Bill Hybels
American author, speaker, and the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
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.
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.
How do you pray a prayer so filled with faith that it can move a mountain? By shifting your focus from the size of your mountain to the sufficiency of the Mountain Mover and then stepping forward in obedience.
The most common cause of unanswered prayer is prayerlessness.
Most of us are far too busy for our own spiritual good.
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.
Prayer busters (causes of unanswered prayer) are prayerlessness, unconfessed sin, unresolved relational conflict, selfishness, uncaring attitudes, and inadequate faith.
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.
We don't take confession seriously enough. If we did, our lives would be radically different.
I can write about prayer, you can read about prayer...but sooner or later you have to fall to your knees and just plain pray. Then, and only then, will you begin to operate in the vein of God's miracle-working ways.