--- title: "Seven Hindrances to Prayer" description: "Pastor Kim is going to show you seven hindrances to prayer. Most of it can be found in what he recommends to you from Dr. Ruckman’s DVD, but Pastor Kim is going to give his own spin on it, and there could be something different as well. 1. Sin The first hindrance to your prayer […]" image: "https://het.realbiblebelievers.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/missing.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/seven-hindrances-to-prayer" --- • Christian Living• Prayer # Seven Hindrances to Prayer 10 min. read ![](https://het.realbiblebelievers.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/missing.jpg) Pastor Kim is going to show you seven hindrances to prayer. Most of it can be found in what he recommends to you from Dr. Ruckman’s DVD, but Pastor Kim is going to give his own spin on it, and there could be something different as well. ## 1. Sin The first hindrance to your prayer life that you have to watch out for is your sin. When you sin against the Lord, He is not going to hear you. That is why it is very important that you confess that sin to the Lord first before you pray, and then have Him wash it away with His blood. > ***Psalm 66:18**: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:”* See, that hinders God from hearing you when you speak to Him. It is because of your sin. ## 2. Not Asking Another reason why God is not answering your prayer is because you did not even ask Him to begin with. This can include prayerlessness, or it can include where you are not specifically asking Him for something. Pastor Kim knows that this is a given, but sometimes you have to realize that just asking the Lord, “Lord, please make life better for me,” is not going to make God answer your prayer. When you have health issues, financial issues, or disruption in the family, you have to specifically ask Him what that problem is. You cannot say, “Lord, You know all my heart and You know what makes me happy, so I pray it all in Jesus’ name. Amen.” God is like, “Okay, no. Tell Me.” You might say, “Oh God, You know.” And God is like, “I know, but you don’t know.” So you need to tell Him because you do not know the things that make you happy, actually. When you pray more specifically, you actually start to change your mind sometimes, and you choose words more carefully when you pray. You have to be very specific in your prayers. > ***James 4:2-3**: “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lust.”* Because you do not ask, the Bible says to ask. ## 3. Praying to Consume It Upon Your Lust The third hindrance is because you pray something that consumes it upon your lust. In other words, when you are praying, “Lord, I want a mansion for myself,” you have to realize this: Are you praying that way to consume it upon your lust? That is something you have to pray about. Sometimes people might be overcritical and think, “When I am praying to God for a spouse to marry, that sounds like something that I would pray according to my lust.” What helps keep a measuring stick on it is this: **Does it glorify God?** Is it used more to glorify God or glorify your flesh? That is how you know. You have to understand this: **God does want to make you happy.** God is not the type of God where He wants you to be miserable. So you have to think of it in a way that the happiness lies accordingly in that which will glorify Him, that gives Him glory, and it is not solely for your selfishness, especially when it leads you to sin. If it leads you to sin, then that is why God is not going to answer it because of the lust. > ***James 4:3**: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lust.”* How about that? Because of lust. ## 4. A Husband Mistreating His Wife Another reason why God does not answer your prayers is based upon the fact that husbands are mistreating their wives. Pastor Kim is talking to the husbands, not the wives. When you do not treat your wife well, when you do not honor your wife as much as you should, then what happens is your prayer is hindered. > ***1 Peter 3:7**: “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.”* The wife is supposed to submit to the husband and obey him, but you cannot neglect giving honor. If you lack honor toward her, look at this: you are heirs together of the grace of life. You are not ruler over everything. Notice that you are heirs together of God’s grace that He has given to you both. That is why you have to keep in mind that your prayers be not hindered. It is true that the man of the house is the head of the house and that the wife is supposed to obey the husband, but it is not where you abuse the power. That is the thing. There is no abuse of power there. ## 5. Double-Mindedness > ***James 1:5-8**: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. **For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.** A **double minded man** is unstable in all his ways.”* When you ask something of God, you have to ask in faith. You have to make up your mind.  You cannot waver in it. You have to believe. You have to believe. If you do not believe in the power of prayer, or that God is going to answer it, then the Lord is not going to answer it. Every time Pastor Kim prays, he believes. He believes that the Lord has the power. Pastor Kim believes that the Lord has the power to remove a mountain. > ***Mark 11:22-24**: “And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”* ## 6. Unresolved Issues With a Brother or Sister in Christ Now this one is something the church needs to understand. If you do not have this solved, then Pastor Kim does not care how hard you pray—the Lord is not going to answer if you have something unresolved with a brother or sister in Christ. Then the Lord is not going to answer your prayer no matter how faithful you are in your deed and service to the church, and no matter how much you pray like a prayer warrior. > ***Mark 11:25-26**: “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”* Remember, if the sin is not forgiven, then what happens? At point number one, He does not hear. So if you have some unresolved spirit toward a brother or sister in Christ, you better solve that, or God is not going to answer your prayer. Do you think Pastor Kim takes it seriously? Yes. If Pastor Kim should have a bitter spirit toward his members, especially if they may not attend church, or if they are not that spiritual, or help out, or grow their church, Pastor Kim should not have that. Why? Because then God is not going to answer his prayer of growing the church. One thing Pastor Kim learned as a Bible-believing pastor is that it is not just the member; it is also the pastor himself who is imperfect. The more that Pastor Kim discovers his imperfections, the easier it is for him to forgive a person of imperfections. **The reason why you find it hard to forgive a person is that you are only looking at that person’s imperfection versus your perfection.** That is especially important in an argument. Your wives and husbands may hate this, and siblings out there may hate this, and this includes brothers and sisters in Christ, but when there is an argument, the most important thing that will help you immensely to move forward in a conversation is this: do not look at your perfection and that person’s imperfection. **You have to look at your imperfection, and it becomes more forgiving.** ## 7. Not Praying According to God’s Will Pastor Kim believes that this is most important. > ***1 John 5:14**: “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:”* The most important thing that Pastor Kim believes will be a hindrance to prayer is that you do not pray it according to God’s will. According to God’s will—that is the ultimate importance where God will hear your prayers. The bottom line is this: if you lived according to God’s will, then do you not think that pretty much all these prayer requests would be answered? A lot of times you will hear Pastor Kim pray this: “Lord, we surrender it according to Your will, not my will but Thy will be done.” That is as Jesus prayed at the Garden of Gethsemane. > ***Luke 22:42**: “Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”* When you pray it that way, then it becomes very powerful. The concern is, “I don’t know if my prayer is in God’s will, right? Maybe it’s a little selfish. Maybe it’s unselfish, but it’s not God’s will.” But the point is this: whatever you pray, and you have a sincere heart that says, “Lord, this is my prayer, and yes, I surrender it according to Your will,” that is it. If you surrender it according to His will, whatever request you have, then His will could be no, yes, or wait. His will is always best. So just pray it to the Lord, but make sure that you end it with “according to His will,” or at the very least, think about His will and contemplate His will. That is why it makes sense that 1 John 5:14 says: > *“And this is the **confidence** that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:”* This is the confidence you have in prayer. One thing Pastor Kim learned is that too many times he has confidence. When you have confidence in prayer, it is confidence throughout everything in life, especially during these crazy times of COVID-19, when churches are unable to run and members are spiritually struggling. It is because you just have to contemplate according to His will. When you live your life according to His will, you do not really worry about what happens. Have confidence in your prayer life that **however God answers, it is going to be the best.** [▶ Video: YouTube player](https://www.youtube.com/embed/bOhIc3BJhU4?enablejsapi=1&list=PLFIc5Y7xpsJJ6DtJ6d6XLfgtGDwJrc4F2&index=16&autoplay=0&cc_load_policy=0&cc_lang_pref=en&iv_load_policy=1&loop=0&rel=0&fs=1&playsinline=0&autohide=2&theme=dark&color=red&controls=1&disablekb=0&) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com","name":"Real Bible Believers","description":"RBB","publisher":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/?s={search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/seven-hindrances-to-prayer#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://het.realbiblebelievers.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/missing.jpg","contentUrl":"https://het.realbiblebelievers.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/missing.jpg","width":640,"height":370,"caption":"Seven Hindrances to Prayer"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/seven-hindrances-to-prayer#webpage","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/seven-hindrances-to-prayer","name":"Seven Hindrances to Prayer","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/seven-hindrances-to-prayer#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2026-09-16T14:45:51","dateModified":"2026-09-16T14:45:51","author":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"description":"Pastor Kim is going to show you seven hindrances to prayer. 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