# Prayer, backsliding and sin



## arapahoepark (Oct 14, 2016)

I am just wondering does God hear and respond to our prayers when we sin? What about after confession? What about indwelling sin that one cannot seem to get a grasp on?
I was reading Muller's five principles for prevailing prayer and he cites Psalm 66:18. It seems at times I fall short. I was also reading Nicolas Byfield's The Promises of God on prayer and it was so encouraging but, I am not sure how the two can be reconciled.


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## gordo (Oct 14, 2016)

A really good book on the subject is The Spirit of Prayer by Nathaniel Vincent. You can get at Puritan Publications. Really helped me with this. 

I do find God's response to our prayers and the overall 'quality' of our prayer is directly affected by the amount of unconfessed sin we are weighing down our souls with and repentance towards that sin after confession. Meaning if our repentance is sincere. God is a 1000 steps ahead of us. He knows if our repentance is just to get over the guilt of the sin immediately, or if we truly are trying to overcome it. 

When I pray, after acknowledging God, I always try and confess any sin on my heart before I move on to anything else.


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## arapahoepark (Oct 15, 2016)

I read up some more and it seems futile. I am not sinless and some of the stuff I read it seems like I cannot pray for temporal things even if they are not sinful. I do not mean that in like a prosperity gospel way either.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Oct 15, 2016)

arapahoepark said:


> I read up some more and it seems futile. I am not sinless and some of the stuff I read it seems like I cannot pray for temporal things even if they are not sinful. I do not mean that in like a prosperity gospel way either.



Be encouraged. 

Psalm 66:18 is more about the sincerity of one's prayers than it is about our indwelling sins. The want of sincerity made the Lord reject the prayers of those mentioned in Hos. 7:14, where he says, ‘They have not cried unto me with their heart,’ that is, in sincerity, ‘when they howled upon their beds.’

I asked for strength and find gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity and God gave me brawn and brains to work.
I asked for courage and God gave me dangers to overcome.
I asked for patience and God placed me in situations where I was forced to wait.
I asked for love and God gave me troubled people to help.
I asked for favors and God gave me opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted, I received everything l needed.
My prayers have all been answered.

“If God has eternally decreed that you should live, what is the use of your breathing? If God has eternally decreed that you should talk, what is the use of your opening your mouth? If God has eternally decreed that you should reap a crop, what is the use of your sowing the seed? If God has eternally decreed that your stomach should contain food, what is the use of your eating.”

Hodge answers his own questions:

“In order to educate us, [God] demands that we should use the means, or go without the ends which depend upon them. There are plenty of fools who make the transcendental nature of eternity and of the relation of the eternal life of God to the time-life of man an excuse for neglecting prayer. But of all the many fools in the United States, there is not one absurd enough to make the same eternal decree an excuse for not chewing his food or for not voluntarily inflating his lungs.”

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## Reformed Covenanter (Oct 15, 2016)

arapahoepark said:


> and some of the stuff I read it seems like I cannot pray for temporal things even if they are not sinful



Where did you come across that notion?


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## VictorBravo (Oct 15, 2016)

arapahoepark said:


> I read up some more and it seems futile. I am not sinless ....



Indeed, be encouraged.

I reckon it is a rare day when I don't feel similarly at some point. In small ways, or big, my awareness of my sin bubbles up and I wonder how on earth I can even move.

But I have a ready prayer, straight from the Gospel: "God, be merciful to me a sinner!"

Jesus in Luke 18 provides a universe of consolation here. A miserable sinner is justified. God hears this sinner's prayers very well indeed.


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## TheOldCourse (Oct 16, 2016)

arapahoepark said:


> I read up some more and it seems futile. I am not sinless and some of the stuff I read it seems like I cannot pray for temporal things even if they are not sinful. I do not mean that in like a prosperity gospel way either.



Q. 193. What do we pray for in the fourth petition?

A. In the fourth petition,(which is, Give us this day our daily bread,[1253]) acknowledging, that in Adam, and by our own sin, we have forfeited our right to all the outward blessings of this life, and deserve to be wholly deprived of them by God, and to have them cursed to us in the use of them;[1254] and that neither they of themselves are able to sustain us,[1255] nor we to merit,[1256] or by our own industry to procure them;[1257] but prone to desire,[1258] get,[1259] and use them unlawfully:[1260] we pray for ourselves and others, that both they and we, waiting upon the providence of God from day to day in the use of lawful means, may, of his free gift, and as to his fatherly wisdom shall seem best, enjoy a competent portion of them;[1261] and have the same continued and blessed unto us in our holy and comfortable use of them,[1262] and contentment in them;[1263] and be kept from all things that are contrary to our temporal support and comfort.[1264]


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## arapahoepark (Oct 16, 2016)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> arapahoepark said:
> 
> 
> > and some of the stuff I read it seems like I cannot pray for temporal things even if they are not sinful
> ...



I was reading a sermon on 1 John 5:14 on Monergism. I had to read through it like three times to see if I understood correctly and I think he was saying that most people have just skewed their prayers toward material stuff.


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## arapahoepark (Oct 18, 2016)

Let me say that reading Jeremiah Burroughs' Jacob's Seed and David's Delight from Puritan Publications has proven immensely encouraging for my prayer life right now.


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