Pre Prayer Journey Preparation

Reasons For Unanswered Prayers

     In the week before our prayer journey we would like the people going on the journey to consider examining their hearts so that they will be able to better listen to God and get answers to prayer. We would also encourage you to spend a day in fasting for further purification. Listed below are ten biblical reasons that prayers are not answered. Please examine your heart this week and seek God’s forgiveness. We want everyone to be as equipped as possible when they arrive for the prayer journey. All scripture quotes are NLT.

 -If we have sin in our hearts God will not hear or answer our prayers. Psalm 66: 17-20: “For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke. If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, my Lord would not have listened. But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer. Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer and did not withdraw his unfailing love from me.”  Please confess the sins you may have in your heart.

 -If we are ignoring God, He may not hear or answer our prayers. Proverbs 1:24-28: “I called you so often, but you didn’t come. I reached out to you, but you paid no attention. You ignored my advice and rejected the correction I offered. So I will laugh when you are in trouble! I will mock you when disaster overtakes you- when calamity overcomes you like a storm, when you are engulfed by trouble, and when anguish and distress overwhelm you. I will not answer when they cry for help. Even though they anxiously search for me, they will not find me.” Please ask God to forgive you if you have been ignoring Him.

 -If we are ignoring God’s word, He may not hear or answer our prayers. Proverbs 28:9: “The prayers of a person who ignores the law are despised.”  Please ask God to forgive you if you have been ignoring His word.

 -Our prayers may not be heard or answered if we have an ungiving spirit. Malachi 3:8-9: “Should people cheat God? Yet you have cheated me! But you ask, What do you mean? When did we ever cheat you? You have cheated me of the tithes and offerings due to me. You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me. Please ask God to remove the curse of an ungiving spirit if this applies to you.  

 -Our prayers may not be heard or answered if we are hypocrites. Matthew6:5: “And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on the street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I assure you, that is all the reward they will ever get.” Please ask God to forgive you if you have a hypocritical spirit.                                                                                                                                  

-Our prayers my not be heard or answered if we have an unforgiving heart. Matthew 6:14-15: “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Please ask God to forgive your unforgivness and forgive those people now if this applies to you.

 -Our prayers may not be heard or answered if we have a condition of self pride. Luke 18:10-14: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a dishonest tax collector. The proud Pharisee, stood my himself and prayed this prayer: I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t sin, I don’t commit adultery, I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income. But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow saying, O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner. I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, and the humble will be honored.” Please ask God to forgive your proud heart if you have one.

-Our prayers may not be heard or answered if we suffer from self doubt. James 1:5-8: “If you need wisdom- if you want to know what God wants you to do- ask him, and he will gladly tell you. He will not resent your asking. But when you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to answer, for a doubtful mind is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. People like that should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. They can’t make up their minds. They wave back and forth in everything they do.” Ask God to forgive you if you have doubted what He can and will do.

 -Our prayers may not be heard or answered if we are selfish. James 4:3: “And even when you do ask, you don’t get it because your whole motive is wrong- you want only what will give you pleasure.” If you have a need to ask forgiveness for selfish motives do it.

 -Our prayers may not be heard or answered if we have an unhealthy marriage. I Peter 3:7: “In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. If you don’t treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard.” I believe this applies to the wives as well. Please ask God to forgive any unhealthy marital situation if this applies to you.

       We devised this list in no way to be legalistic or to judge the hearts (only God does that) of those that will participate in this prayer journey. Our goal here is to give you some information to glean on and if it applies to you ask God to cleanse your heart. We want the people that formulate the prayer team to be the most effective they can be for God’s Kingdom. It is a big responsibility to plant a new church in a community, we don’t want to do it without God leading the charge (Psalm 127:1), and that is why it is very important for all of us involved to be able to hear his voice.

Thanks Reggie,

Dear Family and Christian Friends:
You have heard the tragic news from Haiti. You know as much as we know. We have tried desperately to telephone some of our Christian friends in Haiti and we have emailed all whom have email. Up to this moment we have heard from only one preacher in Gonaives. Brother Solonique said that Gonaives felt the earthquake but it did not damage anything and all are okay in Gonaives. So at least we know the JESUS LOVES ME ORPHANGE home is okay.  You know that we have worked in Haiti since 1971 and that we have made well over 100 trips to that nation.

Looking at the photos on TV and listening to the reports we realize that even if we could go there today we would be unable to do anything. Until the rescue workers and US disaster team and UN Military do their work of rescue there is nothing we can do except pray.

I believe it is necessary for us to gather all the emergency relief money that we can. When the airlines restore service and when it becomes possible for us to go and help we will need all the resources we can gather to help our Christian brothers and sisters who have survived. You know the victims have lost their homes, furniture, bedding, kitchen utensils everything.

We have heard that there have been 33 aftershocks. We have seen the Presidential Palace in ruins. We have heard that the UN Headquarters building collapsed and that the loss of life among the military is very heavy. Early reports estimate thousands are dead.  WHITE FIELDS OVERSEAS EVANGELISM will be ready to do all possible to help. Please pray for all the more than 600 Christian Churches in Haiti and for all our brothers and sisters.

In Christian love,
Reggie and Esther

1. The existing churches we have now can’t keep up with population growth.

2. New churches are more focused on Evangelism.

3. The sad reality is that many of the established churches have plateaued or are dying and are not willing to make the necessary changes to reach out and grow.

4. The culture and ethnic makeup of the US is changing. We no longer have to go across the ocean to find different cultures; they are coming here. Therefore we need new churches which will reach these new groups. (This is a big one for me)

The kingdom reality is just all over the place when you think about it. So what we find is that Christ came for more than just offering fire insurance, but something totally and completely “new and from above”. (Note John 3:3) A common misunderstanding about the Kingdom is that it is something that will be established when Jesus comes back. But it’s much more than that. I cut my teeth on this truth while taking a preaching class from Mark Scott way back in 91 or 92. The main text that I was looking at was Mark 1:15 where Jesus opened up his ministry with the radical words of,”The time has come . . . The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” The old King James Version of the text sheds a bit more light in its translating the verse, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.”

The real shot came when I dived into the original language of the verse, (don’t worry, we won’t get too heady here and I’m really not that smart) and noticed that the phrases, “time is fulfilled” and “is at hand” are both in the perfect tense. The point being that Jesus was saying that the long awaited coming of the Kingdom of God was an “event that happened and is continuing to happen.” In other words, the Kingdom of God was inaugurated with Jesus Christ. We can live in it now as kingdom citizens. Yes the final reward will be when we move on from this side of eternity into its fulfillment. But the Kingdom is also a present reality. This is seen by Christ the King ruling in the lives of His citizens today. This is also seen in His providential sovereignty around the world today. So in the pages and blog of Kingdomolgy, we’ll be exploring and discussing what it means to really live as Kingdom Citizens now. What about you? How are you living out the Kingdom in your world today? Are there areas where you struggle in this area?

Over the next few weeks I’ll spend more time further expanding on the purpose of Kingdomology, but to begin with, I want to explain more about how this blog came about. While on one hand, there is the simple fact that we made a faith move in ministry from our church plant and left our old blog behind. But the root goes deeper than just geography. Part of the drive for this new site and blog actually originated back in January when I took off on a prayer retreat in the coastal mountains near Santa Cruz. The plan for the time there was to review my prayer journal from the previous year, ask some strategic questions, and most importantly, to quietly read through scripture. A big observation came from John 6:29 where Jesus said that the work God requires is to “believe in the one he has sent.” It struck me in a new way that the first call of God is not to some great accomplishment or exploit, but a simple belief in Jesus. As I chewed on that reality among the Sequoia trees a number of other texts came to mind from my reading that week. James 1:5 teaches us that we are to “trust and not doubt.” Luke noted in Acts 14:2 and 19:9 that the Jews who opposed the message of Christ “refused to believe.” It all then occurred to me that in a real sense, belief is actually a choice we all have to make. When it comes to salvation and the changing of citizenship from the world to the Kingdom of Heaven, we have to choose to believe the message of Christ or not.

Just as our citizenship in the Kingdom starts with a choice, we as Christ followers have the daily choice of continuing in that belief or giving in to doubt. Someone much wiser than me once observed that Christians at times live as practical pagans as they trust God for their salvation, but not for their daily bread. The whole revelation brought me to a place of further commitment to God in this area of trust and belief. It called me to whole heartedly believe the things I say I believe. It called me to take ALL of His Word for what it is and rest in His promises. In short, it was a big transition not only in thinking, but in life.

It is that belief that led me to eventually take a dive of faith and move from our church plant in Nor Cal back to Texas where I haven’t lived for 20 years in pursuit of an unexplainable call of God deep within my gut. It was frightening (and still is) to pick up and move even though we didn’t know exactly where we were headed. Our part was just to trust Him. It’s that belief that is actually a core factor in real Kingdom living. One of the foundational parts of the Christian life which is missing so much in America and the West is a daily walk with Christ that radically affects our entire life. It changes our world view, how we interact with others, our careers, our marriages, our churches, and life in general. It’s that kind of life that Kingdomology is setting out to explore and live.

Presently, we’ve set up camp in Amarillo and I’m taking interim jobs as I can. Through prayer we’re waiting to see how God opens this next chapter of our lives. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I do know that the one who does is very active today in the lives of those who whole heartedly pursue Him. What about you? Where are you at in this grand adventure? How is your faith quotient going? Just know that the King of all creation is madly in love with you and He’s got more in store for you than you can possibly imagine. Anyone else ready for a dive?