The Healing Word

Jack Morris: There's not a thought, there's not an imagination, there's not a dream, there's not a vision that is too big that God can't handle and take care of it. Exceedingly, abundantly, and He wants to do it.

Guest (Male): Sometimes believers pray sincerely, yet their prayers seem unanswered. Today, Pastor Jack Morris joins us to examine the hindrances to prayer, helping us understand what can stand in the way of effective communication with God.

Jack Morris: James wrote the book of James. He's the author. I want to tell you something about this man. He knew about communion with Jesus. You see, the man who wrote this book was a natural brother of Jesus. This was Mary's second son. Jesus was her first son. She had sons and daughters after Jesus.

Mary was a virgin. The Holy Spirit came, spoke to her, and told her that she was going to bring forth a son and that she was to call his name Jesus. Joseph and Mary married, but they didn't consummate the marriage sexually until after Jesus was born. After Jesus was born, they had a natural husband and wife relationship. The next son, which then became Jesus' half-brother, was James.

Here he is. He wrote this book. This is not the Apostle James. Matter of fact, there were four Jameses in the New Testament. The Apostle James was killed early on. So, what I'm trying to say basically is here's a person who really knew Jesus and knew how to communicate with Jesus, and he's going to share with us his insight and information on how to talk to Jesus Christ.

Chapter four, verse one. He begins this way: "What causes fights and quarrels among you?" Now, who is he writing to? If you turn back to the first chapter of James, you will notice he's writing to the 12 lost tribes of Israel. Jewish people who had become Christians, who had accepted his elder brother as their personal Lord and Savior.

Matter of fact, James had a very difficult time believing in Jesus. James, the writer of this book, did not become a Christian until after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He lived with Jesus. They played together. They were little boys. This was my big brother. How could he be the Savior of the world going to the cross to bear my sins?

He had a very difficult time believing and accepting Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. But when he did, the scripture says, the Apostle Paul says, James became a pillar in the church. He was the leader or the pastor of the first Jerusalem church, and what I'm telling you can be found in Acts, chapter 15.

But there came great persecution to the church and the church was scattered. These Jewish Christians were scattered all abroad. James, being their pastor, knowing where some of them were, wrote letters to them. They were his flock and he wrote letters. He heard that there were some problems existing. The church was such a new church. Christianity was such a very, very new thing.

So he knew that these people needed Christ. They needed to know how to pray and get answers to their prayers. But he heard that they were acting like immature children and that they started fighting among themselves. He was saying, "Aren't you getting enough problem from the world? The world and the government and persecution drove you out of Jerusalem, drove you from the church."

"Not only is there problems out there, I understand there are problems inside and you're now starting to quarrel among yourselves when you do get together." What James was saying is this: If we do not have a relationship, a pure, honest, loving relationship with one another, God isn't going to answer our prayers. That's first and foremost. This is what the brother of Jesus is telling us.

"What causes these fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?" What he was saying is the trouble, friend, is not that other person, but it is something that is wrong that's going on inside you. Jesus even said in Matthew, chapter seven, we always want to go around and correct other people. We want to go around and try to take the speck of sawdust out of their eye and there's a great big plank or two-by-four sticking out of our own eye.

Look within. Some introspection. Often the problem is not an external problem with my brother in the church, but James is saying, "You've got trouble in your own heart. Get that fixed and make that right with God and watch what happens." Now this happens in many a marriage. Many marriages. I have husbands saying, "If my wife would only straighten up. She's the problem. Her."

Often they'll come in and they'll say, "Pastor, I'd like to talk to you by myself, without my wife. If she would only do this or stop doing that." It's that external. If this whole problem would be fixed if he would or if she would. It also happens in the church. Often we're thinking if so-and-so were just a little different. But he says, "Don't they come from desires that battle within you?"

Look at verse two: "You want something but don't get it." Now he's really not talking about marriage here. He's really talking about the church and selfish things that we want. We quarrel over some of the most ridiculous things. "I don't like that color carpet. Now they want me to pay for that carpet. They want me to tithe to put my money in to pay for that carpet and that's not the color I want. I'm not going to pay for something that I don't want."

Did you ever hear, "I don't like the style the choir robes wear, the choir wears. I like a different style, a different color." People will start over some of the most insignificant little things. I mean, it really is going to make a difference, isn't it, if the color is red or if the carpet is blue or if the choir robes are different. But these little things, you want something but you don't get it. You kill and covet.

Now, the killing is not murdering; it means hate. You begin to hate each other over little things like this. What James is saying is relationship is absolutely essential, absolutely important, if we're going to have answered prayer. The thing I need to do, one of the very first things I need to do when I find that my prayer isn't being answered when and how, I need to examine my own heart.

I need to look within and ask myself the question, "Am I in love with all God's people?" Otherwise, Jesus said if I come to the altar and the Holy Spirit brings to my mind that there's a problem, that there's somebody I don't like or somebody that doesn't like me or we're at odds, I need to get up. That's the only time He says stop praying. Matter of fact, He says it's useless to pray because you're just wasting your breath. I'm not going to answer it.

Get up and go and make things right and develop a unity love relationship, and then come back to the altar and pray and take communion. There are certain explicit conditions and under no circumstances whatsoever will God answer a prayer if I am not right with another Christian. Isn't that true? Isn't that what it says? Well, I'm going to say it anyway. It is true.

Look at what the scripture says: "You kill and covet but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." There is a selfishness sometimes that comes when we pray. Are they coming from our heart? Will they be prayers that will ultimately bring glory to God?

The scripture says in verse six, "But he gives more grace." That is what scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." We need to first have a relationship with one another. It's a reflection of our relationship with God. Secondly, we need to pray unselfish prayers with right motives.

Thirdly, we need to have a caring attitude. It says in Proverbs, chapter 21, verse three, "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he will cry out and will not be answered." James was writing to the church that was scattered. Those people had lost their jobs. They were brothers and sisters in Christ, and it got to the point where people in the church didn't care about people in the church anymore.

Their lives became absolutely selfish. You present a need, they're not going to give a dime more. They're not going to go out of their way one mile. They're not going to do anymore if you present a need or if you don't present a need. If a person is in need in the church, they need food, they need money, they need clothing, they need help, we're going to give what we're going to give, what we've determined to give, and we're going to be like a pillar and nothing's going to move us.

James says okay, when the cry from a needy person comes and you're not touched or moved by that, the day's going to come when you're going to be a needy person and you're going to cry out to God and God's going to not hear your cry. We need to know how soft is our hearts and tender is our heart toward one another. Not only in physical and in material things, but also in other matters.

There are widows that need visiting. There are orphans, there are prisoners. People are poor in many, many ways. We have an idea that we think that we pack a food basket and we relieve our conscience for an entire year, and all the while there are people who are elderly, who are shut-in, poor, poor, broken, hurting. God's people have a tendency to become very, very selfish. "Me, mine, ours, no more. Nothing moves us."

What is happening here? James is telling us that the Holy Spirit is desirous to build within each of us the character of Jesus Christ. He wants us to love, to care, to have compassion. That's what He's trying to do. "Love one another as I have loved you. Give and serve one another as I have given and served you. Reach out and minister as I have ministered to you. For what you sow, you reap." Isn't that what the scripture says?

Okay, I'm going to turn over to Isaiah, chapter 59, verses one and two. If you don't have your Bibles turned over there, just listen for just a moment. "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save." What's happened? What's happened to God? Can't God reach me? My need? My wife? My husband? Can't God reach my child?

"Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save nor His ear too dull to hear." Is God losing His hearing? Has God gotten so old and now He's beginning to become deaf? What's wrong? God isn't touching. God isn't hearing. "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save nor His ear too dull to hear."

Pick it up now and read the rest of it, those of you who have it open: "But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear." Now friends, what we're reading about today and what we have been talking about for weeks is that God hears and answers prayer. Today we're reading and learning that there are prayers that God doesn't hear and He doesn't answer.

Prayers where there's conflict, God's not going to hear and answer those prayers. If you and your spouse are having a conflict, you know it's going to be difficult to say grace at the meal. It's going to be difficult to have a family altar. You're even going to lose your desire to have private devotion. That same conflict, bring it into the church or anywhere else, it'll have the same reaction.

You're not going to be any closer to God than you are to other people, including people in your own home. Selfishness, self-centeredness. Only thoughts about me. It's mine. It's my money. It's my time. It's my health. Listen, God could take your time and your money and your health and He could do it very quickly. Matter of fact, you're going to lose it eventually anyway.

And He's telling us if we don't love and give as He has loved and given to us, then we're going to pray and His arm's going to be too short. God just can't quite reach us anymore. We're going to pray and we're going to think has God gone deaf? What's going on here? What's happened? But He says your sins, your iniquities.

Those sins, the Holy Spirit wants us to confess those sins and to get them out of our lives. Now there are a number of other things that we could mention this morning that is causing God to turn a deaf ear to us. But here are some things I want you to think about. Think about it. What prayers are you praying that you feel that God isn't answering?

Are you right with everybody in your home and in your church? Is your heart right with God in that there's no unselfishness there? Are you living selfish, self-centered, stingy lives? You don't care who's in a nursing home and how much they're hurting, or who's in the prison, or who's cut off. "I don't have time for those people. I don't have money to give to people. I don't have talent to give to people. I just have enough time to make it for myself and my own."

You take that attitude and heaven is going to be like an iron gate. That's what the scripture says. If there's unconfessed sin in your heart, that sin must be confessed and repented of. These are some of the things that stop heaven's blessing from coming to us. Why is it that the Lord told us this? Because God wants you to free Him, to loose Him, so that He can send blessings into your life.

That's why He told us these things. To be hard on us? To discipline us? To make us feel and squirm in the pew this morning? No, a thousand times no. That's not why He is telling us this. God is saying, "You've tied my hands behind me." But let me tell you how you did it so that you can undo it and my hands can be loosed with upraised blessing. "I want to bless you. Don't tie me up." Isn't that wonderful that God would tell us this?

The last thing that I want to mention this morning very quickly is inadequate faith. Build your faith, dear friends. Build your faith. You can build it. Let me tell you how to build your faith. Build your faith, one of the easiest ways for me to have build my faith is to read the four gospels. I read the life story of Jesus Christ four times.

I read His life, His teachings, His miracles, and faith begins to well up within me. More than any other place, that's the quickest way. That's sort of the shortcut to faith is to read about Jesus and His miracles. The second way to build my faith is to remember the prayers that He's already answered. Not only in my life but in somebody else's life.

That's why I had Elaine to come up here today, saying, "Hey, if God can help her and cure her, you mean His arm's only long enough to touch her but it's too short to touch you or to touch." No, not at all. So think about the prayers that He's already answered. One of the greatest motivations to pray is to remember answered prayers.

When I think back of what God has already answered, I think, "Wow, that's great. He can do it again." And He does. Remember the miracles. Remember the blessings that He's brought to you already. Reflect upon that, ruminate, meditate upon it. You'll feel the faith building up within you. That's one of the ways. Inadequate faith, or without faith, it's impossible to please God.

And if you don't believe that God's going to do it, it'll never happen. You have to believe that God's going to do it. The other thing you must remember is that God is able. Faith is explicit trust and confidence that God's going to do it. And if you don't have that explicit trust and confidence, then it's a waste of time to pray. You must believe.

Well, how can I believe? Well, read the scriptures. Read the gospels. Remember the past answers to prayers. Remember the prayers that God has already answering for other people. And remember that He can do it for you. He's no respecter of persons. Explicit trust and full and absolute confidence that He can do it. God is able.

It says in Ephesians, chapter three, verse 20, and I'm going to use the King James because it reads so much better, at least in my thinking: "God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." Let me say it again. God is able to do exceedingly abundantly. Say "exceedingly abundantly."

When I get there, you just bring it in and say it. God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we are able to ask or think. There's not a thought, there's not an imagination, there's not a dream, there's not a vision that is too big that God can't handle and take care of it. Exceedingly, abundantly, and He wants to do it.

But friends, He can't if we tie His hands. We can't if we tie His hands and these are some of the things that will tie His hands. God is willing. Otherwise, why would He say so much about prayer in the scripture? God is willing. Otherwise, why did He tell us some of the things that will hinder Him and tie His hands?

He doesn't want us to tie His hands and you and you alone can free Him to answer prayer in your life. Free God up so that His miracle power will flow. It says exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. Not the negativism that worketh in us. Not the conflict that worketh in us. Not the selfishness that worketh in us or the selfishness and wrong motives that worketh within us.

But according to the power of God that worketh within us. According to the power of His word that worketh within us. According to the power of your faith that worketh within you. Something's working in you today. It's either positive or negative and you can decide whether it's positive or negative. Decide for God. Decide according to the word. Untie God's hands and let heaven's doors open. The windows of heaven, the storehouse of love, and let God do something for you and answer those prayers that seemingly are not being heard.

Guest (Male): God desires to bless His people, but He also calls us to approach Him with hearts that are sincere and obedient. If today’s message helped you, visit thehealingword.com, where you’ll find more teachings from Pastor Morris and opportunities to grow in faith.

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