“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” (Isaiah 59:1–2, ESV)
When I grew up, my dad and I would spend a lot of time on the beach surf fishing. Often, we would fish at night using a gas lamp for lighting. One of the problems with the gas lamp was that over time the lamp’s globe would soil. The globe would have soot build up to the point that the light would not radiate clearly and we struggled to see the tips of our fishing rods.
People’s lives are like globes on a lamp. People can have soiled globes, not with soot but with sin. This soiling of sin hinders the radiance of the light of our prayers to a holy God. This is the message that we have in these two verses of Isaiah. This is a universal principle. Sin hinders a person’s ability to pray effectually.
In the context of Isaiah’s message, the nation had fallen away from the pure standards of conduct that were at the heart of God. They were deceitful, unjust, oppressive, etc. The result of this would be that they would experience difficulties and the oppression of other nations. They would call out to God and not get an answer because their sins had “hidden his face from” them so that he did not hear.
We see this principle reiterated throughout the Bible. The Psalmist said, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” (Psalm 66:18, ESV) In James we read, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” (James 5:16, KJV 1900) Righteousness is a key to powerful and effective prayer and sin is antithetical to righteousness.
Therefore, if we want to pray effectively, we must have clean globes. How do we clean up the globes of our heart? The fact is that we cannot but God by His grace can. Believers in Christ have a beautiful and unique privilege of divine cleansing and righteousness. The shed blood of Christ cleanses us from sin and He has clothed with His righteousness. God provided this at salvation and this is a constant provision for every believer.
Thus, while we still fail on occasion, God’s grace provides for us in Christ so our prayer will continue powerful and effective. We see this in a key promise to believers as John wrote, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9, ESV) When true believers stumble, they immediately focus on God’s amazing grace through confession. In this they realize that His provision of cleansing makes their access to the Throne of Grace assured and powerful.
Renewing the Heart 