WINNING WITH THE WORD “Winning with the Word” is a weekly blog that will help you to be a winner in life by applying God’s principles for living the abundant life as found in the Bible, God’s manual for life. AN INVITATION TO YOU: To follow this blog, click here.  If this blog has blessed you, please encourage your family and friends to subscribe as well. Thank you! ______________________________________  

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Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, your Virtual Life Coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is Monday, February 24, 2020. Today’s Podcast is Episode #8 in Series 2020 and is titled “When Your Prayers Hit a Brass Ceiling."

Recently, I've had a couple of people tell me that they feel as though God does not hear them when they pray. Perhaps this describes you as well. If so, let me encourage you with some tips on how to break through that brass ceiling when you pray.

Here are a few things that may be keeping you from getting a response from God:

1. Know that God is listening, but you may not have connected to His wave length. Have you ever tried to tune in to a radio station while driving your car? Sometimes you have to keep turning the knob until the connection is made. The station is always transmitting, but you are not always connecting because you haven't hit the station's wave length.
2. Faith is the spiritual device that connects you to God (Hebrews 11: 1). Another way of putting it is to say that faith is the currency of Heaven, the medium of exchange. God has a storehouse of blessings for you in Heaven. To download them from Heaven to Earth, we need faith. Faith is the downloading device. The Bible says that without faith, it's impossible to please God (Hebrews 11: 6).
3. Our prayers must align with God's Word (1 John 5: 14-15). For instance, a single woman who prays that a certain married man will become her husband is not praying according to God's Word. Instead, she is being deceived by Satan. God will never answer such a prayer--nor any prayer that violates His Word. 

4. We must ask with the right motives (James 4: 2-3). Right motives are not selfish motives. Right motives characterize a heart willing to accept God's will, no matter what it is.

5. Gratitude must lace our prayers. God responds to a grateful heart because a grateful heart is a humble heart. Scripture tells us in James 4: 6 that "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." 

6. Finally, we must wait for God's timing. "There is a time for everything," Solomon writes in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Although it may seem as though God has not heard our prayer, he sometimes delays His response for reasons of His own. Perhaps we need to learn to be patient. Perhaps He has to orchestrate other situations connected with our own situation. Whatever the case may, God is always on time in answering our prayers. All of the above tips are meaningless unless one has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ--in other words, unless one has been born again. Scripture says this: "God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him." The only prayer God hears from those who do not know Him is the prayer for salvation. In John 6: 37b, God says, "Whoever comes to me I will never drive out." 

If you have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord, I urge you to do so now.

Pray this simple prayer with me: Father God, I want and need a personal relationship with You. I recognize that I cannot save myself. For this reason, You sent Jesus to save me and to restore me to fellowship with You.