Question 5: "What can block my prayers and prevent God hearing me?"
Are all prayers heard by God? Or are there some prayers he just can't listen to, because they're not right? The Bible warns that, yes, there are some prayers like that. So how do you know that you are going to get through?
There are three big things that can go wrong.
(1) When you're unwilling to trust
Learning to pray is a bit like learning to swim, or learning to ride a bike. You need to have enough faith to believe that this might just work! That you won't sink down to the bottom of the pool and drown... or that the bike won't just topple over, letting you fall on the ground.
You might not have a lot of faith, but you do need enough to spur you into action. Once you overcome your natural fears and do something about it - everything happens from there.
So your prayers are going to be blocked if you've already decided in your head, "This is stupid. It's never going to work. There's no God anyway." Here's another bit from the Bible:
It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him. |
(2) When you're unwilling to change
700 years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah wrote to people who were complaining that God didn't seem to be listening to them. Here's what he had to say:
Look! Listen! |
"We’re a far cry from fair dealing," he explained, "and we’re not even close to right living. We long for light but sink into darkness, long for brightness but stumble through the night." God won't hear the prayers of people who are walking away from him in the opposite direction. Unless we're willing to turn around and listen to what he has to say - why should he give us what we ask? To do that would be only to encourage us in destructive behaviour! "Tough love" is what we need when we're like this!
(3) When you're unwilling to let him be God
The third reason our prayers can be blocked is that we're trying to dictate to God exactly what he should give us. We know best! So we instruct him that he must give us that job, or get a chance to go out with that girl. And when he gives us something a little different, we're angry because it wasn't precisely what we asked for! Or maybe God takes a little longer than we'd like - and then we get annoyed because we have a schedule in mind, and he just isn't keeping to it.
We don't call the shots. He does. And only when we're prepared to surrender to his will, and let God be God, are we in the right frame of mind to approach God and be heard.
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