Hindrances to Prayer

Why the Results Fail. 2. Why the Results Are Delayed. 3. The Great
Outside Hindrance, or, the Relation of Prayer to Satan.

Why the Results Fail

Breaking with God.

God answers prayer. Prayer is God and man joining hands to secure some
high end. He joins with us through the communication of prayer in
accomplishing certain great results. This is the main drive of prayer. Our
asking and expecting and God's doing jointly bring to pass things that
otherwise would not come to pass. Prayer changes things. This is the great
fact of prayer.

Yet a great many prayers are not answered. Or, to put it more accurately,
a great many prayers fail utterly of accomplishing any results. Probably
it is accurate to say that _thousands_ of prayers go up and bring nothing
down. This is certainly true. Let us say it just as bluntly and plainly as
it can be said. As a result many persons are saying: "Well, prayer is not
what you claim for it: we prayed and no answer came: nothing was changed."

From all sorts of circles, and in all sorts of language comes this
statement. Scholarly men who write with wisdom's words, and thoughtless
people whose thinking never even pricks the skin of the subject, and all
sorts of people in between group themselves together here. And they are
right, quite right. The bother is that what they say is not all there is
to be said. There is yet more to be said, that is right too, and that
changes the final conclusion radically. Partial truth is a very mean sort
of lie.

The prayer plan like many another has been much disturbed, and often
broken. And one who would be a partner with God up to the limit of his
power must understand the things that hinder the prayer plan. There are
three sorts of hindrances to prayer. First of all there are things in us
that _break off connection_ with God, the source of the changing power.
Then there are certain things in us that _delay, or diminish_ the results;
that interfere with the full swing of the prayer plan of operations. And
then there is a great _outside_ hindrance to be reckoned upon. To-day we
want to talk together of the first of these, namely, the hindrances that
_break off connections_ between God and His human partner.

Here again there is a division into three. There are three things directly
spoken of in the book of God that hinder prayer. One of these is a
familiar thing. What a pity that repugnant things may become so familiar
as no longer to repel. It is this:--_sin_ hinders prayer. In Isaiah's
first chapter God Himself speaking says, "When you stretch out your
hands"--the way they prayed, standing with outstretched hands--"I will
shut My eyes; when you make many prayers, I will shut My ears."[12] Why?
What's the difficulty? These outstretched hands are _soiled!_ They are
actually holding their sin-soiled hands up into God's face; and He is
compelled to look at the thing most hateful to Him. In the fifty-ninth
chapter of this same book,[13] God Himself is talking again. Listen
"Behold! the _Lord's_ hand is not shortened: _His_ ear is not heavy."
There is no trouble on the _up_ side. God is all right. "But"--listen with
both your ears--"your _iniquities_ ... your _sins_ ... your _hands_ ...
your _fingers_ ... your _lips_ ... your _tongue_ ..." the slime of sin is
oozing over everything! Turn back to that sixty-sixth Psalm[14]--"if I
regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me." How much more if
the sin of the heart get into the hands or the life! And the fact to put
down plainly in blackest ink once for all is this--_sin hinders prayer_.
There is nothing surprising about this. That we can think the reverse is
the surprising thing. Prayer is transacting business with God. Sin is
_breaking with God_.

Suppose I had a private wire from my apartments here to my home in
Cleveland, and some one should go outside and drag the wire down until it
touches the ground--a good square touch with the ground--the electricians
would call it grounded, could I telegraph over that wire? Almost any child
knows I could not. Suppose some one _cuts_ the wire, a good clean cut; the
two ends are apart: not a mile; not a yard; but distinctly apart. Could I
telegraph on that wire? Of course not. Yet I might sit in my room and tick
away by the hour wholly absorbed, and use most beautiful persuasive
language--what is the good? The wire's cut. All my fine pleading goes into
the ground, or the air. Now _sin cuts the wire;_ it runs the message into
the ground.

"Well," some one will object, "now you're cutting us all out, are you not?
Are we not all conscious of a sinful something inside here that has to be
fought, and held under all the while?" It certainly seems to be true that
the nearer a man gets to God the more keenly conscious he is of a sinful
tendency within even while having continual victory. But plainly enough
what the Book means here is this:--if I am holding something in my life
that the Master does not like, if I am failing to obey when His voice has
spoken, that to me is sin. It may be wrong in itself. It may _not_ be
wrong in itself. It may not be wrong for another. Sometimes it is not the
thing involved but the One involved that makes the issue. If that faithful
quiet inner voice has spoken and I know what the Master would prefer and I
fail to keep in line, that to me is sin. Then prayer is useless; sheer
waste of breath. Aye, worse, it is deceptive. For I am apt to say or
think, "Well, I am not as good as you, or you, but then I am not so bad;
_I pray._" And the truth is because I have broken with God the
praying--saying words in that form--is utterly worthless.

You see _sin is slapping God in the face_. It may be polished, cultured
sin. Sin seems capable of taking quite a high polish. Or it may be the
common gutter stuff. A man is not concerned about the grain of a club that
strikes him a blow. How can He and I talk together if I have done that,
and stick to it--not even apologized. And of what good is an apology if
the offense is being repeated. And if we cannot talk together of course
working together is out of the question. And prayer is working together
with God. Prayer is _pulling with God_ in His plan for a world.

Shall we not put out the thing that is wrong? or put in the thing the
Master wants in? For _Jesus'_ sake? Aye for _men's_ sake: poor befooled
men's sake who are being kept out and away because God cannot get at them
through us!

Shall we bow and ask forgiveness for our sin, and petty stubbornness that
has been thwarting the Master's love-plan? And yet even while we ask
forgiveness there are lives out yonder warped and dwarfed and worse
because of the hindrance in us; yes, and remaining so as we slip out of
this meeting. May the fact send us out to walk very softly these coming
days.
Walking In Gods Blessings From This Day Forward!