Prayer Sermon Series: Obstacles in Praying

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Obstacle in PrayingSermon Notes: Obstacles in Praying
Fire up your prayer’s life series (III)

This is a sermon note translated from my church’s Sunday sermon about Prayer life sometimes ago. This is the third series of the “Fire up your prayer’s life”.

Our God always wants to hear our prayer. However, most of the time, we have to do some “housekeeping” in our lives first, so that we can pray better.

Read 1 Peter 3:7
“Hinder” or egkopto (from the original language), from military: to break up a road/road block so that enemy armies can’t get through.
This word is being used in a Prayer, meaning that sometimes our prayers are not answered by God because of the obstacles that we created ourselves.

OBSTACLES IN PRAYING
1) IMPROPER MOTIVE / WRONG MOTIVATION
Read James 4:3
• Wrong motives (NIV)
• Spend (NIV)
• Pleasures (NIV)
Motivation is crucial in our life. It’s what drives us forward. The question “Why do we do what we are doing?” has to be asked by ourselves continually.

Spend.
What we spend the most, that’s us. If you like to spend your money on shoes, that means you love shoes very much.

Pleasures (Lust, Hedone; Hedonism)
Often we are focusing on a request to satisfy our own pleasure!

When we pray, we learn not to be self-centered. God sees through our motivations and our hearts.
Read Hebrews 4:13, 1 Chronicles 28:9

How to build the right motivation when praying? When you pray, ask yourself:
a. Why am I asking God for this?

Do I need this? Why would I want this for?
b. Am I willing to lay aside my will so that God’s will can be done?
When the answer to the prayer is “No”, are we ready & believe that He knows what’s best for us?

c. Is it my concern that God gets the glory for it?

(2) Broken Relationships
Matthew 6:14-15, Mark 11:24-26, 1 Peter 3:7 (in the context of praying)

Broken relationships (both horizontally to other human beings and vertically to God) will hinder our prayer’s life!
When we are having relationship problems with our wife, our husband, our friends, our brothers & sisters in Christ, our relationship with God will be affected too.
Remember that the Devil is smart to make use of your current situation! (Ephesians 4)

Before you start praying, start asking for forgiveness. Ask for restoration from God (admit that we are angry, full of hatred, an urge for a revenge, then let go of our rights to judge people). Then, ask God to restore us, to heal us. Let His love heals you and then take a step to forgive & love the person.

Forgiveness is a process. The devil won’t stand still! Read Rome 5:17.

Take out your hindrances in praying RIGHT NOW and have a more effective prayer’s life!

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Michael Aulia is a Christian blogger who lives in Australia. He is the owner of WriteForGod.com and also CravingTech.com

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