers effective. Teach me to pray with power. Help me to pray with great faith even in the difficult areas of my lives. I thank you that you are making me an open channel of blessings to others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Evelyn Christenson, the founder of United Prayer Ministries and author of numerous books on prayer, tells the story of how she and two other intercessors began to pray together on a weekly basis for their church. They discovered that their own spiritual condition would determine whether God would answer their prayer. They based their prayer meeting on Psalm 66:18 that says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” God began to do a deep work in their personal lives first. “In prayer, we asked God to search our lives for everything that was sin in His sight. For six miserable weeks - to our continuing astonishment - He dug deeper and deeper while we confessed and repented. Finally, at the end of that time, He released us to pray for our church.” The results were astounding. For the next six months they had revival in their church because they had been praying for God to cleanse their own lives first and then they had prayed for their church. I don’t think we can fully grasp how powerful prayer is when we remove the hindrances in our own lives. There is a potency and effectiveness in prayer that is available to each one of us. God is able to answer prayer most powerfully when there is an open channel of His blessings. He wants you and me to be those unhindered channels of blessing!

“The Scriptures are clear about the potency of prayer. ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man,’ wrote the inspired James, ‘availeth much’ (James 5:16). With this the whole Bible and Christian experience agree: prayer is effective. When it is not answered, something is wrong. The same apostle who affirmed the effective power of prayer admitted also that prayer is sometimes ineffective: ‘Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts’ (James 4:3). In spite of the difficulties surrounding prayer, it is still the highest activity in which a human being can engage.” A. W. Tozer

Together in the Harvest,

Debbie Przybylski
Intercessors Arise
deb@intercessorsarise.org
www.intercessorsarise.org

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