These seven things are blocking your prayer life today. How's your prayer life doing? Do you feel
a sense of resistance? Do you feel a sense of two steps forward, three steps backwards? Can't put
your finger on it. What's really hindering me from living a life of prayer? I'm not talking
about prayer as a spare tire or an insurance card or in an emergency but as a lifestyle.
Now I want to share with you seven things that are blocking your prayer life and I believe as
you're hearing about it, the Lord's going to bring breakthrough for you in your prayer life.
I will use the example of Matthew 13 Jesus gives us the parable of all parables. It's the parable
that's the mother of all parables. Understanding this parable helps you to understand other things
about Jesus's kingdom. The first blockage of our prayer is the lack of understanding.
Lack of understanding is blocking your prayer. Many hear about prayer but do not understand
it. So Satan steals what they hear. In Matthew 13 Jesus talks about, people hear about the kingdom,
they don't understand it and then Satan blocks, Satan takes it away. Many do not understand why
they need to pray, so they never start. It seems to be pointless. Many people don't
understand how to pray, so they never start. It seems too confusing for them. What's the point
of prayer if God's going to do what God is going to do? Yet we see in the scripture that prayer a
lot of times changes us before it changes our circumstances and God many times in the Bible,
did things as an answer to prayer. He would come to Zechariah for example and says, your prayer
has been heard. He doesn't say yeah, I decided to give you a child. So God loves to partner with us.
So we must understand prayer matters but prayer is not only to get answers. Prayer is to get to know
God. Prayer is a communion. It's a fellowship. It's a two-way street. Sometimes it's a cry.
Sometimes it's communication and sometimes it's a warfare. Prayer is important and how to pray,
many people don't understand that and that is what blocking their prayer life. I have other videos
on how to practically pray, different things that you can use in prayer and those videos are linked
below on my YouTube channel. The second thing that's blocking prayer is lack of strength,
might be blocking your prayer life. Now the seed that was sown to another soil that didn't have a
lot of dirt and at first, everything sprouted and then the sun came up and bang, it was gone and
so what might be blocking your prayer is lack of fortitude. For example, many hear about prayer and
start out to pray with joy but when difficulties come, they have no strength. No fortitude. So they
leave the place of prayer. For example, they're physically tired because sitting motionless
before an invisible God can be physically taxing and tiring. Walking around praying can also wear
you out. So you feel like I'm tired. It could be emotionally tiring. This is boring you know what
is on sale? When is the game day? You know who's winning the football? I got more important things
to do. So it could be emotionally tiring that sun starts scorching your little thing that God
is doing in your life. Martin Luther said, Prayer is the sweat of the soul. If you think prayer is
just physical. No, think again. Prayer is the sweat of the soul. It's okay to feel a little
bit tired even emotionally also prayer could be spiritually tiring. Satan spiritually opposes
anyone who sets out on the path of prayer. Somehow praying is the hardest thing to do in the world.
It seems like anything else could be easier except prayer. You need fortitude. Fortitude, it's the
strength in the face of difficulty and adversity. Now David Martyn Jones said this about prayer. If
you have never had any difficulty in prayer, it is absolutely certain that you have never prayed.
Thank you for saying that because sometimes we go into prayer and we experience difficulty and we
quit. We're like oh well, I'm not enjoying this. It requires discipline so I'm going to quit. You
know God doesn't want this to be some kind of a painful sacrifice but sometimes prayer has certain
resistance, certain scorching of the sun wants to come and kill those things that the Lord is
doing and you just got to have that fortitude. You got to have that persistence to paralyze
the resistance. Come on somebody. The third thing that blocks our prayer is good life or busyness.
Enjoying life as it is. Being busy with work family, friends, food, entertainment, vacations,
parties and so forth and so on. Living only in the moment, steals, blocks your prayer. Jesus said
that. He talked about the third type of soil that killed the seed. In fact, the words Jesus used is
choke. If the first one, the bird stole it because they didn't understand it and so many people,
you don't pray because you just don't know why to pray and how to pray. The second one is there was
a lot of hype, very little dedication because things got hard and you quit. The third reason
that blocks your prayer is you got busy. It's actually things didn't get hard, life got good and
these thorns started to grow very big busyness and they went and choked your spiritual life. Busyness
will choke out the spiritual life if it squeezes out your prayer. Now you can be blessed and busy
and you can be busy and not blessed. Busyness does not equal blessing. The blessing of the Lord makes
rich but it adds no sorrow with it. A busyness without blessing is what kills your prayer life.
It goes and chokes your devotional life. Jesus described this busyness as the cares of this world
and the deceitfulness of riches. They are the ones that choke. It's when your responsibilities become
so big you don't have time to pray. You have no energy to pray. Prayer is not even on your radar.
You don't have time for that stuff but you believe the lie if that is you, prayer doesn't take time,
prayer saves time. Prayer saves time. E M Bounds said this, To give prayer the secondary place is
to make God secondary in life's affair. When you put God first, He begins to make other things
fall into place. I am not saying you will be healthy, wealthy and everything will go
well. What I'm saying is Matthew 6:33 one of my favorite verses is true. Seek first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, everything else will be added to you. Don't be like the pagans,
like the heathens in the verse before Jesus said, who seek after all of these things. See if you
seek after things you're a heathen. Even if you're a Christian you're practicing heathen but if you
seek after God not after things then what begins to happen, God blesses you with those things,
gives you grace not to let the things rule your life. For many of us, our idol that hinders our
prayer is things, success, good life, busyness, ministry. If you're all about living the good
life, you are very likely allowing the good life to choke the spiritual life out of you and sooner
or later, the weight of your responsibility is like branches. If you don't have the root system,
the depth of your relationship with God, it will happen like it happens in my city,
when it gets windy and it gets windy here a lot. Trees fall over because the root system is short,
small but the branches are big and heavy. If you let the busyness squeeze out your spiritual life,
you're like a big tree with no root system. You're like a house built on the sand,
you will collapse in a matter of time. The weight of your responsibilities will crush you because
only the depth of your relationship can sustain you. You're not just a physical human being,
you are a spiritual being. You need spiritual life to be deeply rooted in God. The fourth thing
that's blocking your prayer life is Satan. Yep, you heard it right. Satan will directly assault
you so that you don't pray. He will make you busy as long as you don't pray. Anything as long as you
don't pray. Satan attacks prayer because prayer attacks Satan. Prayerlessness was born when Adam
and Eve obeyed Satan and they hid from God. When you begin to fall in the trap of Satan,
you will live your life hiding from God. That's what prayerlessness is. It's hiding from God.
You're already in Satan's trap. He succeeded if he made you prayerless, he succeeded so make
him fail and press into God in prayer. I find it interesting when Daniel was in Babylon, there was
a law against prayer. The enemy was against Daniel praying. You know in the United States prayer
was removed from the schools. Who's behind that? Satan. Satan doesn't want you to pray to God. He
wants you to do anything, scroll on the phone, do anything, just don't pray because when you
come out of prayer, have you ever seen that meme where cats walk in and then lions come out. That's
exactly what happens when you come out of prayer. You become a lion. You become strong and powerful.
The fifth reason that blocks our prayer or the fifth blocker of our prayer is unanswered prayers.
It's when we pray and don't see answers in our prayer. The devil uses that, we use that not
always the devil. You say what's the point? I've prayed but nothing happened. We must understand
is that when prayer doesn't change things, it surely changes you and Martin Luther also said,
Pray as though everything depends on God and work as though everything depends on you. Prayer must
lead to work. You can't just be the person who prays. You also have to use common sense. You also
have to apply yourself. It's like that story of a person that was in the house and the flood came
and he said, God save me. Somebody came knocking in the house and said, you need to evacuate. He
says, I'm waiting on God. You know sometime later, the water reached the house. So he climbed on the
top of his roof and said, God save me. You know there was a helicopter flying by and you know
hovered over him and said, drop the ladder. So that he can climb out. He says, this is your
last chance. He says, I'm waiting on God and then he drowned, he went to heaven and his of course
complaint is God you didn't answer my prayer and God says, well I sent you people, that was My
answer but you chose to ignore it. So sometimes when it comes to prayer, God answers prayer for
example by sending someone. God answers prayer by saying no or God answers prayer by saying wait.
So that is an answer or there are mysterious ways we don't understand why the prayer maybe we prayed
for somebody and they died but even in that case, let's say somebody that you knew who loved Jesus,
that person wouldn't want you to now give up on praying just because they went to heaven and
they're enjoying their time with Jesus. We should not be the people who let unanswered prayers to
hinder our relationship with God even if there's a mystery involved with it that we don't understand
why certain things happen, step over it, don't trip over it because James 4:2 says, Ye do not
have because you guys don't ask. There are so many things you miss in your life if you don't pray.
So many things you'll miss in your life if you allow the enemy to shut your prayer and says well,
look you pray there, nothing happened. That's it, give up praying. What if that answer is on
the way? What if God is already releasing that answer? What if God is planning something better
than what you are asking for? What if Mary and Martha asking Jesus to heal Lazarus but
He's planning resurrection? What if God sometimes doesn't meet our expectations because He plans to
exceed them? Have you ever thought about that? Our God is bigger than we ask, think or imagine
but even if certain things don't get answered, we trust in God. We don't use God. God is not a means
to a goal. He's our goal and prayer is not just a means to get answers. Prayer is a means to know
God and if you see prayer is that, you will begin to dwell, abide in God. Pray out of the place of
abiding and you will receive more answers then you will know what to do with but it doesn't doesn't
mean that you will have every single prayer you pray will be answered because you know why,
sometimes we don't pray in line with God's will. That's why it's important to be in God's will,
to be in God's word so that we pray prayers out of God's will and some of us we don't pray in God's
will and sometimes we just don't know there are resistance in the spiritual realm, we don't get
the answers. We get discouraged. We're like that's it. I won't pray again. I got my feelings hurt,
that's it, I'm disappointed. It never came. So God just doesn't hear my prayer and that is the
lie of the enemy. Don't fall for that lie. The sixth blocker of prayer. This is interesting.
Drum roll. Mistreating your spouse can block your prayer. 1 Peter 3:7 Husbands likewise dwell with
them your wives with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel and as being
heirs together of grace of life. That that that that I'm going to say again that your prayers
may not be hindered. That means if you live with your spouse and you constantly fight and you are
not dwelling with understanding, you're not giving them honor, your prayers are going to be blocked.
So treat your spouse good so that your prayers will be unblocked. The seventh and final reason,
unrepented sin blocks your prayer. As I mentioned when Adam committed sin, he ran from God. Isaiah
59:1 it says this, Behold the Lord's hand is not shortened that He cannot save nor His ear heavy
that He cannot hear. Verse two but your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins
have hidden His face from you. So that He will not hear. Now this is not about going and looking for
every sin that you can think of. This is about coming to the Lord and if there are known sins,
repent of them. Forsake them because God is not going to hear person who willfully habitually
chooses to live an unrepentant life. Jesus made it very clear in Matthew chapter 7, Depart from me. I
never knew you. You who practice lawlessness not those who struggle with sin. Practice it
meaning you make a habit of it. So takeaways. Run to the secret place even if you've committed
sin. You committed sin, run to God. Ask Him for forgiveness. Repent, forsake that sin. The second
takeaway is go from I need to pray to I want to pray to I will pray. Number three, the best way
to learn praying... number three, the best way to learn how to pray is by praying. J C Ryle said
this, Whatever else you make a business off, make a business of prayer. John Blanchard said, The
real secret of prayer is secret prayer, and the last takeaway. Pray hard when praying gets hard. E
M Bounds said, No man can do a great and enduring work for God who is not a man of prayer and no man
can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying. J C Ryle said, We must wrestle
earnestly in prayer like men contending with a deadly enemy for life. So my friend, get praying!