Confession and Prayer
God wants to hear our prayers and answer them. However, there are things which keep Him from hearing. Namely, if we regard or harbor known sin in our hearts, He will not hear us. (Psalm 66:18,19) We must confess that sin or those sins, so that God cleanses our hearts.(I John 1:9) Then, He will hear us. We don't have to be perfect to get our prayers heard by God, but we do need to be clean before Him.
Prayer is talking with God and relating with Him. Any time we have a relationship with another person, and we sin against them, we hurt our relationship and our ability to talk with each other. That is especially true, if our friend finds out we have been hiding something from them. The same if true for the Lord, except we can't hide anything from Him. He sees all and knows all. Therefore, we must be diligent to confess our sins quickly, so our wickedness does not hurt our relationship with God. It is really very simple. We just admit to God we were wrong, and we turn away from that sin. God knows when we are serious, and if we are, our relationship with Him is fully restored, and He hears us. This requires diligence, because we do not want the unconfessed sins to pile up in our hearts. That makes it harder and harder to receive the cleansing, because we must show God we are serious about doing His will. All Christians can do what it takes to have our prayers heard, but we must be very sensitive to the Spirit of God's conviction, and very ready to confess whatever He points out to us.
Tomorrow, I intend to read Psalms 67-70.
Prayer is talking with God and relating with Him. Any time we have a relationship with another person, and we sin against them, we hurt our relationship and our ability to talk with each other. That is especially true, if our friend finds out we have been hiding something from them. The same if true for the Lord, except we can't hide anything from Him. He sees all and knows all. Therefore, we must be diligent to confess our sins quickly, so our wickedness does not hurt our relationship with God. It is really very simple. We just admit to God we were wrong, and we turn away from that sin. God knows when we are serious, and if we are, our relationship with Him is fully restored, and He hears us. This requires diligence, because we do not want the unconfessed sins to pile up in our hearts. That makes it harder and harder to receive the cleansing, because we must show God we are serious about doing His will. All Christians can do what it takes to have our prayers heard, but we must be very sensitive to the Spirit of God's conviction, and very ready to confess whatever He points out to us.
Tomorrow, I intend to read Psalms 67-70.