The Battle of the Mind- 3

Subtitle: The Leverage of Desires and Emotions

Galatians 5:16-26.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, June 22, 2025.

As we continue this series on the mental battle that Christians encounter, we must deal with the reality of our desires and emotions.

Desires look toward something in this world or future.  It focuses on bringing something into our sphere of experience.  Emotions, on the other hand, have more to do with the way that the world (reality) around us affects us.

Of course, these can play off of one another.  I may desire something, but the reality of whether it can happen or not can create frustration and anger, or it may create excitement, anticipation, and a euphoric feeling of near success.  Similarly, our emotions can spin off new desires.

This world of desire and emotion is a powerful part of what it means to be human.  God created our ability to desire and have emotions.  Therefore, there is something about them that is good and should not be excised from our life.  Yet, in our fallenness, they can lead to all kinds of harmful actions and patterns of life.

An example of this is the area of sexuality.  God designed humans as sexual beings and called it “very good.”  Yet, if we let our fleshly desires drive our sexuality, it will become destructive to ourselves and others.  It will pull us outside of the good design, the good purpose, for which God intended it.  Thus, it is not a person’s sexuality that should be “fixed.”  Rather, it is that world of the mind and heart in which we make decisions on how we are going to express that sexuality.

These desires and emotions are strategically placed within a person.  They wield an incredible amount of leverage upon us.  With that in mind, let’s look at our passage.

Be led by the Holy Spirit and not your desires (v. 16-18)

A follower of Jesus should seek to be led by the Holy Spirit and not the desires of their flesh.  This is what Paul is saying.  However, we should note the chain of understanding.  We are disciples of Jesus, followers of him.  However, he is not on the earth right now.  How can we follow him?  Yes, we can read his words and live them out, but Jesus promised something even greater than that.  He promised to pour out the Holy Spirit upon believers.  Jesus would lead them through the work of the Holy Spirit.  Thus, to be led by the Spirit is to be led by Jesus (is to be led by the Father, too). 

Though He does speak to us in our hearts and minds, the Holy Spirit often uses the Scriptures and other believers to speak into our lives, or at least, to trigger His communication to us.  This inner dialogue between our spirit and the Holy Spirit is not meant to exclude these others in our life.  Instead, it incorporates it.

In verse 16, Paul uses a word for desire that has been translated as lust in other versions.  It simply means a strong desire or passion for something.  The desire may or may not have a bad target.  Ultimately, a believer should always pay attention to the target of their desires (is it good and acceptable to God). 

However, this word also involves a strength of desire that is greater than normal.  You could picture a person driving a car around a corner that is designed for 25 mph.  To drive your car around the corner is clearly in alignment with the design of the road (the target is good).  However, the speed at which you drive could be compared to the strength of your desire.  To drive around the corner doing 125 mph is going to end in disaster for me and anyone else in the car.  Am I carried away by the strength of the desire?

We tend to think of strong desire, or lust, as bad.  But verse 17 compares the “strong desire” of the flesh with the strong desire of the Holy Spirit.  This is important.  God has strong desires for us.  However, He doesn’t have the problem of “going too fast around the corner.”  As humans, the strength of our desire can overwhelm our ability, but the Spirit of God can have strong desire without it pulling Him off track.

Thus, we should not focus so much on how strong our desires are, but rather on the source of them.  The strong desires of my flesh will pull me off the way of the Lord, but the strong desires of the Spirit will keep me in the way of the Lord.

Typically, desires are rooted in the senses of our body.  I want to feel this, taste that, see this, hear that, etc.  Notice that God gave us senses to help us.  There is a good way in which we are to operate in these areas.  Desire can also be something more abstract.  In 1 John 2:16, we are warned against the “pride of life.”  The feeling of pride that often comes from the adulation of people and their willingness to serve us for favors is just as real though it may not be directly tied to a physical sense.

Thus, we should see the problem as an internal one within our natural self, rather than our body per se.  Our nature is to desire something as an end in itself.  “I’ll be happy once I get that job, …make that amount of money, …get that person to love me, etc.”  But, God did not design our senses and the things of this world to be the goal of our life.  These things are all means by which we can live a life that reflects God to the world around us and walks in harmony with His purpose.  To make them the goal is to turn them into an idol.  They are supposed to be an aid to us in going after the greater goal.

One pastor- I believe it was Spurgeon- pictured the death of a human as becoming a worm carnival.  In other words, you leave this body behind and a bunch of worms will revel in destroying it, and then they will die.  I bring this up because we become like those worms when we live for things, rather than for God.  We simply consume the things of the world around us that are dead in and of themselves.  There is no true life in these things, no matter how much I consume.  If your life is just a carnival, then it will come to an end one day.  You will die and realize you wasted your life consuming dead things that cannot help you.  May God help us to live for a higher purpose, that the things of this life would only be means by which we image Him and worship Him.

The flesh strongly desires to target things as an end in themselves, but the Holy Spirit has a strong desire to help us become like Jesus, perfectly imaging the Father.  Thus, we need to learn how to let the Holy Spirit become the source of our desires.  We should seek to desire what the Holy Spirit desires, instead of our natural self.  This creates an internal battlefield.

The battlefield already existed before you were a Christian.  However, you had no clue about the desire of the Holy Spirit.  You were a casualty of your own desires and those of the culture around you.  Yet, when you became a believer in Jesus, you became aware of this problem within your flesh.

Praise God that we are not left alone in this battle.  At salvation, we became aware of the strong desire of the Holy Spirit that we put our faith in Jesus.  Once we yielded to that, the Spirit then works to make us more like Jesus.  He does that by taking up residence within us.  He works in our heart and mind to make us aware of all the ways that the strong desires of our flesh have pulled us off track.  He also gives us strength to get back on track.

In fact, let us be clear.  Paul says that your flesh and the Holy Spirit will desire things that are hostile to one another.  Your flesh will not want to cooperate with the Holy Spirit.  When someone is confronted with the truth about Jesus, there is a battle in them.  The Spirit of God is showing them that it is desirable to follow Jesus, but your flesh wants to shrink back away from that in fear.

Still, you are more than the desires of your natural self.  You can choose to follow the Holy Spirit (who supplies strength for you to follow through by faith on that choice), or you can choose to operate from the natural self.  In fact, a life of living for the flesh can be covered up with an outward appearance of following Jesus (think Judas). 

Verse 17 talks about the way in which we can want to do one thing, but end up doing another.  You may want to follow the Spirit, but the flesh is pulling  you off track.  You can even analyze this in your mind and despise your lack of following the Holy Spirit.

Yet, this is not just a problem for Christians.  Even unbelievers who are ruled by their flesh cannot simultaneously satisfy all of their desires.  In order to have one, they may be forced to sacrifice another.  One person desires to feel good (euphoria) over other desires and pursues a life of substance abuse.  Whereas, another may never touch drugs and the like because they desire money and the power it gives them greater than feeling good right now.

To bring this back to Christians, you may desire to be moral and good, like Jesus, but your natural self simply seeks satisfaction and doesn’t care about the morality.  Without Christ and the Holy Spirit he sends to us, we would be powerless in this battle.  Thus, all people deal with this reality that some desires are stronger than others for them.  Whereas the next person struggles with a different hierarchy of desires.  The Holy Spirit is given to empower us in this fight.

Throughout this passage, Paul has used two different phrases that are basically synonymous: walking in the Spirit and being led by the Spirit.  The second has the Spirit as an external guide showing us the way.  The first is less specific.  It can be seen as the person who has a relationship with the Holy Spirit within them.  We have seen this before with the difference between being filled with the Spirit (internal picture) and being baptized with the Holy Spirit (external picture). 

Part of our spiritual battle is to recognize that the Spirit is within you to lead you.  Reading the Word, prayer, godly counsel are all ways that the Spirit uses to show us the path forward.  However, this brings us to a point of action that requires faith.  He truly is trying to lead us on behalf of Jesus. 

We should also see the Holy Spirit as a path or atmosphere that we are seeking to stay on or within.  He is our helper, and if we stick with Him, stay in step with Him, then we will be far more successful in this battle.  The battle to follow the Spirit and not our natural self is essentially a battle in our minds and hearts.  As it is won, we can then do those things that make us more like Jesus.

The flesh will result in not inheriting the Kingdom of God (19-26)

Paul warns the Galatians that they will not inherit the Kingdom of God if they let themselves be led by their flesh.  Is this about salvation, or is the Kingdom of God a particular reward that God gives to certain believers?

In Romans 8:6, 13, Paul makes it clear that following the flesh leads to spiritual death, but following the Spirit leads to eternal life.  So, this is not just about a particular reward in the future that certain believers will experience.  It really is about eternal life, salvation.

The Kingdom of God can be thought of something that is in the future.  That is, Jesus is going to come back and set up a kingdom on the earth.  This is not to ignore the fact that the Kingdom of God is already here in a very real sense.  The point is this.  The Kingdom of God has phases in regard to what God is doing.  It is best to think of it as the particular way that God is expressing His life to believers at a particular time. 

Right now, we can participate in the Kingdom of God that has been made available through Jesus.  By the Spirit, we listen to our Lord and live out his commands.  However, a day is coming when I will die.  Am I leaving the Kingdom of God?  Of course, not.  My spirit will go to Christ at the right hand of the Father.  My participation in the Kingdom of God and the life He gives through it will have changed.  After the resurrection and return of Jesus to earth, glorified believers will attend Christ to the earth.  This too will begin a new expression of God’s Kingdom and the life we receive through it.  Thus, the Kingdom of God is eternal, but not static.

Yet, we should note that the term inheritance is in general a reference to our reigning with Christ in resurrected (glorified) bodies.  Some people who appeared to be followers of Jesus, but really were masking a life of following their flesh, will find themselves shut out from what God is doing.  This is essentially the picture that is given to us with the Lake of Fire at the end of the book of Revelation.  The wicked will be shut out of the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Verse 21 introduces a word that is translated as “practice” in the NASB.  “Those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.”  We tend to connect this verb to things like sports and music.  In this case, practice is about something that is not the real event.  It is merely preparation.  However, when we say that a physician practices medicine, we do not mean it in this way.  In that case, it speaks of the very real decisions that a physician makes as they care for their patients.

This word speaks of what we do, but not just in a point in time.  It is talking about something we continue to do.  It also focuses not on the end of the action, but on the routine of it.  A person who routinely practices (does) what works of the flesh will find themselves shut out of God’s goodness. 

Paul moves from the flesh to the Spirit.  However, he does not continue to use the “practice” word.  He could have, but instead, Paul uses a different word, the fruit of the Spirit.

This contention between works and fruit is being used to highlight the powerful differences between following our flesh or the Spirit.  Of course, we are to practice the works of the Spirit, but the fruit of the Spirit adds a powerful idea.  Like a fruit tree, we are to connect to Jesus.  The Holy Spirit comes from Him to us.  The supply of the Spirit in our lives enables us to bud, blossom, grow, and evidence ripe fruit.  This demonstrates that more is going on than just choosing to do certain things.  Rather, the presence of the Holy Spirit within us supplies and works life into us and through us.  The list of fruit is not even about giving us a set of check boxes.  “I have the love fruit now!”  Rather, it shows us a list (not exhaustive) of the kinds of things that will be expressed when a person is following the Holy Spirit.  Fruit is not always in season, but it is on a path to ripeness.  Give yourself to the Spirit of God, and He will help you to grow in these kinds of things.

Verse 24 speaks of the need to crucify the flesh, our natural self and its desires.  When we come to Christ, we have had years of serving the flesh, so it has a lot of leverage upon us.  The flesh is not only hostile to the strong desire of the Spirit, but it is also hostile to us crucifying its desires.  Thus, we need the help of the Holy Spirit to put these fleshly desires to death and give ourselves to the spiritual desires of Christ. 

We should see our flesh like a spoiled child who throws a fit in the grocery store in order to get what they want.  There is no easy way to deal with this.  We basically deal with the flesh one fleshly desires at a time.  As they crop up, we need to recognize them for what they are, and then, we need to ask the Holy Spirit what the positive, spiritual action would be that will enable us to become more like Christ.  Crucifying the flesh is more than not doing fleshly things.  It also involves doing what the Spirit of Christ is leading us to do.

For example, a person who is a thief, but becomes a Christian, doesn’t just stop stealing.  He also works to make restitution to those he stole from.  He may even have to face jail time.  Paying the price of our wrong actions and carrying the burden of their effects can be done in praise to God.  Yet, it is amazing how often God takes the negative effects of our sin and redeems by the help of the Holy Spirit.

This weekend, there was a wedding at our church.  A couple who had been living together, but not married, chose to honor God by being married.  For them, crucifying the flesh involved committing to one another in a way that their flesh had resisted for a long time.  Yet, now, they repent of their past actions and choose to honor God going forward.  Their marriage won’t be perfect, but they are doing the spiritual thing that will bear fruit in their life as they continue to follow the Holy Spirit.

Let this be our prayer everyday.  “Lord, strengthen me to say no to this desire of my flesh and show me the positive thing that I should do to break its hold on me!”

Desires & Emotions audio

Lessons from the Underground Church 10: Treacherous Quarreling

This is a 13 week series that will not be posted on our website.  If you would like an audio of the sermon or a written article on the sermon contents then please contact the church at AbundantLifeEverett@frontier.com.  You can also leave a message at 425.438.1500.  Thank you for your interest.

Father, Turn Our Hearts

Luke 1:11-17.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 20, 2021, Father’s Day.

We are celebrating Father’s Day.  It is easy in life to let your heart turn towards the things that it wants to turn towards.  It doesn’t help when you have a society that elevates following the heart over doing what is right and pleasing God.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes, God puts things in our hearts, but the follower of Jesus will wrestle with those things, seeking to be intellectually honest before God.  They desire more to follow him than to follow their own heart.

Today, we will look at a man who was grieved by the fact that he and his wife couldn’t have any children, and through his interaction with an angel, we are reminded of God the Father’s heart for us.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Father’s impact

In this passage, we are not told whether Zacharias was praying for a child that day in the temple.  He was a priest who had been picked by lot to offer the incense in the Holy Place before the veil, and the Presence of God.  We are told that he and his wife were “well advanced in years.”  This probably means that his years of praying for a child had long since ceased, and his hopes for such had long since died.

God the Father chose a particular day, when it looked like there was no hope, and in fact he wasn’t even looking to see if there was hope anymore.  It was at that moment that He sent an angel to give Zacharias the good news.  God had a present for him, a large measure of grace; he was going to have a son!  As exciting as this news was to Zacharias, notice that this grace is not all about him and his wife.  It is also about the nation of Israel and its need to turn back to God.  We must always remember that the grace of God in our life is a present from a loving Father, but it is also intended to bless more than just me.  It is our natural tendency to be short-sided in regard to the grace of God in our life.

This is probably the first time that Zacharias has seen an angel.  Though we are not given a description in Luke, the angel explains that he is Gabriel who stands in the presence of God.  This angel called Gabriel also interacted with Daniel in Daniel chapters 8 and 9.  There he is described as looking like a man (no wings).   So, it is most likely not what Gabriel looks like that startles Zacharias, but the fact that no one is supposed to be in the Holy Place at that time, but him.

There are things that can make men afraid.  Zacharias is a righteous man who has been serving God “blamelessly.”  It would be easy to say that a righteous man shouldn’t fear anything, even that we shouldn’t fear God; He is on our side!  However, God still does things, or allows things, in our life that we can’t control, and that we weren’t expecting.  Fear is a natural response in these times.

Many fathers try to look like they aren’t afraid, but if we don’t keep our heart and eyes turned towards God, we can become entangled in a web of fears.  You can spend your life trying to become greater than your fears, or you can turn to the One who is greater than all that you fear.  In fact, when we are not living right before God, we often fear things that we shouldn’t.  Proverbs 28:1 says, “The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”  We can become trapped by a mixture of real things and figments of our warped imagination.

The real problem in life is not that we fear, but that we are truly bad at fearing the right things.  There are many fathers today who are not afraid to abandon their children, or they are not afraid to help a girl abort their baby.  They aren’t afraid to abuse the woman that they are with.  Really, they don’t fear God who has warned those who do such things of the consequences of the things they are doing.  We are not afraid to play God in our labs, businesses, and government buildings.  We are not afraid of throwing off the time-proven wisdom of the past for the seduction of a future that we think we can control.  Yes, the real problem is that we aren’t afraid of running off the cliff with all the other lemmings.

In the end, God is not a danger to those who serve Him in love.  I should add a caveat to this.  It all comes down to the definition of “danger.”  Jesus served the Father faithfully in love, but he died on a cross.  Yet, God is showing us through the resurrection of Jesus that any danger He purposefully brings before us, or even allows to come before us, has a way through it that brings us to the good things that He intends for us on the other side.

In truth, He is a danger to our flesh, but He is Eternal Life, Peace, and Joy to our soul, and to our future.  He really does love you, and will bless you if you will turn to Him in faithful love.  Like Zacharias, we must be those ones who are rare in a land of men who have turned away from God.  We must pass that reality on to the next generation, both with our natural children and with the spiritual children that God brings into our lives.

The Father’s desire

As the angel describes God’s purpose for the child that Zacharias will have, we see the desire of our heavenly Father’s heart, and the things that were keeping Israel in bondage.

The term “children of Israel” is used in this context as a reference to generation, and not as a reference to age.  It is not talking about everyone under the age of 12, but of the current generation who had been birthed by the generation before.  It pictures each generation as Israel giving birth to the next generation of Israel.  The nation of Israel, both young and old, were the children of Israel, just as we today are the children of the United States of America. 

The problem with any nation is that our hearts get turned away from God the Father.  No matter how good our beginning may have been, all nations run into peril as more and more of their people turn their hearts away from God.  The Father’s desire was that the hearts of that generation be turned back towards Him.

We must not see God as a Father who is hurt and mad that His children don’t love Him.  Instead, we must see the reality of what happens to children who turn away from loving parents, and cast off their godly instruction.  Such children turn towards foolish things, and the path of folly always brings ruin to a person and to a nation.  God’s heart breaks over the folly that is taking over, not just our land, but all of the nations on this earth.  With a Father’s heart, He cries out, “Why will you die?  Choose Life, and turn back to Me!”

He also desires to turn the hearts of the fathers towards their children.  When our hearts are turned towards God, He teaches us to have our hearts turned towards each other in the right way.  There is a plague of fatherless children across our land.  Too many fathers have rejected the heavenly Father and His desire to turn their heart towards their wives and children.  This is not just a problem for fathers.  Mothers and children have the same problems too.

However, men, we must be bold as lions and care for the people that God has put in our lives.  Regardless of how they respond, we must love them and seek God’s best for them, by showing them what a righteous man looks like, and how he lives.  This world successfully seduces our hearts away from what really matters because it first seduced our heart away from God.  This is how Satan plunders us from the goodness and inheritance of God.

Ultimately, the Father desires to turn the disobedient towards the wisdom of the righteous.  Israel had become disobedient children.  They were fathers who were disobedient to the heaven Father, and children who were disobedient to earthly fathers.  They refused to hear the words of wisdom spoken through the righteous men of the past, and written down in the Bible.  In short, to turn is to repent.  There is a lot of turning going on in this world.  People turn from one thing to the next seeking their own happiness.  However, it is not good enough to repent of one fleshly pursuit to go after another.  The only repentance that will actually do you any good, and even do good for the people around you, is the repentance that turns all the way around back towards God.  Finally, when we are truly oriented towards Him, He is able to turn us back around to the people and things in our life in wisdom and righteousness, in a way that gives life, and not death.  May God help us to cast aside disobedience, hear the heart of a loving Father, and turn into the path of life!

Jesus Teaches on Prayer

Mark 11:22-26.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on July 19, 2020.

Last week, we talked about the situation where Jesus had cursed a fig tree and within 24-hours it was dead down to the roots.  There, we talked about the symbolic importance of what Jesus did.

Today, we are going to look at what Jesus told his disciples immediately after Peter expressed amazement that the bush was so dead only one day after Jesus spoke to it.  Peter’s amazement is itself a demonstration of his ignorance at how powerful prayer truly is.  Thus, Jesus takes advantage of the opportunity to hammer home just how powerful prayer is to the person who has faith.

We should have faith

Jesus does emphasize the faith of the person praying, but even more critical is his emphasis on whom our faith is based.  My faith must be based upon God alone.  God is the foundation of our faith, and prayer is a dependence upon the power of God.

People who do not pray do not believe that they need God’s help.  It is also possible that they may think they are too spiritual to ask God for things, but the prior reason is the most typical.  Such people will attempt to gain the goal or target that they desire by their own abilities.

Here is where we should recognize that it is unbiblical not to pray, and yet just as unbiblical to sit back and do nothing while asking God to do everything.  Instead, we are to do what we can while praying for God’s help in those things we can’t.

To emphasize the critical nature of having our faith based solely on God, here are some examples in Scripture.  When Jesus tells us that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, he follows it up with the statement that with God all things are possible.  Thus, he is not impressing on us that rich people cannot be saved, but that it can only happen with God’s help- this is actually true of all of us.  This is the same message that the angel Gabriel gave to Mary when she questioned how she would have a baby- she was still a virgin.  The angel tells her that with God nothing will be impossible (Luke 1:37). 

The same God who created the universe is the Heavenly Father who watches over us.  His possibilities go far beyond our impossibilities.  He did not intend us to do life without Him.  Prayer is our ultimate birthright, to cry out to our Father for help, the one to whom all things are possible (that conform to his character, of course).

In case the teaching hasn’t sunk in, Jesus gives his disciples an illustration that is much greater than praying that no one will ever eat fruit from a particular fig tree ever again.  Praying that a mountain be removed and cast into the sea represents an extreme fantastic prayer that seems impossible.  There is an added symbol to this prayer because mountains are used as metaphors for political powers and empires, such as the Roman Empire.  It is the extreme nature of the request that highlights how unable we are, and yet how able God is.  By definition, God has the power to literally cast a mountain into the sea.  Yet, why would I ever need a real mountain thrown into the sea, and who will the resulting tsunami imperil?  A literal mountain is not the “impossible thing” that we typically need removed from our way, or life.  Instead, it represents an impossibility of any nature for which we would need God’s help.  This extreme example is intended to stretch our faith to the point that we stop limiting God just because we are limited.  Did not God literally move the waters of the Red Sea aside so that millions of Israelites could escape Pharaoh’s army?  So, can He not take care of my problem?  Of course, He can!

It is here that Jesus adds the issue of doubt.  We must not doubt God’s power, but neither should we doubt His care and concern for us.  It is one thing to have enough faith to pray a prayer, but we should not doubt that God will do it.  Granted, doubt is not the only issue here, but it is a critical one.  It might be better for us to ask the question, “Why do I doubt that God would answer this prayer?”  We will come back to this, but doubt is a huge reason why many people have quit praying, or never started in the first place.  We start doubting that God will do anything about our request.  He may help others, we tell ourselves, but I doubt that He is willing to help me.

In verse 24, Jesus gives us a summation of what he is saying.  When you pray asking for something, you should believe that you are receiving it, and it will be yours.  Another way to say this is that we should believe that God is taking care of it and that we will experience His answer to our prayer.  There is a certain load and burden in life that we all need to learn to carry, but there are things that are too heavy of any of us.  Prayer is intended by God to be the place where these overly heavy burdens are moved off of our shoulders and onto God’s  O, what joy we will experience when we learn to put those things we can’t change onto the shoulders of the one who cares for us (1 Peter 5:6-7).

This is not an exhaustive summation on prayer, but we need to let it sink in on its own merits.  Once that is done, we can move on to the other lessons concerning prayer.  This summation does beg two questions.  First, what impossible things should I be praying for that actually need removed from my life?  Second, what is the source of my doubt about it?

We must deal with our sins

In verse 25, it may appear that Jesus is switching the subject, but in reality, he is still teaching on prayer.  The sentence is introduced with the connective word “and,” and it involves a particular thing that affects our prayers, sin.

Jesus brings up the heart issues of what other people have done to me.  It can be hard for me to forgive those who sin against me and this becomes a source of problems for our prayers.  It is in the heart that I am to believe without doubting.  Yet, this very heart is often full of hurts and wounds that I have received from others.  Many people stop praying because they are angry that God has allowed other people to hurt them.  Technically, these are the sins of others, but they have intersected with my life and infected my heart.  We could say that they are other people’s sins that are now stuck in my heart.  Believers must learn to deal properly with those sins.  Harboring a grudge, hurt, or anger towards another person, and refusing to forgive them, becomes an obstacle to answered prayer.  Why is this?  It may be because it affects my faith and causes doubts, leading me to doubt that God really cares about me.  However, it may be because God is not pleased and wants me to deal with my lack of forgiveness first.  Scripture does not detail the nuts and bolts behind how this affects our prayers, but that it surely does.  Jesus teaches more about this in Matthew 18:15 and the following verses.  This would be good homework for us in the area of dealing with the sins of others against me and forgiving them.

Yet, notice that Jesus does not end up on whether or not our prayer is answered.  A lack of forgiveness for those who sin against me can even become a hindrance to me having my sins forgiven by God.  This is the exact situation that Jesus describes in the parable of The Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:22-34.  The question ceases to be about answered prayer and becomes about my own salvation.  A lack of forgiveness is far more serious for the believer (note the irony in that term) than just having our prayers answered.

Jesus leaves the teaching there.  Perhaps, he felt that it was a sufficient amount for them to contemplate.  However, I want to look at two more areas that God’s Word tells us can be a problem for our prayers.

The first is when we sin against others.   Jesus taught on this in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:23.  When we approach God in prayer and worship, He may bring to our remembrance some way in which we have sinned against others.  We are told to go and make things right with them, and then come back to God.  We may be avoiding things that we don’t want to deal with, or we may be obstinately clinging to our own righteousness in the situation.  Regardless, we are called to be at peace with all people, as much as is possible with us.  Being right is not an excuse to treat someone harshly, in short, to sin against them.  Such, lack of repentance in our heart will cause our prayers to be hindered.  The Apostle Peter gives us a picture of this in 1 Peter 3:7. There, he cautions husbands to dwell in wisdom with their wives, recognizing that, though they have different constitutions and roles, they have the same inheritance as them before God.  Husbands who mistreat their wives (i.e. sin against them) will find that their prayers are hindered by God.  Such hindering is God’s way of getting our attention and challenging us to deal with our sins against others.

James also gives us some more instructions on prayer.  In the first chapter, he too focuses on praying without doubting. 

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.  But, let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For, let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;” (James 1:5-7 NKJV).

Yet, in chapter 4:1-3, James gives us more teaching about prayer.  Prayers that are focused on our desires for pleasure in this life will also be hindered.

James says that he is writing to people who are relying on clawing their way over others to get what they want instead of praying and believing God.  Their problem is that they are not asking God for help.  They are prayerless.  Yet, in the rare times that they did pray to God, there was a second problem.  Their prayers were focused on their own fleshly pleasures.  James literally says that such prayers are bad or wicked.  God is not our Golden Willy Wonka Ticket to chocolate pleasures, or any others.  A heart that is only filled with the desires and pleasures of this life will also find that its prayers are hindered by God.  Why?  We will find them hindered because we are still pursuing the flesh instead of following the Spirit to become like Jesus.  It is not that God doesn’t want us to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.  He made them.  Yet, our flesh hijacks the purpose of our life and makes it all about obtaining as much pleasure as possible.  God in His grace will not answer such prayers.  However, let me give one caution.  Scripture does say that, if we persist in seeking wickedness, God may give us what we seek as a judgment against us.  We must not be deceived.  God will not be mocked.  If you sow to your flesh then from your flesh you will reap destruction, but if you sow to the Spirit of God then you will reap everlasting life (Galatians 6:7-8).

We need to be a people of prayer for our sakes, and for the sake of the lost around us.  Yet, to do so means to be a person who deals with the sin that is in their life on a daily basis.  Then, our hearts can be clean before God and our prayers will not be hindered, but answered.  Amen!

Prayer audio