It is when we take our eyes off the Lord and begin to seek our fleshly desires that our prayers begin to be hindered.  Let’s look at a few examples of how a believer’s prayer life can be thwarted.

James 4:2-3, “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”  Often, we do not receive from the Lord simply because we do not depend upon Him enough to commit our needs to Him.  Then, when we do pray, if we are only asking for carnal pleasures from the Lord, He will not give that to us.  In effect, the Lord will not give us anything that will tend to draw us away from Him and cause us to live after our fleshly desires.

1 John 5:14-15, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”  Sometimes we might pray for something that the Lord does not want us to have.  We should desire His perfect and holy will for our lives, so it is good, when praying, to ask the Lord to answer according to His will.  He knows far better than we do what is really needed in our lives.  How often we confuse our wants with our needs.  The Lord knows the difference and we are assured in Philippians 4:19, “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” 

Psalm 66:17-19, “I cried to Him with my mouth, And He was exalted with my tongue. If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear; But God has heard; He has given attention to the sound of my prayer.”  Here, the psalmist rejoices in the Lord because God heard his prayer and answered him.  Notice that his prayer included exaltation, or praise, for the Lord.  When we pray in faith, we can also praise the Lord at the same time, realizing He will hear and answer when we pray to him accordingly.  Yet, the writer here also realizes that if he is in a state of enjoying sin in his life…the Lord will not listen to him when he prays.  This is probably our biggest hindrance in having our prayers answered.  This might be an open or hidden sin in our lives.  Perhaps no one is aware of the sin we allow in our hearts, but the Lord does.  “…the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts.” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

There are other things that can hinder us from having our prayers answered, but I believe those are probably the most common ones.

Now let’s move on from that important question.  I would like to look into God’s Word to see how we CAN HAVE ALL OUR PRAYERS ANSWERED.  We read in Psalm 37:4-5, “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”  The Hebrew word for ‘delight’ is “ʻânag” which means to be soft or pliable, to be delicate.  That gives the thought that we should always bend our will so that we might seek the will of God.  It means to be delicate, or tender, towards the Lord…seeking to please Him with our lives.  When we delight ourselves in the Lord and give our lives over to Him to guide our footsteps, our prayer life will adapt to His will.  We will want to have what the Lord provides for us.  We will want to have that which will draw us closer to the Lord.  We will trust Him for all our needs, and He will give us the Spirit-led desires of our hearts.  (CC)  (661.2)