I live in Newnan, Georgia and pastor Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Tuskegee, Alabama. To get to church I take I-85 South. During this 1 1/2 hour drive I listen to audiobooks or make phone calls to pass the time. But there is one spot on the road where my calls get dropped. Right near the state line there is deep valley right in front of the KIA plant in West Point, Georgia. That valley is so deep my cellular signal gets lost, my call gets disconnected, and I can’t reconnect again until I’m out of the valley on the other side.
Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear. (Isaiah 59:1-2 NKJV)
Prayer is our communication with God. It’s kind of like a phone call. But sometimes it seems our calls or prayers are not getting through. According to Isaiah, there’s no problem on God’s end of the connection. His hand isn’t so short that he can’t reach us and his ears are not so heavy that he can’t hear us. The problem is our sin. Sin literally means to miss the mark. Imagine an archer who is aiming his arrow towards a bullseye but when he releases the arrow it misses. The distance from the target to the place where his arrow landed is called sin.
Our iniquities and sins separate us from God and hide his face from us so he won’t hear our prayers. It’s like sin is a deep valley and every time we go there our calls to God get dropped. To reconnect we must recognize how far we’ve gone astray and steer our lives out of the depths of sin. Our repentance will bring us closer to God again. Then we can make a strong connection and get a prayer through.
Amen!! Pastor Conway just talked about that Sunday. We have to change our ways and ask God forgiveness and forgive us of our sins. What everyone you are holding on to that someone has done to you in the past let it go. God can’t hear our prayers when we don’t forgive.