When your Call gets Dropped

    There was a problem a few years back in a county near by Ashmore, where I live. Turned out that some of the first-responders, firefighters and police officers were having trouble communicating in certain parts of the county. Apparently, there were certain dead zones in the county where the radios was unable to receive or transmit a signal. There were several areas in the county where the signal would be weak, making it difficult for the people to understand one another.

   I know that I have times when I would be talking to someone and the signal would not be great and the call is dropped. That kind of thing can be frustrating, especially when you don't know when it was dropped and you find your self talking to your self, that is until you realize the call was dropped. That alone is frustrating.

    However it's one thing to be on the phone with someone and all of a sudden you lose connection. It is something entirely different when you are trying to save a life, or protect a life and you can't communicate. I don't know about you but if my house is broken into and the police need to call for back up, I want them to be able to call for back up right away. If I happen to be in a car reck, and I am needing to me air lifted out. I don't want them to have to drive around to find a good signal. In cases of life and death good communication is not just convenient it is essential.

    That is not just true about emergency personnel, but spiritually speaking it is important for you and I to have clear communication with God. You want to make sure that the lines of communication with the Lord is free and clear. You don't want any dead zones or weak signals when it comes to your prayer life. 

    One of the things that happens when we get saved is that we begin a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. When this takes place there are many blessings that are attached to that relationship. One of which is that you are now able to communicate with God. Unless a person comes into a relationship with Jesus Christ it is impossible for them to speak to or hear from God.

    All these other religions have what they might call prayer. However because they do not follow and they have yet put there faith and trust in Jesus Christ, they are not speaking to God. They lack the ability to communicate to God because they have yet to receive the forgiveness of their sins. So the separation that exists between them and God has not been rectified through Jesus Christ, who died that they might be forgiven.

     All of that changes the moment you come to Jesus Christ and receive that free gift of salvation that He purchased for you on the cross of Calvary. The moment you get saved, the lines of communication between you and God are connected. Prayer is transformed to become more than just mere words. It becomes the means in which you are able to have a dialogue between you and the One and Only true and living God. This is what the apostle Paul was writing about when we penned those words found in his letter to the Romans. 

 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”- (Rom 8:15)

    While all of this is true it is sadly equally true that many times our lines of communication can become corroded. We can become robbed of the clarity of our communication in our conversation with the Creator. There are times in our lives where our prayer life is in a dead zone. There are moments when our calls to God are dropped. There are times when our communication with the Lord becomes muddied and static. 

    There are a lot of reasons why this can happen to you as a believer in Christ. One of the biggest reasons is however is do to unconfessed sin in your life. In fact there are many passages that talk about this very thing. You see it matters a great deal how you live your Christian life. The bible time and time again shows us that the sin we allow in our lives has a way of causing our communication with God to become corroded. This corrosion in our communication with God makes our prayers inoperable and ineffective. Don't believe me? Listen to what Peter has to say about it in his first letter. 

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”- (1Pe 3:12)

    It is here the apostle Peter tells us how the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. In short there is a clear signal, the lines of communication between the righteous and God are open.

    However, the apostle Peter makes a comparison here. He says "But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. So unlike the righteous who have a clear and open line of communication with God. Those who do evil, Peter says, do not. There prayers, there communication is clouded over by there sinful state. 

    So how can we make sure our communication with God is clear and unbroken? Well the answer to that question is actually found in the previous verse. 

let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.- (1Pe 3:11)

    If the problem with our prayer is our sins, then the answer is to simply repent of them. To repent simply means to turn from the direction you are currently going to go the way you need to go. So instead of indulging and living in unconfessed sin, turn from it, confess it and start walking back toward the direction God desires for you to go. Ask the Lord to restore your fellowship with Him and in so doing your lines of communication will also be restored.  

    We as believers have a wonderful and powerful relationship with God through Christ Jesus. This relationship gives us free access to communicate with God the Father. However our communication is not always what is should be and it is in those times when you feel your prayer life is not what it should be. When you feel like your prayers are not being heard. When you no longer can hear the voice of God in your life. Those are the moments when you need to check and make sure that there is not any unconfessed sin in your life creating a unneeded barrier in your dialogue with God.