Join host Rick Hughes as he explores the reasons why some prayers remain unanswered. This episode highlights the importance of understanding and adhering to God’s plan by growing spiritually. Through profound biblical insights and practical advice, Rick elaborates on building a robust prayer life that aligns with divine protocol, ensuring your prayers reach the heavenly throne room and are impactful in your life’s journey.
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, please stick around. It’ll be a short time, just about 27 minutes of motivation, inspiration, some education. And we always do this without any manipulation, which means we don’t con people. We’re not trying to get money. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re just offering to give you some accurate information. Hopefully, the information will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life And you can orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. We’ve been on the air now for almost 13 years with the Flatline. It’s been amazing to see how God has graced us out, provided for our needs. and lets us continue to broadcast in your area. Thank you for listening. If you ever fail to get the show on some particular Sunday, if something happens and it doesn’t play, let us know. Go to our website, rickhughesministries.org and shoot us an email. We’ll figure out what happened because sometimes they do have mistakes at radio stations and sometimes things don’t play as they should. But thank you for listening. Today we want to talk about something that’s very critical. I constantly hear people tell me, I prayed about it. When they’re faced with a big decision like a job or even a marriage or a school or something they’re going to do, they say, I prayed about it. And I’m thinking to myself, okay, good deal. You prayed about it. But what exactly does that mean? That just seems to be a catch-all term today. We pray for you. Our prayers and thoughts go out to you. Nobody really understands the mechanics involved in that, and sometimes it’s just a cliche. So what I want to talk to you today is about prayer and why sometimes your prayers may not be answered. That’s right. Every prayer that is uttered is not always answered, and you may be in that situation. And so why would prayers not be answered? Let’s start off with a verse that’s very critical. And first of all, is it legitimate to pray? And the answer is certainly yes. The Bible says we should pray without ceasing. And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have instant long distance terrestrial access to the heavenly throne of God. You have it. if you dial the right number, so to say. But if you don’t dial the right number, your call is not going to go through. In our state, they’re adding a new area code, and I’ve been told that if you don’t dial the right area code, your call will not go through. And so anyhow, let’s talk about this. Why would my prayer not get answered? Or why would my prayer not get to the throne room of God? Because some people say, well, I thought every prayer went straight to God. No, they do not. First of all, in Proverbs 128, the Bible says, then they shall call on me, but I will not answer. They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. Now there’s nothing more devastating to a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ than praying for an answer and then not getting any response. I guess it’s sort of like being on an island and Not having anyone come to your rescue, you’re stuck there. I think we all saw that movie where Tom Hanks was stuck on that island and had a relationship with a volleyball. Wilson, I think he called it, and nobody came to rescue him. Of course, you and I know that the Holy Spirit plays a major role in our prayers and whether they get answered or whether they don’t get answered. Listen to what Romans 8.26 says about the Holy Spirit’s ministry to me in prayer. Romans 8.26, likewise, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit says, also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. The Greek word for groanings is stenagmos. Stenagmos is the Greek word and it means cries. our request. So when we go to the Father and we pray, if we want to have our prayers answered, it’s imperative that the Holy Spirit be involved in those prayers. In Acts 7.34, that word groaning is used where It is written, I have seen and I’ve heard the affliction of my people, which is in Egypt, and I’ve heard their groanings. Same words, denagmos. And I have come down to deliver them, and now I will send you to Egypt. Groanings, their cries, their appeals to be answered. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. He takes our prayers to the Father with our desperate plea or a desperate cry to answer. If our prayers are going to be effective, and hopefully your prayers are effective, especially if you’re praying for me, I’d like for them to be effective, then we have to follow protocol. And protocol simply means you have to do the right thing in the right way. Because the right thing done in the wrong way is wrong. a right thing done in the right way is right so if you do a right thing in the right way at the right time then it’s always right so there is a wrong way to pray and this is seen in psalm 66 18 if i regard iniquity in my heart the lord will not hear me what does that mean it means that sin blocks the ministry of the holy spirit in or during my prayers so let’s go back to a basic bible doctrine that we should all understand which is the filling of the holy spirit we have problem solving devices one two and three and four and five six seven eight nine ten in the flat line of your soul Problem solving device number one is the rebound process where it says, if I confess my sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Now, If I have sin in my life, the Bible tells me that I’ve got a problem, that I have quenched or I have grieved the Holy Spirit because sin blocks the ministry of the Holy Spirit during my time of prayer. So what sin? Are we talking about drunkenness? Are we talking about fornication? Are we talking about cursing? What are we talking about? Well, let’s look at a sin that you might not have thought of. This is a sin that slides by a lot, and people don’t really think about it very much. Are you listening? 2 Peter 3.18, grow, and that’s a command, that’s not a request, grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So We are commanded to grow. Here’s another verse, 2 Timothy 2.15. Study, and by the way, this is how we grow. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. rightly dividing the word of truth. Both the word grow and the word study are verbs, and they are both in the imperative mood in the Greek New Testament, which means this is a command, this is not a request. Both of these are divine mandates for the believer in Jesus Christ to grow spiritually by studying God’s word. Now, what does that mean exactly? Hosea 4.6 talks of national discipline on God’s people because they rejected knowledge. The objective of growing and studying is to get knowledge. We call it the Fantastic Four, wisdom, knowledge, discernment, and understanding. The objective of growing is to gain knowledge. And listen to Hosea 4, 6, the sin of rejecting knowledge. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Hosea 4, 6, national discipline coming on the nation Israel. Because you rejected knowledge, the verse goes on to say, I will reject you, that you will no longer be a priest to me, seeing you forgot the law of your God, and I will also forget your children. Uh-oh. That’s a little bit of a warning. When our Lord Jesus Christ was carrying his cross and Simon of Cyrene had to pick it up for him and carry it on up to Golgotha, you remember what the Lord told the thief, today you’ll be with me in paradise, and you remember what the Roman centurion said, surely this is the Son of God, but do you remember what Jesus said to the women who were mourning and wailing as he went down the street, all beaten and scourged and just barely even walking, not able to carry the burden of the cross. He looked at them and said, don’t weep for me, weep for yourselves and what’s coming and weep for your children and pray that you don’t have children. You see, national discipline on a nation is a horrible thing, and in 70 AD, Jerusalem was completely destroyed by the Roman invasion of Titus. And if you put that into perspective today, I personally believe the United States of America is at a serious crossroads in history. And you’ve heard me say before, as goes your spiritual life, so goes the future of your nation. and what is the problem we have forgot the law of our god we have put him in third place fourth place fifth place we no longer can even talk about god or even post the ten commandments in the public square it’s offensive to someone and that is the most ludicrous crazy thing i’ve ever heard in my life so we don’t want knowledge we don’t want the knowledge of god we don’t want people to be exposed to the knowledge of god What did the verse say? My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. It is a sin to reject the knowledge of God. Proverbs 1.22 gives another divine warning to those who fail to learn and understand the plan of God. Here it is, verse 1.22 in Proverbs. How long will you simple ones love simplicity? And how long will the scoffer delight in his scoffing? And how long will fools hate knowledge? What’s wrong with knowledge? It is the plan of God. It is understanding the protocol plan of God. It’s coming to do exactly what the Bible says. Jeremiah 9, 24, let the one that glories glory in this. that he understands me and he knows me. You can’t understand God without having a knowledge of God. If you don’t understand that he’s sovereignty, righteousness, justice, love, eternal life, immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and if you don’t understand some of those things, how can you love a God you don’t even understand? The question you must answer this morning on this radio show is, are your prayers being hindered because you are sinning by not learning and understanding God’s plan for your life. Are you just going through the ritual without any reality to it? You know, the nod to God crowd, the casual Christian crowd. Is that you? Because if you’re not taking time to actually learn the Word of God and understand the mechanics and the procedures and the principles that are taught in the Word of God, then at best, you’re just a casual Christian. the nod to God crowd, the Sunday morning guy. And that doesn’t cut it as far as your spiritual life goes. How much about your God do you actually understand? That’s the question. And how can you worship a God that you don’t understand? So in the Bible verse in Jeremiah says he’s looking for someone that understands him and knows him. The only way you’re ever going to understand God is to study and grow and do what Jesus said, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Learn of me. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Learn, study, grow. Listen, folks, you’re not going to grow with 30 minutes on Sunday morning and 30 minutes on Sunday night and maybe 15 minutes on Wednesday night before the chicken dinner. You’re not going to grow that way. If you sent a kid to the first grade for an hour and 15 minutes a week, he’d never get out of the first grade. And many Christians don’t study God’s Word. They don’t even read the Bible. They don’t even bring a Bible to church. It’s ridiculous. And unless you have a Bible that you can study, and unless you’re under what I call a well-qualified pastor, not a cruise ship director, a well-qualified pastor who’s going to study it himself, and then teach it to you, and you’re never going to grow. It’s imperative that you understand that. It’s not a text. I mean, it’s not a novel. You’re not going to read through it and grow spiritually. I’m glad you read the Bible, and I’m glad people have. I read the Bible in a year. That’s wonderful, but that’s not how you grow. You grow by sitting under a person who has a communication gift called the poimen kai didaskalos in Ephesians, the pastor and teacher. And you listen to him break the bread open and make you rich. Make you rich, give you a treasure. The word for treasure in the Greek New Testament is a thesaurus. It’s a word treasure. When you have a word treasure in your soul, it affects the way you think. It brings you to the mind of Christ so that you begin to think divine viewpoint. And you begin to fulfill Romans 12, 1 through 3. Stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think, but think in terms of humility. As God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. understanding, wisdom, insight, knowledge from his word. It’s critical. There’s one difference between knowing God and understanding God, a big difference. And this may be one reason your prayers are not being answered and they’re not effective. You may have sinned by ignoring the word of God and ignoring the scriptures and not studying consistently. You say, well, I do a morning devotion every morning. Really? That’s wonderful. I’m proud of you. But a 15-minute devotion is not really going to cut it as far as you growing. That’s kind of like squirting a little ether in your carburetor trying to jumpstart it on a cold morning. You know, we don’t even hardly have any pastors today that are willing to study and teach anymore. There’s so many demands on the pastors for them to visit and call on folks and shake folks’ hands and pay attention to folks that the pastor doesn’t have time to study. When you find good men who have the gift of pastor-teacher, who are willing to sit down and study every day before they get up and try to teach you, who go line upon line, word upon word, verse upon verse. We call it the ICE technique. I-C-E. Isogogical, categorical, exegetical. Go in and study the word, what it meant then, what it means today. develop the categories within the passage and exegete the passage line upon line, word upon word, dot upon dot. It’s all important in the word of God. When you can do that, when you can sit at home under a pastor, if you’re not at church, well, you can Maybe you can get a DVD or an MP3 or a cassette or something, and each morning or each evening put it in and get your Bible and get a notebook and grow and study and learn. I’ve been doing this for 50-plus years, and the more I study, the two things I realize, the more I don’t know, and I’ve learned that Scripture is layered. So once I go through a passage and understand the surface layer, if I go back through it again, I see something underneath the surface that I didn’t see the first time. And sometimes it’s many layers deep. But there’s need for you to study and grow so that you become a mature believer. That’s what the whole process is about. So that you begin to replicate the thinking of Christ. so that you begin to reproduce the life of Christ, so that when people see you, they see Christ in you. That’s the whole thing, and that’s what you must do, and that comes by renovating your thought process, renovating your thinking, letting the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. this is one reason why prayers are not answered why prayers are not effective because you ignore the mandate to study and grow spiritually and it’s a battle folks i understand i mean i see it in my own family and the distractions that come along I can promise you this. If you decide in your life that you’re going to set aside an hour a day for study of the scripture under a pastor, I promise you, you will be tested in every way you can imagine by the enemy himself, by the cosmic system, the world, the flesh, whatever. First of all, you might not even be able to concentrate for an hour. And secondly, if you decide you’re going to do this, you will find all sorts of distractions. You may get job opportunities you never had. You may get wealth offered to you you never saw. Anything to keep you out of the Word of God. Because if there’s one thing Satan doesn’t want, it’s another effective warrior for the Lord Jesus Christ taking the high ground and representing the life of Christ to a dying world. He doesn’t want you to do that. So he will try to hinder your advance. Here’s another reason your prayers might not be answered. You are not filled with the Holy Spirit. You have unconfessed sin in your life. You’ve quenched the Holy Spirit. Another reason is you rejected the Word of God. You didn’t spend time studying the Word of God. Another reason is you failed to keep his mandates. What do I mean? 1 John 3, 22. And whatever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his mandates firmly. and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. Did you hear that? 1 John 3, 22, whatever we ask, we receive because we keep his mandates and do the things that are pleasing in his sight. God expects you to be obedient and God will bless you as a result of that. One reason your prayers might not be answered is malfunction in your marriage. 1 Peter 3, 7. Likewise, you husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge. There it is. Gnosis, the Greek word, epinosis, full knowledge. This is wisdom, discernment, insight, and understanding. Dwell with them according to knowledge. How do you get knowledge? Study, learn, grow. And the verse goes on to say, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel and being heirs together of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered. Marital discourse, malfunction in marriage can hinder your prayers. If you and your spouse, husband or wife are arguing or bickering, if you’re not on the same page, if you’re frustrated, well, your prayers are not gonna be answered because that is a sin. And it’s looking to the husbands to solve the problem here. You husbands dwell with them according to knowledge, according to what the scripture says. Another reason your prayer might not get answered is the wrong motivation for praying. Maybe you’re praying for something you don’t need or you’re praying for something that’s absolutely ridiculous. James 4.3, you ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss so that you can consume it upon your lust. I’m just going to tell you right now, if you’re praying to win the lottery, you’re wasting your breath. You’re like, what, what? You’re wasting your breath. You know, you’re thinking that if you could just win the lottery, you see them on TV, you see this guy won a million, this guy won 22 million, this guy won 100 million. Oh, look how happy they’re going to be. No, no. The only thing money will do is give you the ability to be miserable in a different part of town. That’s all. So don’t be praying to win the lottery. That prayer is probably not going to be answered unless it’s very unusual. And that means that God may want to take it all and use it for his glory, not for yours. And in that case, you’re probably saying, well, I would give God 10%. Oh, whoopee doo. A big gracious person you are. Listen, don’t pray to win the lottery, false motivation. And don’t be praying, well, you know, if I could just have a new car, I’d be happy. If I could just have a new home, I’d be happy. You can be happy right where you are if you’re content. That’s a wonderful thing because contentment gives you the capacity to enjoy life as you are. Another reason your prayer might not be answered is malfunction of faith rest drill. Mark 11, 24. Therefore, I say unto you, whatever things you desire when you pray, believe it that you may receive them and you will have them. Believe it. That’s faith. Faith rest drill. Standing on the promises of God. And God has over 7,000 promises in the Bible for you. If you can’t claim those promises, you can’t believe them. Do you even know any? we have a book called biblical promises and principles we’ll be glad to send you if you don’t have one let us know but many of those promises are categorized in that book for you but you’ve got to know the promises of God so you can claim them Another reason prayer might not be answered is the improper prayer procedure, praying in the wrong way. For example, nowhere in the Bible are you told to pray to Jesus. Prayers are to be addressed to the Father. Matthew 6, 9, after this manner, therefore, Jesus our Lord said, pray like this, our Father, which art in heaven. And we are to pray in the name of Jesus, John 15, 16. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever you ask of the Father in my name, he may give unto you. So we’re authorized to go to the Father in the name of the Son. That’s a legitimate thing, that he may give it to you. Now, we also learn something else. We also learn that there can be a problem in our life when we pray the wrong prayers, when we pray the wrong reason or the wrong way or pray the wrong prayer. And so there’s a prayer called an imprecatory prayer. An imprecatory prayer is praying for the destruction of your enemy. And some people get mad at certain people and want to pray for those people to be harmed or for god to get even with them don’t do that it’s not a way to pray we get mighty impatient when god’s justice doesn’t happen fast enough for us sometimes so it’s a test it can come from a person or a system but we have to be very careful not to allow ourselves to get ahead of god And so we must not be involved in hypersensitivity and arrogance because we make enemies of arrogance. We fight against impulsive arrogance and self-righteousness. Arrogance will utterly destroy any effective prayer life you may have. So there is a legitimate prayer for asking for protection from the enemy. Psalm 54, 1 through 5. Save me, O God, by your name. Vindicate me by your might. Hear my prayer, O God, and listen to the words of my mouth, because arrogant foes are attacking me. Ruthless people are trying to kill me. People are without regard for you. Surely, God, you are my helper. You are the one who sustains me. Let evil recoil on those who slander me. In your faithfulness, destroy them. Psalm 54, 1 through 5. and it’s okay to pray for the enemy to be destroyed. General Patton taught us that in World War II. A lot more to say. Hope I’m making sense. I pray it’s making sense. Come back next Sunday, same time, same place, and you’ll learn more. Until then, 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.
