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How to avoid sabotaging your prayer life

Columnists
“ . . . if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive yours.

“ . . . if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive yours.” Matthew 6:15, Mark 11:26. Do your prayers work? “Father, bless my enemy with your peace . . .” is a prayer that makes sense! A lot of people wonder why some prayers are answered while others, or their own prayers, seem to never get answered. So here are things to consider, if you actually want power in prayer.

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Revere God: Do what it takes for Christ and maintain your reverence for God. Know that He is mighty, is the Creator of the Universe and deserves glory, praise and honour. Your prayer life should acknowledge the Lord in His rightful place in your life.

Pray thankfully and praise God and end your prayers positively: Overcome attitudes like overly emotional begging and pleading to God because, for example, this might cause upset and bad dreams. Believe that God already knows and wants for you what you need and rightly desire

There is, of course, a time and a place for that pleading and begging. For happiness, rather ask for joy, or for trying to stop anxious thoughts or bad dreams. Ask the Lord to show you the root cause of these and take them to Him in prayer, believing.

Colosians 4:2, “Continue in prayer, and watch (for results) in the same with thanksgiving.” Everyday thanksgiving. can bring peace into your life! Increase, or start thanking, and praising and lifting up (be a booster of) God and Jesus for any good things (called blessings) in your life: God and Jesus have promised to bless one who blesses others and who thanks God for blessings.

Stop harbouring sin in your life: Yes, this would kill it. God cannot look upon sin. I Corinthians 6:9-10: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?

Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

Forgive others: Even if and though you are God’s child that He loves “positionally” in Christ, and you will be in His joy forever, yet, you need to seek righteousness and forgiveness remembering that you must also forgive, or you will not be forgiven “relationally” as a friend.

So that you may be more pleasing in His eye, always forgive and it comes back to you in kind! Mark 11:25: “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

Obey God: John 15:7: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Sin is disobedience and separates us from Him.

Believe, never doubting: Be wise enough to pray for what you want and be sure that you have the wisdom to believe when you pray, and so you shall receive. Faith makes it happen. James 1:5-8: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.