6 Destructive Ways to Sabotage Your Prayers
Do you sabotage your prayers without even realizing it?
Do you wonder why your prayers aren’t being answered?
The fastest way to sabotage your prayers is
by an unrepentant heart that keeps living in sin.
Break the bondage to sin with victory-living!
Sin has a grip on your life so that even when your biggest desire is to follow Christ, you might have destructive ways that are preventing your prayers from being answered.
I’m far from perfect and also need to examine my heart as I share these destructive ways that sabotage prayers that are heavy on my heart.
Trials and problems often oppress us on our journey through life.
Do you have prayer concerns for your husband and children?
As moms and wives, we often pray for our family’s safety, health, salvation, and spiritual growth.
My focus is encouraging your prayers to increase instead of trail off.
I’m challenging you to think deeply through what I’m sharing to ensure your prayers aren’t hindered.
When your prayers go unanswered it can be discouraging as it tests your faith while waiting weeks, months, or years. It can bring you to despair.
Jesus encourages you to endure in prayer (Luke 18:1-6) and not lose heart. You need that kind of encouragement and hope. You’ll be equipped to up-level your prayer-life through meditating on these thoughts and verses.
Sometimes God’s answer to your prayer is to wait or not now. Is there anything standing in the way of your prayer being answered? Is your heart right with God?
Don’t stop asking God for a specific request because you haven’t been getting answers. Allow God to fuel you with unquenchable fervent prayers burning inside you.
6 Destructive Ways to Sabotage Your Prayers
I don’t want anything to hinder my prayers.
My biggest destructive problem with prayer is prayerlessness!
I want to up-level my prayer-life, especially for my family.
My kids desperately need my prayers whether they are living for God or not.
My husband desperately needs my prayers because there’s nothing satan would rather do than destroy my marriage.
So, I’m asking you to join me as I pray and ask Jesus, “Lord, teach me to pray!”
1. Be Unrepentant
The fastest way to sabotage your prayers are through unrepentant sin!
As Christ-followers, we go to church and put on our mask to cover up what is underneath. During the past year, wearing masks have become common as we wear them whenever we go out in public.
Masks prevent germs from being transmitted to others but we also hide behind ‘masks’ to conceal our hurt as well as our sin.
Examine your heart in case there is anything you are hiding.
Destructive habits preventing prayer:
- What you are watching!
- What you click as you scroll social feeds!
- What you buy!
- What you say!
- What you think!
Behind your mask, you might feel you aren’t enough. That you’re unworthy and that makes you less likely to pray.
God doesn’t want a perfect prayer that would ‘WOW’ all the women at church. Your simple prayer is all God wants to hear.
He wants you to cast off the weights that so easily entangle you (Hebrews 12:1) and rely on the blood of Jesus for transformation. Cling to Him through whatever you are going through.
When I go through issues with my husband, I need a clear channel between myself and God so He will hear my cry for help!
I have children who are not walking with God and I need the strength to uplift them in prayer.
Don’t think if your children are walking with the Lord, that you’ve less reason to pray. They need direction and safety each day. They desperately need your prayers.
If you have kids growing up in your home, you’ll want your prayers answered and not sabotaged!
If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. Psalm 66:18
Behold, the Lord‘s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,
or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;
2 but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear. Isaiah 59:1-2
“Whoever desires to love life
and see good days,
let him keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from speaking deceit;
11 let him turn away from evil and do good;
let him seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” 1 Peter 3:10-12
What man is there who desires life
and loves many days, that he may see good?
13 Keep your tongue from evil
and your lips from speaking deceit.
14 Turn away from evil and do good;
seek peace and pursue it.
15 The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
and his ears toward their cry.
16 The face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
to cut off the memory of them from the earth. Psalm 34:12-16
2. Ignore God’s Word
One thing I say over and over again is . . . get into God’s Word and spend time with Jesus.
Do you know where your Bible is right now?
No, not the one on your phone (although that works) but the one with the pretty cover, worn from use. The one that doesn’t have social media apps constantly sending notifications, calling you away from Jesus!
God is always waiting for you to stop your business and spend time alone with Him. He is a jealous God and doesn’t want to share your time and attention with anything else.
God graciously leaves the door open for you to come any time of the day or night for comfort and help, giving you hope and grace.
Hopefully, you’re willing to hear what God is saying today,
Don’t ignore God’s Word.
As important as it is to pray, it’s life-saving to listen to God!
3. Pray for Your Own Glory
Have you ever heard the story of the man who kept pounding his chest as he boasted (Luke 18:9-14) about the wonderful and righteous person he was? Nothing could have been further from the truth!
God isn’t impressed when we boast about ourselves, thinking we have arrived in our success, greatness, and holiness. God’s heart is moved when we come to Him as a sinner with a contrite heart, declaring our need for God and Him only.
Meditate on the mercy of God and His love for you.
Nothing makes sin seem so sinful and so hateful as when you meditate and think on the love of God.
Soak yourself in the Word of God until your confidence increases and KNOW that He DOES answer your prayers!
“that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” 1 John 5:14-15
4. Secretly Doubt God is Good
Of course, you don’t doubt that God is good! Or do you?
You don’t have to go to church (online or off-line) for long to realize that we all think God is good.
Or do you?
Sometimes we say things with our lips with the full intention of believing what we’re saying.
You might have the ability to choose all the right words to say when tragedy happens to you.
- I have a 37-year-old friend who tragically died in a fatal car accident last summer.
- Another friend passed when she was not quite 42-years-old leaving her husband and 6 children.
- Another friend died recently from COVID leaving her husband and 10 children (baby to young adult).
When life tragically happens, do you secretly doubt God’s goodness?
Are your prayers anchored to earth as you doubt God because of what’s happened in life? I think I’m guilty of this because I’m not praying a fervently as I should. Not believing God from the depths of my heart.
Prayers can be rolling off our tongues in the holiest way but with a heart that’s murmuring and not really believing that we’ll be heard.
Are you half-heartedly praying?
Do you not expect to receive?
We are dishonoring God when we pray like this!
5. Your Prayers to God
If you want your prayers to be heard by a holy God who loves you despite what you’ve gone through, come to Him making sure that you aren’t filled with the stench of unrepentance or worldliness.
Jesus may be patient with you even though you have put worldliness and sin before Him.
You are not only your husband’s wife but the bride of Christ. As the church, you might be drunk with the world and turn to God with a brief little prayer but you reek so bad of worldliness that God turns his face away.
Worldliness breeds unrighteousness, leaving us unholy for serving our husband and children in the best capacity possible.
When you (and I) come to God, let’s pray, and keep praying and praying not losing heart. Don’t lose careful watch over your life and that of your family through prayer.
When you live in repentance, it’s easy to pray and devour God’s Word.
It’s easy to seek God’s glory in all that you do throughout the day. Even the mundane tasks.
I encourage you to love your husband and children.
Go to your Father every single day. Go to Him when situations loom out of control and the chaos of motherhood overwhelms you.
Be reverent towards God and press on and on until prayer becomes more precious than scrolling social media feeds from the moment you roll over to turn off your alarm!
