The Principles of Prayer XXXII

 Proverbs 23:26, “My son, give Me your heart and let your eyes observe My ways.”

Jeremiah 29:13, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

Of all the things God could have required of man, why is it that He asks for the heart? He could have asked for the deed to my house, the couple of bucks in my bank account, my left ear, or my right eye, but He settled on the heart.

The answer to this question is no mystery. It is evident, as it is profound. If my heart belongs to God, so does everything that I have and everything that I am. When the heart is truly His, there is nothing we will withhold from God or deem too high a price to pay.

One’s heart can belong wholly to the light, wholly to the darkness, or be divided in such a way that there is no light or darkness but just a murkiness of sorts that stands at the crossroads of indecision, never fully committed to one course or the other. Of the three, the divided heart is the worst possible option, because as Jesus said to the church of Laodicea, I could wish you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

By Christ’s own words, what has been sold to the modern-day church as a viable option will result in being vomited out of His mouth.

We’ve been discussing the effectiveness and necessity of prayer for some time because it is an inexhaustible topic. From seeing its results in the lives of those who came before us, to understanding it was one of a handful of practices Jesus Himself assumed His followers would pursue and devote themselves to, prayer is a topic worth exploring and deepening our knowledge of.

As yet, the one facet of prayer we have not discussed is what can make it ineffective and ineffectual. Is there anything that can hinder prayer? Is there anything that can keep your prayers from reaching the halls of heaven, or that can keep God from hearing them? The answer is, yes, there is. If the heart is not wholly His, if one’s loyalties are divided, if the prayers we pray are not heart cries but merely habitual lip service, then our prayers will neither be heard nor answered.

Because we know that out of the heart spring the issues of life, and that our duty before God is to keep our hearts with all diligence, before we can pray for power, gifts, revelation, or authority, we must humble ourselves and ask God to create in us a clean heart.

Search our hearts, Oh God, and if there is any dross, any shadow, any darkness, any duplicity or inconsistency, burn it out, make it clean, so that when we cry out to You, You will hear, so that when we ask of You, we will receive.

Far too many have been lulled into believing they can have the best of both worlds, when in reality, they have neither of the two. Because they attempt to hopscotch between kingdoms and divide their loyalties, they can never know the fullness of God, nor do they allow themselves to pursue the lusts of the flesh with abandon. They live their days in doubt, wondering if they belong to a God they’ve never felt, but the fear of judgment compels them to pull back on the reins of their desires whenever they conclude they’re getting out of hand.

I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news, but halfway inside the kingdom means you’re completely out. This isn’t baseball, and nobody who’s tried to slide into home plate at the last possible moment has succeeded. When we start playing games with God, we can be sure our hearts do not belong to Him. When we start justifying compromise, telling ourselves it’s okay to look as long as we don’t touch, or we can touch as long as we don’t taste, then taste as long as we don’t swallow, eventually, because the heart is not wholly His, you won’t just taste the cake, you’ll eat it all, then lick the tray hoping for another.

You can’t give God your heart on the weekends, then to the world the rest of the week. It doesn’t work that way. When we pray that He creates a clean heart in us, it becomes new and is not interchangeable with the old heart whenever the opportunity arises.

We’re either clean or dirty. We can’t be a little clean or a little dirty. We either belong to Him or we don’t, and there is no in between. This is what the Book says, and I have no desire to spend my mornings trying to pander to those who insist that a third option exists.

Long before the fat acceptance movement got a foothold in modern society, there was the sin acceptance movement that torched its way through the church like an out-of-control brushfire. The end result for both movements was predictable and tragic.

If you have no idea what I’m referring to, then you’re fortunate. In a nutshell, the fat acceptance movement revolved around a handful of morbidly obese influencers trying to wheeze their way through a sentence, insisting that they were as healthy as any marathon runner. The entire movement flamed out when the aforementioned influencers started dropping dead of coronaries and heart attacks with such frequency as to cast doubt on the entire enterprise.

When it came to the sin acceptance movement, the ripple effects of the aftermath of insisting that a divided heart is not only acceptable but preferable can still be felt through every denomination in the West, leaving a swath of broken homes, shattered faith, empty churches, and countless non-apology apologies from men once deemed spiritual giants in its wake.

Rather than learn from the mistakes of those who fell into the snare of allowing for duplicity within the congregation or their individual hearts, the new iteration of smiling faces has chosen to repackage what was demonstrably proven not to work and present it to a new generation of starry-eyed sheep insisting that they would be the exception to the rule. They won’t, because the Word of God says they won’t.

The tragedy of it all is that while much of what we call the church today is getting their popcorn ready for the greatest revival to sweep the world in any generation, what we will inevitably see is a new wave of destruction brought about by rebellion and disobedience to the Word and will of God.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Posted on 24 May 2025 | 11:49 am