A lot of times we all feel as though God is a million miles away and that our prayers to Him must be falling on deaf ears. It's like we hit a wall and no matter what we do our prayers seemingly go unanswered. We often complain bitterly to whomever will listen "What am I doing wrong, why won't God help me."
I am going to suggest a list of things that we all need to consider FIRST during these times of silence from God in our lives.
We need to take a serious look at the people that we spent our time with on a regular basis. Are these people living the way Christ would have us live? When we are with them do we feel they bring us closer to Christ or do they drive us further away from righteous living? We then may need to let go of some of these folks and cling closer to God as He brings Christian friendships into our lives.
Nothing will destroy our intimate relationship with God quicker then moral impurity. God will not allow us to dabble in unholy intimacy. Once we do we then cut our connection to Christ. God is holy and expects those who dwell with Him in intimacy to remain pure and chaste in their relationships. If we spend time with someone who doesn't respect that we become more like the devil, and less like God the Father. We should take personal inventory of our lives. If we are indulging in some secret sexual sin we need to deal with that immediately so that we can commune with Christ and get answers to our prayers.
What kind of things do we watch on television? What kind of Web Sites do we frequent? We become like those we spend time with. Is our mind so polluted with garbage coming in that all we manifest is garbage going out? We are to be of the world but not in the world per the Word of God. Maybe we would benefit by spending more quality time in prayer, worship and the Word of God. All of these things help us to get to know Christ and then anything that is not like Him becomes more and more distasteful to us.
Check your conversation for 24 hours and see what comes out of your mouth. What you say is what you get. If you spend your time speaking words of anger, discouragement and self-pity, what do you think you will get back in your life? When we can't seem to find anything positive to say regarding our situations we then need to search the Word for uplifting scripture and meditate on that. Change what you say about your situation and sit back and watch the change in it!
One thing that truly separates us from God and His favor is bitterness. In Ephesians 4:31 we read "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you" I have found in my own life that bitterness is like a sore. You keep picking at it and picking at it until it gets so infected it then begins to cause poison to seep through our bodies. Sure we may have good reason, in our minds, to be bitter. But we have to trust that God in His infinite wisdom is working all things to our good. We need to pray for him to take all bitterness and wrath from us and ask Him to forgive us for our bitter attitudes. Bitterness will keep us from getting answers to our prayers. We have to just let it go and let God have it.
Now, if we have taken care of our attitude, gotten rid of known sin in our lives and spent quality time in the presence of God we are in the right position for our prayers to be answered. His timing is perfect. Breakthroughs are coming. We simply relax in the knowledge that He loves us and delights in giving us the right desires of our hearts.