Do You Want God to Hear You? – The Sixth Commandment

Do You Want God to Hear You?

Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17

“You shall not murder.”

Psalm 66:18

If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

Your prayer life depends on it.

Hatred in our hearts can lead to murder, as we have seen. Not necessarily the violence of taking another person’s life, but certainly forms of expression and behavior that are contrary to the command to love our neighbor as ourselves – gossip, mean spiritedness, hurtful speech, backbiting, and more. If we allow anger to find a safe harbor in our hearts it may eventually come to light as sin against our neighbor. But even if it doesn’t, we’re asking for trouble. For anger in our hearts, when it becomes hatred against our neighbor, is sin; and if we allow sin to linger in our hearts, we put an obstruction in the way of our prayer life. God will not hear us when we hold on to sin. He will turn a deaf ear to our prayers so that our communication with the Lord goes straight line. That’s a very good reason to keep a close watch over our hearts and to be aggressive against any sin finding a home there. We may think we have good reasons to be angry, and it may just be so. But do not allow that anger to lead to sin (Ps. 4.4). Face up to it, and if you can’t talk with your neighbor and work through your problems, take your anger to the Lord and let Him help you deal with it. After all, if anyone had a good reason to hold on to anger, it was the One Who said, “Father, forgive them.”

How do you keep anger in your soul from turning into sin?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.

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