Psalm 66:16-20 16 Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me. 17 I cried out to him with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue. 18 If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; 19 but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. 20 Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me! NIV
Probably one of the most important aspects of all prayer, is knowing that God listens. If God is deaf, why pray? But God has perfect hearing and hears our prayers in ways we maybe don’t understand or realize. God hears our prayers in wisdom and judgment – is this person praying genuinely? Or is his prayer all for show and just to impress men? Is this person praying out of purity or is his heart sullied with dirtiness? Only God knows the true condition of our heart and the real motives behind our prayers.
The writer of Psalm 66 said, If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened… (v18). So the first thing I need to do when my prayers seem to be hitting the ceiling is to examine my heart and see if there’s some secret place where I am playing footsy with some sin; God expects purity.
There are people out there today who’d say, “No, Paul, this is Old Testament stuff; it doesn’t apply to us today under the New Covenant!” I know what they mean, but I also know that God expects purity out of me (and every other believer) today like He did with any other saint in the Old Testament. The issue isn’t covenant – the issue is the basic condition of one’s heart toward God. Even if there was no covenant, my relationship with the Lord would still be characterized by how I relate to Him – am I a phony, or the real deal?
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 7: Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. (v 7:1) It’s amazing what difference it makes with a good attitude toward God, along with a full-grown respect for His distaste of sin… Reverence for God is not reverence – for you or me or anyone else – if it is devoid of purity and respect. My life depends on knowing that God is hearing my prayers; but I especially need to know that when I am harboring sin or sins, His hearing is hindered by the cacophony in my soul.
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