Bible Studies

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God, where are you?

In the last segment, I talked about the importance of praying according to God’s will. In the next few issues, we’ll be looking at why God doesn’t answer prayer.

The first is sin. Psalm 66:18 says, If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Iniquity means sin. So if you have sin in your life, the Lord will not hear you. Mark 11:25 says to forgive so that God may also forgive you. This means you have to have the right heart—and be living a life that reflects that—for the door to be open with God. You simply can’t have it both ways. Many people assume they can live their lives the way they like and then pray that God will meet their needs. But most of us don’t take the time to see it from His perspective.

God wants to fellowship with you, and we have to realize that this is broken by habitual sin because there is no darkness in God. To have fellowship with Him, we must be walking in the light, which is the word of God. 1 John 1:6-7 says, If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Now, God does have mercy. He blesses us by answering prayers in our lives when we’re not necessarily in the right place. But when you know something is wrong and you’re walking in it, the door is closed. Isaiah 59:1-2, says Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

If you’re not in the light, you can always go back and ask forgiveness. That’s what David did with Bathsheba. He slept with a married woman, had her husband killed and married her. And yet God forgave him. Why? He repented. He was truly sorry. In fact, from their union came Solomon, the next king of Israel. That is God’s grace, love and mercy. But we can’t just live the way we want to and then wonder why God isn’t answering our prayers. Even if you’re repenting for the same things all the time, the blood of Jesus is there, but God wants you to change.

In the next segment, we’ll look at wrong intentions.

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