When is Prayer Heard? by Christopher Love
If it is so that a man must be in a state of friendship before his prayers can be accepted, then understand that all you ever do before that state is hateful to God. Not only your sinful actions, but even your civil, your natural, yes, your religious actions. Not that they are so in themselves, or in regard of God, but in regard of the doer of them. Many prayers cannot turn one sin into a grace, but one sin willfully and resolutely continued in can turn all your prayers into sin. “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the lord: how much more when he brings it with a wicked mind?” Proverbs 21: 27
Prayer is an ordinance of great excellency, of great efficacy, but if it comes out of the heart of one who is wicked it loses all its virtue. A diseased body turns food into corrupt humors which a healthy body turns into sound nourishment. Water that is pure in the fountain is corrupt in the channel….
God does not care for the:
¢ rhetoric of prayers (how eloquent they are),
¢ nor for the arithmetic of prayers (how many they are),
¢ nor for the logic of them (how rational or methodical they are),
¢ nor for the music of them (what a harmony and melody of words you have).
God looks at the divinity of prayers, which is from the heart. The heart is the window through which God sees into a man.
It is good to inquire:
¢ Is my heart right?
¢ Is my mind composed?
¢ Are my affections raised and kindled in prayer?
¢ Is my person accepted by God?
James 5: 16, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray for another, that he may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”