Prayer is the privilege of every born again child of God and it must be a place of ever increasing intimacy with our Heavenly Father. But often we find ourselves devoid of such intimacy and that’s why in this series we are meditating on the things which hinder our fellowship with our Heavenly Father so that we may correct ourselves and again be restored to a place of unbroken communion with God. Let’s move on to the next part of this series with the expectation that the Holy Spirit will open our eyes and apply the truths of the Holy Scriptures to our hearts.
3. Lack of concern towards the poor renders our prayers ineffective.
It is an undeniable fact that believers and unbelievers all alike show partiality towards the poor. In churches also men are respected based on their high social standing. A believer who is having a well paying job, nice family, big house, nice car and good social backup is often respected more. A poor believer is often seen with contempt. Rich believers are given prominent seats while poor believers are made to stand or made to seat at the feet of leader. Sin of partiality has crept into the churches (James 2:1-4). Rich believers are often seen least concerned about the physical needs of the poor believers (James 2:15-16). God wants us to show mercy on the poor, for judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy (James 2:13).
The poor will always be there in our midst. God expects that we neither harden our hearts nor shut our hands from our poor and needy brothers. God tells us to open our hands wide and give sufficiently for the need of our poor brother. If we do so God has promised to bless us but if we fail to do so then the cry of our poor brother will be considered as sin unto us (Deut 15:7-11). The Bible says that the one who ignores the poor will have many curses (Proverbs 28:27). Too much fasting and praying is going on nowadays but we are not getting the desired result. Because God’s way of chosen fasting and praying is to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts, share bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into our own house, cover the naked poor with clothes and don’t refuse help to our own relatives. These are the scriptural basis of true fasting and praying. And when we implement this in our life and do the praying God has promised to answer our prayers (Isaiah 58:6-9)!!
God is sick of our Sunday meetings, youth meetings, revival meetings, women’s conferences, youth conferences, bible quiz, children’s meetings, fasting and all the prayer performances. God doesn’t like our lengthy and loud prayers because he sees the heart not the outside performances. He is asking us to stop all the artful performance in prayer. He is not going to listen such prayers (Isaiah 1:15). He requires from us to remove all the evil doings from our life, to learn to do good, to seek justice, to help the oppressed, to defend the cause of orphans and to fight for the rights of widows (Isaiah 1:16-17). Effective Praying and Sinning both can’t go hand-in-hand. God is more interested in justice and mercy than our fasting and prayer (Zech 7:9-13). Even in the New Testament, during Jerusalem council Paul and Barnabas were asked to remember the poor (Gal 2:10). Also we can see that, Paul had been the means of bringing contributions from the wealthier churches of Antioch to Jerusalem (Acts 11:29-30).
Proverbs 21:13 says, “Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered.”
