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Happy Saturday to you all!  This is the third of 4 posts on “Breaking Down Roadblocks to Answered Prayer”.  Parts one and two can be found by clicking on the links, and the entire Moving Mountains prayer series posts can be read by clicking here.  My prayer is that this series has given you a serious power boost in your prayer life!

Today we’l cover “hidden” sin number 7 that can block your communications with God and hinder the power of your prayers.  I was going to throw 8 and 9 into this post too, but number 7 is a serious roadblock to our prayers and therefore we have lots to talk about.

7.  Not treating your body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.  SO, do you treat yourself and your body the same way that you would’ve treated Jesus’ body had He been born to you?  Put yourself in Mary’s place for a moment.  It’s 2013, and you’ve been entrusted with the growing of Jesus in your womb and the raising of Him to adulthood.  What would you feed Him?  Would you allow His precious body to be filled with the chemicals that we see in much of today’s food?  Would you allow Him to sit on the couch, playing video games all day and living a life void of physical activity?

Of course you wouldn’t!  So why do we treat our own bodies, which are temples for the Holy Spirit, (1 Corinthians 6) any differently?  Treating our bodies as the temple for God Himself (because He lives in us) consists of guarding our physical bodies and our minds.  If we are to truly treat our bodies as homes for the Lord, we must guard what comes into our minds as well as what comes into our mouths.  This is simply an act of respect that the Lord, through Paul, admonished us to do.

How does this affect our prayer life?

When we fill our bodies with junk “food”, they will not function the way God created them to, as they were never meant to eat much of the so-called food we see at the stores today.  Genesis 1:9 tells us that:

“And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”.

The Lord put in place, from the beginning, all that we need to have to nourish our bodies.  He created the food He created because He knew what nutrients we would need for our bodies and minds to function at the optimum level.  Today’s society, however, has perverted that food, and when we eat too much of the world’s food and not enough of God’s food, it affects our ability to hear Him clearly, and subsequently, our ability to pray effectively.

The same rules apply to what we feed our minds.  The Word tells us that:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it.  For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1:8)

If we are to have “the mind of Christ”(1 Corin. 2:16), we must fill our minds the same way as Jesus did: with the Word of God.

People often mistakenly assume that what they read/hear/watch doesn’t affect their relationship with Christ, but the Word says otherwise.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, or anything praiseworthy, think on these things. (Phil. 4:8)

Our minds are like computers, sisters in Christ.  Whatever you put in your mind stays there, in the memory chip of your brain, forever.  And when we’re facing a mountain in our lives, a fight with the Enemy, we need to use the weapons of our warfare, which are “not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself above the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinth. 10:4-5)

The Enemy works every day to bring trouble to the body of Christ.  It is his goal in life.

And if we are to hear God’s answers to our prayers about how to fight against the Enemy effectively, we need to have strong bodies and strong minds, that are full of the Word of God, which is the Sword of the Spirit that we can use to slay the Enemy.  If the memory banks of our minds are instead filled with the things of this world: the books, the movies and the other entertainment media, we won’t have the weapons inside us needed to hear from the Lord effectively.

If you have any doubts about this, here’s a challenge for you.  Set aside 7 days to fill your bodies only with whole foods, and only with the Word of God as your form of entertainment.  The first 2 or 3 days may be tough as your body purges itself of toxins and leaves you with some detox symptoms such as headache and body aches.  But stick through it, because on day 3 or 4, or maybe even before, you’ll start to feel better than you’ve felt in years.  Combine this with feeding yourself in abundance with the Word of God, and watch as the power of the Lord rises up in you!

** Never begin any diet or exercise program without first consulting a physician.