In this episode, Rick challenges common misconceptions about prayer, exploring why many prayers remain unanswered. By shedding light on biblical principles and personal anecdotes, he endeavours to help listeners enhance their prayer life, making it a more profound and fulfilling part of their spiritual journey. This is a must-listen for anyone seeking clarity and depth in their relationship with God through prayer.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stick around. It won’t be long, only 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and absolutely no manipulation. Why? Because we don’t con people. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not asking you for money. We’re not trying to raise money. We’re not going to ask you to do anything foolish. We just want you to listen. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life if you are, in fact, a Christian. If you’re not, then I tell you the greatest thing you could ever do is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Cannot believe you would go through this life and put that off. Why gamble with your eternal future? Jesus Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man can come to the Father but by me. I hope you’ll listen to those words. I hope you consider that because he loves you. He died for you. He resurrected from the dead. He guarantees you that you’ll be alive in eternity, and what a wonderful thing that is. So there’s so much to cover. I’ve been covering for the last few weeks a lot on the Flatline, how we came up with the name Flatline. Then I’ve been going through those 10 problem-solving devices that my pastor taught me years ago. I want you to know we’re working on a new book. Hopefully it’ll be out before the summer’s over, surely in the next couple of months, and it’s called The Spiritual Life of the Christian. We’re gonna show you how the spiritual life works When you ask people how’s your spiritual life, many people don’t really understand what you’re talking about. What do you mean by my spiritual life? And that’s what I’m attempting to do. My team and I have put together this book for you called The Christian Spiritual Life. It deals with what is your spiritual life, and you’ll be able to order that. You can pre-order it if you want to. We’ll put your name on the list and send it to you. You can always go to the website, rickhughesministries.org, or you can call 800-831-0718. So thank you for being with me this morning. What I want to talk to you about this morning is very dear to my heart. I want to talk to you about prayer. I want to talk to you about prayer. You know, as I said for the last several shows, I’ve been reviewing those 10 problem-solving devices and how we came to call our show the FLOT line, F-L-O-T, which stood for Forward Line of Troops. And if you missed that information about what those 10 problem-solving devices actually consist of, Please don’t hesitate to go to our website and order the free book, Christian Problem Solving. There, all 10 problem-solving devices are discussed in detail, and you can study them and read them up, mark it up in your Bible, and learn them and use them in your life every day. The message I want to give you today is message 1029 Sundays on the radio. That’s right, 1029 Sundays, all provided by the grace of God. You might notice that we don’t have any advertisers. We don’t solicit finances, so you might wonder how in the world do they pay for all of these shows on so many different stations, almost 100 stations every Sunday morning, and it’s not free. The answer is simple. We pray a lot. I once had a friend who told me, if you need anything, just ask me and I’ll provide it. My answer was, if I need something, I’ll tell God. If he wants to let you know about it, he’ll tell you. My associates and I believe in the power of prayer. We pray for you, our listeners, who write and request information about growing spiritually. We pray for the finances to fund the radio ministry as well as the staff and office needs. In short, there are many needs that we pray for, believing God will hear and God will answer. But what about you? Do you pray very often? Are your prayers being heard? That’s the question I want to ask you. Are your prayers being heard? And definitely, are they being answered? So please allow me to give you some concerns about prayer. These things were taught to me by my pastor many years ago, and they may be a little bit of shock to you, but I think they need to be said. So buckle up your chin strap, tie up your shoelaces, and listen carefully. Number one, you cannot con God in prayer. Can’t pull the wool over God’s eyes. You can’t con God in prayer. Prayer is legitimate and it’s a wonderful thing, but it’s not to be used for you to try to con God. Two, you don’t use prayer to get your own way. You don’t use prayer to get your own way. It’s very easy to think you need something and start praying for it, asking God to give it to you. It might not even be in his will. And three, Prayer must be compatible with the will of God, not with our will. It must be compatible with the will of God and not with our will. Number four, another thing that has to be said, prayer is not designed to get us out of trouble, but rather to express our helplessness and our dependence on God when we are in trouble. And number five, prayer is an extension of our spiritual life and is always based on the content of the word of God in our soul’s mentality. In Hebrews 7, 24 through 25, listen very carefully. But he, that’s the Lord Jesus Christ, because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore he is also able to say to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. The Lord Jesus Christ makes intercession for each one of us. That means that he prays for us. He’s at the right hand of the Father. He intercedes for us in our knees and when we’re under attack. When we’re under criticism by the devil, he prays for us, intercedes for us. He’s my child, Father. He’s ours. He’s believed in me. He’s accepted me. He prays for us since he’s our higher priest. He knows every need we have, and he intercedes on our behalf. Maybe you never thought about that. Today, the Lord Jesus Christ probably prayed for you before the Father, brought your name up before the Father. How about that? The Holy Spirit also has a ministry of prayer for the believer. He intercedes for us to the Father as well. In Romans 8, 26 and 27, likewise the Spirit also helps our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Again, he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. So there you’ve just seen the Holy Spirit makes intercession for you in your prayer. He assists you in your prayer. And the Lord Jesus Christ supports you in prayer, stands behind you in prayer before the throne of God. So there’s no doubt about that, and no doubt that you and I have been commanded to pray. We must pray, we need to pray. In Philippians 4, six through seven, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication along with thanksgiving, Let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. What a wonderful passage. The command be anxious for nothing is a present active imperative in the Greek New Testament. It’s a verb pronounced meri-mena-o, meri-mena-o. And it’s the word be anxious for nothing. Don’t be distracted by anything. Be distracted by your thought. The instructions that Paul gives are obvious. You can go to your Heavenly Father in prayer when you’re anxious, with the result being peace. Notice the word supplication again. Did you hear that? Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication, which literally means presenting your needs to your Heavenly Father. And what happens? When you present your needs to your Heavenly Father, you come with thanksgiving. And what? The peace of God will guard you. With thanksgiving indicates you’re using the faith rest drill, problem-solving device number three. And you are indeed expecting results. So don’t be anxious about anything. That’s stress-related sins. But in everything, by prayer, that’s you going to the throne of God, and presenting your request along with your thanksgiving, appreciation, let your request be made known to God, take it to God. And then the peace of God, which comes through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, which surpasses all understanding, the world doesn’t have what you have, will guard your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. That means you won’t get upset, you won’t be in panic palace, you’ll have complete peace and complete relaxation. When you use this formula, you can expect to have your worries or your concerns removed through the ministry of the Holy Spirit who gives you peace. It’s an amazing phenomena, a phenomena that the lost man can never experience, regardless of how much he prays. People don’t understand that, but a lost man’s prayers are not heard. If he’s not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s no way his prayer is going to be heard in heaven or be answered from heaven. The only prayer the lost man can pray is the prayer of salvation. Heavenly Father, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and I’m willing to receive him as my Savior. I know he died on that cross for me and I know he guaranteed me eternal life because of his resurrection. That’s a wonderful prayer. You can pray that prayer anytime you want to as an unbeliever, but that’s the only prayer the unbeliever has available to him, not us. As Christians, we have a lot of prayers. So we can pray, and we have a very powerful weapon in prayer, if we do it the correct way. But we must remember that prayer has to be compatible with God’s will. It’s not designed to manipulate God, as I told you earlier, you cannot con God. It’s designed to be compatible with his will, not to manipulate him, but rather to conform us to his will, whatever his will is. Many prayers of believers, you and I, many times our prayers will go unanswered. And why is that? Well, it’s simply because we do a right thing but in a wrong way. And I think about that very often about on Sunday morning, especially like this morning, how many people prayed in church, how many people stood in pulpits and prayed, how many people stood in Sunday school classes and prayed, and it didn’t go any higher than the ceiling. Many prayers go unanswered because you do the right thing praying in a wrong way. What do I mean by that? The number one thing that will cause your prayer to go unanswered is unconfessed sin in your life. Psalm 66, 18 says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. So let’s give you an illustration. If Deacon Smith is up praying at the pulpit, the pastor calls on Deacon Smith to pray before the offertory prayer, and he prays this glowing prayer, but he has hatred in his heart for Deacon Jones. Can’t stand Deacon Jones. They got into it in a business deal, and he’s never forgiven him. Well, he has that mental attitude sin, And that prayer will not be answered, not even be heard, because he’s out of fellowship. He quenched the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot do his job and intercede for him. So you have to understand that if you try to pray with sin in your life, unconfessed sin in your life, be whatever it is, mental attitude sins, sense of the tongue, or even overt sins, That prayer will not be answered because unconfessed sin grieves the Holy Spirit and unconfessed sin quenches the Holy Spirit’s power to make your prayer effective. Now, the Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5, 19, don’t quench the Spirit. That’s what sin does. Sin shuts off the power of the Holy Spirit. And then in Ephesians 4.30, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Again, makes him sad, if you can use that word for the Holy Spirit. Disappointed maybe, the Holy Spirit is disappointed in us when we sin. We grieve the Holy Spirit by whom we are sealed into the day of redemption. So we can quench the Spirit and lose the filling of the Holy Spirit, yes, by sinning. But we don’t lose the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He’s always gonna be there since we’re believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the only effective prayer that a believer can offer when there is known sin in his life as found in 1 John 1.9. If you have known sin in your life and you’re trying to pray, it’s not gonna be answered, not even gonna be heard until you use 1 John 1.9. That is the recovery process from failure. If we confess our sin, this is problem-solving device number one, rebound, if we confess our sins, he, God, is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is what every Christian has to do when they sin. Whenever we sin and fail, We must immediately go to God the Father and admit the sin, not try to hide it, not try to put it off, not say, well, I’ll confess it later tonight. If you sin at 8 a.m. in the morning in a traffic jam, headed into work, and you get mad, lose your temper, say something you shouldn’t say, think something you shouldn’t think, you immediately are out of fellowship. And if you wait until you go to bed at night to confess your sin, that’s dumb. Why would you want to live out of fellowship and sleep in fellowship? So when you know you’ve committed a sin, that’s when you have to confess a sin immediately. Not later, immediately. And the word if, if we confess our sin, that’s conditional. It means maybe you will and maybe you won’t. So the two things for us to remember in regards to confessing sin is this. First of all, what sin did we commit? Do you know what sin you committed? Are you confessing a mental attitude sin? I hate that person, I’m jealous of that person, I’ve been envious of that person. Did you commit a sin of the tongue? I slandered him, I lied about him, I gossiped about him. Or is it an overt sin? And second, this verse says, confess the sin, which literally means to name the sin to God. If we confess is the verb homo legeo, compound verb, homo legeo, the same to say, the same to say is what it means. What God is expecting out of us is to tell him exactly what we did. It’s not God forgive me for my sin, it’s God forgive me for my lie. God, forgive me for my hatred. God, forgive me for my lust. It’s naming what you did to God, not, Lord, I’ve been bad. Forgive me for being bad. Tell him what you did because every sin that you commit, once you start going down that road, you’ll commit other sins. But if you do use 1 John 1, 9, amazingly, God can even cleanse you from the ones you don’t remember. Because it says, what? He’s just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all, every unrighteousness. So the believer’s prayer usually falls under one of three categories. First, there’s adoration. This is where we thank God for his unfailing love and daily provisions for us every day. And you should do that when you pray. You thank God for who and what he is, his justice, his righteousness, his unfailing love. And then there’s the intercessory prayer where we pray for the needs of other people. And finally, personal petitions. That’s where we bring up our own personal needs and pray for those. But remember, no prayer is heard while you have unconfessed sin in your life because you are carnal and not spiritual. It’s a very sad thing that many leaders will tell you to pray. Pray, brother, pray, but they don’t tell you how to pray. You may have never heard this from the pulpit of your pastor’s church, but if you pray with sin in your life, it’s not answered. Another principle that we need to emphasize is why do we pray? Why do we pray? Our Lord taught us to address our prayers this way in Luke 11, one through four. Now it came to pass as he was praying in a certain place, He ceased praying, and one of the disciples said to him, Lord, would you teach us to pray? And he taught his disciples this. So he said to them, when you pray, say, quote now, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive anyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Notice that we pray to the Father. I cannot emphasize that to you enough. When you pray, you do not pray to Jesus. You do not pray to the Holy Spirit. You pray to the Father. When you start praying to Jesus, you’re not doing it right. You’re doing the right thing, but you’re doing it in the wrong way. Our Father in heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ said. That’s who you pray to. And I assure you that prayers offered to Jesus or prayers offered to the Holy Spirit are ineffective prayers. Remember that. This particular study we’re doing this morning deals only with the believer’s devout supplication and entreaty to God the Father. It does not, I repeat, it does not cover you praying to Jesus. That’s not correct procedure. Nowhere in the Bible are you authorized to pray to Jesus. You pray to the Father. And you’re not authorized to pray to the Holy Spirit. You’re not authorized to pray to any object of worship, such as an angel or a saint. You, as a Christian, have the right to represent yourself before God the Father in the name of the Son and through the power of the Holy Spirit because you are a believer priest. And you have the right to spiritual privacy. So Hebrews 4.16 says, let us therefore come boldly or with confidence to the throne of grace, that’s God’s throne, so that we can obtain mercy and find grace in time of need. Prayer is one of the most powerful and effective functions in all of history. It’s an invisible power directed toward an invisible God in a relationship with our invisible assets. In 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, Paul commands this, pray without ceasing. This verse is a mandate for us to have a consistent, effective prayer life. It’s not implying that we must pray 24 hours a day, but rather that we be consistent and faithful in our prayers. Hopefully, hopefully you thank God daily for saving you and hopefully you thank God daily for providing your every need as per Matthew 6, 33 and 34. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all of these things will be added to you. Therefore, don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things, sufficient for the day in its own trouble. So look, God promised to provide your logistical needs, and there’s nothing wrong with asking for him to do that. He’s going to be faithful to do that. Thank him for providing your needs. My team and I have assembled a bookmark that I assume will help you with your prayers, especially the ones that are not being answered. And I’d like to offer that to you. If you’ll order it, just go to the website and order 10 Reasons Prayer Might Not Be Answered. Or call again, 800-831-0718. And give us your name and address slowly in case we don’t answer. It may be an answering machine, so say it slow and succinctly. And we will send you the bookmark, Why Your Prayer Might Not Be Answered. But I’m going to give you a few of them here. Hopefully it will help you. Number one, your prayer might not be answered if you fail to use God’s process for prayer. What does that mean? John 15, 16. Whatever you ask of the Father in my name. So when we go to the Father for our prayers, how do we pray? In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I watch people pray on television, preachers or at a sporting event or politicians at something and people pray, I want to know, are they saying, in the name of Christ, I offer this prayer? That must be done. Whenever you pray, you must offer the prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must always approach our Heavenly Father in that name, in the name of Christ our Lord. And two, and by the way, number one, even if you’re saying the blessing, Father, I thank you for the food we’re about to receive. We ask you to sanctify it, set it apart for our bodies. In Christ’s name, we offer this prayer. Amen. Don’t ever fail to do that. And number two, you can pray with the wrong motivation and that prayer will not be answered. James 4.3, you ask and you do not receive what you ask for because you ask it with the wrong motives. If you’re asking for something that’s out of the will of God, it’s not going to be answered. You’re trying to pull one over on God, con God, get God to give you what you want. I used to have a friend that said, if God will just let me win the lottery, I’ll give him 10%. Well, that’s a joke. Don’t pray that prayer. Don’t pray something like that. That’s silly. And number three, you ask for something that’s not in his will. In John 5, 14, if we ask anything according to his will, then he hears us according to his will. So your prayer must be in line with the will of God to get an answer. Here’s one that’ll surprise you. Lack of domestic tranquility can mean your prayers will not be answered. In 1 Peter 3, 7, listen to this, fathers, husbands. Peter wrote, Husbands, likewise dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, so that your prayers be not hindered. And that’s important that you remember that. If you’re fighting and arguing with one another, that’s a sin. And you go to start trying to pray with all of that sin in your life, it’s not going to be answered. And number five, the absence of faith will mean your prayer won’t be answered. Excuse me. In Matthew 21, 22, and whatever things you ask in prayer, now listen, here it comes, believing you will receive. That’s your faith. So when you pray to God and ask for something, believe that he can provide it. If it’s in his will, he will for sure do that. In the spiritual life, you’re always in a position to offer prayer. Anytime, anywhere, any day. Ephesians 6, 18, by means of prayer and petition, pray at all times and in the spirit. And with this in view, be alert in prayer for all the saints with perseverance and petition. Pray at all times in the spirit, filling of the Holy Spirit. Be alert in prayer for all the saints. So finally, we see the Lord delivered the Psalmist from death in his prayer. Listen to what he prayed in Psalm 116, verse one through four. I love the Lord because he’s heard my voice and my request because he bent down and listened carefully to me. Therefore, I can call to him as long as I live. The snares of death encompass me and the terror of the grave has overpowered me. I am suffering anguish and distress. Then I kept calling on the person of the Lord. Oh Lord, I beseech you, oh Lord, deliver my soul. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications because he bent down and listened carefully to me. Therefore, I will call to him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me, and the terror of the grave had overpowered me, but I am suffering anguish and distress. Then I kept calling on the Lord, and he provided the answer. The believer who wrote that was dying and prayed for deliverance, and the rest of the Psalms indicate that that prayer was indeed answered. So yes, you can pray when you’re looking at these doors of death and facing death. If it’s not God’s will, pray. Ask the Lord to deliver you. Reason with the Lord. Go before him and claim the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and pray with faith, not with unconfessed sin in your life. I hope this has helped you understand why prayers are not answered sometimes. And I hope you will keep listening every weekend, same time, same place. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
