1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
We saw earlier that the Holy Spirit has taught us that we can pray with our spirits and we can also pray with our understanding. We have also seen earlier that one who prays in other tongues speaks directly to God with their spirits. As we will see in this section, a very important truth for us to recognise, is that prayer in the spirit is always heard by God. Praying with the understanding on the other hand has its limitations, for there are instances when our prayers of understanding are not heard by God. The most important aspect to a successful prayer life is having our prayers heard by God, for the apostle John assures us that if we know that our prayers are heard then we can be assured that our prayers will be answered (1 John 5:15). Sadly however, there are many prayers of the understanding that are uttered by the saints that are never heard by God. So why is that? There are two main reasons for prayers of the understanding not being heard by the Lord. The first reason is unconfessed sin in the life of the believer. In the scripture quoted above, the Holy Spirit tells us that if we confess our sins that we will be cleansed from all unrighteousness. Conversely, the Holy Spirit is also telling us in this passage that if we do not confess our sins that we will not be cleansed from all unrighteousness, and that has consequences.
1 Peter 3:7-12 “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, that your prayers may not be hindered. … (12) For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
In the scripture quoted above, the Holy Spirit tells us that our Father’s ears are open to the prayers of the righteous. And so one who has not been cleansed from all unrighteousness will no longer have their prayers of the understanding heard, because our Father’s ears are only open to those who are righteous. Someone said, but I thought that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and so we always have direct access to the Father in prayer. That statement is true in the spirit, for it is our spirits that have been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. But that statement is not true in the realm of our understanding, for in the realm of our understanding we are required to walk in the righteousness provided to us in our spirits. However, if we choose with our understanding, not to walk in that righteousness, but rather to walk in unrighteousness, then we no longer have direct access to the Father with the prayers of our understanding. Referring to the above passage of scripture again, we see that the Holy Spirit tells us that strife between a husband and wife will hinder their prayers, which simply means that their prayers of understanding will not be heard. So why is that? When spouses are not walking in love towards each other then they are walking in sin and no longer walking in righteousness, and the act of not walking in righteousness has the effect of having our prayers of the understanding no longer being heard by the Father. That same principle applies to every aspect of the believers’ life i.e. if they are walking outside of love towards any of their brethren, then their prayers of the understanding will also not be heard. However in the spirit this is not the case, for our spirits cannot sin (1 John 3:9). And in fact it is our spirits, along with our consciences, that condemn us when we do sin (Romans 2:15). And so because our spirits are always righteous, when we pray with our spirits those prayers are always heard by God. Even the believer, who is walking in unrepentant sin, has their prayer that is uttered in the spirit heard by God. Obviously the spirit of that believer will be praying for the believer to be led to repentance so that their prayers of their understanding can once again be heard by God. You can therefore readily see that being able to pray in other tongues is of immense value to the believer.
1 John 5:14-15 “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (15) And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
The second reason that our prayers of the understanding go unheard is because many times those prayers fall outside the will of God. In the scripture quoted above the Holy Spirit tells us that if we ask the Father anything in accordance with His will, He hears us. And so conversely the Holy Spirit is also teaching us in the same passage, that if we ask the Father anything outside of His will, He does not hear us. When I say that God does not hear those prayers I do not mean that God becomes temporarily deaf. What I mean is that the Lord chooses to ignore those prayers and He certainly does not answer them.
2 Corinthians 12:7-9 “And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. (8) Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. (9) And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
To illustrate the point that God ignores prayers that fall outside of His will, I have quoted the above passage of scripture. We can see in this example that the apostle Paul had prayed to the Lord three times about the same issue. On the first two occasions that Paul prayed, the Lord ignored him completely. On the third occasion, the Lord finally explained to Paul just why He was not going to grant his request. In effect the Lord told Paul that He would not grant him his petition because he was praying outside of the will of God. We need to understand the background to this incident in order for us to understand the Lord’s response to Paul. The background to this incident is that when Paul was called by God to be the apostle to the gentiles, He decided to give Paul more revelation concerning the mysteries of the gospel than any of the other apostles, so that even the apostle Peter stated that some of Paul’s teachings were hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). The danger to Paul however, of receiving so much revelation from the Lord, was that he could become lifted up in pride, because Paul would know more than anyone else. You will recall that because of the abundance of beauty given him by the Lord, pride was the sin that caused Lucifer to fall. And so in order to counteract the temptation of pride that Paul could be exposed to, the Lord decided to allow Satan to allocate one of his angels permanently to Paul to persecute him as often as he desired. Right from the outset, the Lord told Paul that He would do this, for He told Paul how many things he must suffer for the sake of the gospel (Acts 9:16). After a while however, the persecution became a bit much for Paul to bear in the natural, and so he prayed to the Lord to remove this angel. This was when the Lord finally told Paul that He would not remove the angel, because that would be going against His will for Paul’s life. Instead, the Lord taught Paul to pray for His strength to be made manifest through Paul in his persecutions. And so we see that in the natural, even the apostle Paul did not always have the necessary understanding to pray according to God’s perfect will. No wonder Paul thanked God that he prayed with his spirit more than all others, because praying in the spirit always prays God’s perfect will.
Michael E.B. Maher
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