Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.
Psalm 24:3,4
Prayer Points
Ask God if anything is spoiling your relationship with him. If so, confess it to him.
Having confessed, thank God for his forgiveness. Christ carried those sins on the cross and God now has no condemnation for you because you are in Christ (Romans 8:1).
Without being judgmental, pray for the removal of sin barriers in the church.
Revivals of the past have always included conviction of sin. Pray for God’s Spirit to bring a wave of conviction so that people know they have to get right with God.
DAY 6 : Cleansing
Are there things in us which stop God listening to and answering our prayers? Yes! In the Psalms it says “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” (Psalm 66:18). Our sin stops God from answering. So if we want God to hear and answer we must pray with a clean heart.
Perhaps we need to have a ‘clean-out’. Imagine the dirt-busting, clutter-removing team from the BBC visiting a house today? What do they do? They ruthlessly remove unnecessary junk. They organise the muddle and disorder and apply lashings of all kinds of cleaning materials to purge all the dirt and grime. Within hours they can transform a dirty hovel into an attractive, spacious and desirable dwelling.
Now we might not have ‘hovel-like’ proportions of spiritual grime in our lives, but as God is holy, so should we be. How do we get rid of the dust and dirt in our lives? We need to confess where we went wrong – attitudes and actions. How does this work?
God has provided a way of being clean. It is through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We become clean on the inside not by promising to be good, trying harder or praying more, but by faith in Christ’s death for us. To get a clean heart we need to confess our sins. Confession to God is simply naming our faults, our sins, hiding none holding back nothing. What will God do when we do this? “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness’
(1 John 1:9).
This is how we can be sure that God will listen to our prayer: confess our sin. When we do this, all God’s mighty power is accessible in bringing about the answers we ask of him.
Pray
* Pray for your ‘big issue’
* Pray for your ‘three friends’
* Pray for a new wave of revival.