Welcome back to Devotion for Today- now in its tenth year of bringing
you devotionals by way of the internet. For those of you who are
regular readers, I offer a very lame apology as to the recent
inconsistency of these reads for the following reason: computer
software. Early November I started cranking out devotionals and
sending them out as usual, along with hundreds of emails to church
members and friends, when I started getting emails, and personal
contacts from people saying: "Jeff, what has happened to your
devotionals? Aren't you sending them out any more?" At first, I
ignored the comments, thinking that a few of them might be somewhat more
computer illiterate than myself (if that were possible!). But then
there were some who became upset with me that I had not written them or
informed them of activities, or kept up important communications with
them. I knew now that something was wrong. It turns out that the
client email software I was using was able to receive email, but not
send it. And since I send out these devotionals to hundreds of people
every day- I could not just use the web server because they would
accommodate no more than fifty addresses per send.
Thanks to my son who discovered the problem and found another software
package to download, I am finally able to hit "send" again with
confidence. So hopefully I am back on the road to better consistency.
But the predicament caused me to reflect very seriously about prayer:
not just because I was praying that my emails would get sent, but about
the efficacy of prayer. In other words, does God always hear our prayers?
I would like to say first of all, "Yes, God always hears our prayers,"
but that would not be exactly true. God does and can hear our prayers,
but there must be certain conditions that are met on the part of the one
who is praying. I am going to treat this subject for the remainder of
the week so that I don't just give a gloss-over answer. May I submit to
you that if God does not hear all of our prayers, it is not because of a
lack of desire on His part to hear them, nor is it because of some kind
of prayer back-log so that He is not able to receive our prayers like
when the long-distance trunk line is so busy that it goes into meltdown.
No, one of the reasons why God does not hear all of our prayers is
because of the spiritual condition, namely; the sinful heart of the
pray-er. Allow me to guide you to
Psalm 66: 16-20:
16 Come and hear, all you who fear God, And I will declare what He has
done for my soul. 17 I cried to Him with my mouth, And He was extolled
with my tongue.18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not
hear.19 But certainly God has heard me;
He has attended to the voice of my prayer.20 Blessed be God, Who has not
turned away my prayer, Nor His mercy from me!"
I call your attention particularly to verse 18: If I regard iniquity in
my heart, the Lord will not hear." The Lord will not hear what? The
obvious subject is found in the context: prayer. The primary reason
why God does not hear prayer is not because of deafness, inability to
hear, or unwillingness to hear. It is because there are times that our
prayers are accompanied by sinful hearts and attitudes. These are
spirits which God refuses to abide.
I live in close proximity to a large beach resort area. Casualness is
very acceptable in most restaurants and places of business. But there
are places where they will let you know that being too casual is not
appropriate. As I stopped into a local IHOP, I noticed a sign which
read, "No shoes, no shirt, no service!" We might well think of God
displaying a similar sign which has absolutely nothing to do with our
outward attire, but the inward attitude of our hearts. For example, if
we go to God with an attitude of arrogance, or blatantly come before God
with unconfessed sin, God will not be disposed to hear our prayers
because He does not abide the presence of sin. Naturally, if our aim or
purpose of prayer is to confess to God our sinfulness, then He will want
to hear our prayers because we will have a heart that is yielded to Him
in repentance.
God hears the prayers of the contrite, not the casual. I realize that
we have adopted casual as the lifestyle of the new millennium. There
are some things that are right about that, but a lot of things that are
wrong also (which is a whole other subject). It is true that because of
our new relationship with God we may approach Him with all the
confidence of a child approaching his father, just as long as it is
understood that we approach God respectfully, and not flippantly, and
without sinful hearts and attitudes. I will write more about this tomorrow.
Have a blessed day.
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