Bill Hybels
American author, speaker, and the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
We don't take confession seriously enough. If we did, our lives would be radically different.
I soon began writing out my whole prayer and reading it back to God. Previously I'd get no further than "Dear God" and I'd already be thinking of the person I was going to meet for lunch or the board meeting agenda or what my family members and I would be doing later that evening. But when I began to move pen across paper, it became much easier to remain focused.
Prayer busters (causes of unanswered prayer) are prayerlessness, unconfessed sin, unresolved relational conflict, selfishness, uncaring attitudes, and inadequate faith.
If you let even a little sin into your heart, it's going to contaminate your prayers. Your Christian life will not achieve its full potential.
Most of us are far too busy for our own spiritual good.
The most common cause of unanswered prayer is prayerlessness.
Unconfessed sin cuts off our communication with the Father.
Creating planets didn't seem to be much of a problem for God. Neither was raising the dead. Nothing is too difficult for God to handle, but we won't see much proof of this until we actually ask him to handle it.
Sin is plenty strong enough to create an ever-widening gap in one's relationship with God. The wider the gap, the less likely we are to pray. And the less we pray, the wider the gap becomes.
The greatest prayer motivator in existence is answered prayer.
When I lump all my sins together and confess them en masse, I neglect to feel the pain or embarrassment or shame that should be elicited in me.
As you walk with God, your faith will grow, your confidence will increase and your prayers will have real power.
Keep on praying because the Father does listen. He loves our company, he wants us to endure in prayerfulness and he is eager to do whatever is best for us.
Authentic Christianity is a supernatural walk with a living, dynamic, communicating God.
Confession is probably the most neglected area of personal prayer.
Developing prayer fitness is similar to developing physical fitness: we must follow a pattern in order to stay balanced.
Don't ask God to bless junk food and miraculously transform it so that it has nutritional value. That's not how God works.
If you're tolerating sin in your life, my friend, don't waste your breath praying unless it's a prayer of confession.
God is righteous and just, holy and tender, responsive and sympathetic. He is willing--anxious even--to hear from you. Moreover, he is willing to act on your behalf.
Never forget that if you are God's child through Jesus Christ, you are praying to a Father who couldn't love you more than he already does.