Does God hear the sinner's prayer?
 

Because iniquity doth abound;

The man stood silently before the crowd of angry eyes. They withstood him because of the miracle that Jesus had performed. It had put their condemnation of the contrary prophet in a different light. His helplessness was palpable. Finally, he answered the only way he new how, with a scriptural view.

“Because we know this; if any man be a sinner, God heareth not him.”

This loose translation was from a psalm; Ps 66:18 “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”

There is a difference between the blindness of sin and the withholding of iniquity. Sin does not keep your prayers from God. They ascend to the heights of the heavenlies. They just don’t move God in your direction unless it is sprinkled with repentance and contrition. God will not look upon a sinner unless He imputes righteousness upon him first. But, regarding iniquity in the heart of man elevates the sin above God, and that voice will be forever silenced in heaven until the iniquitous heart is repentant.

Because iniquity doth abound; the love of many shall wax cold.

We are viewing the onslaught of iniquity. The once “on fire” Christians are being turned to bitter antagonists against righteousness. The visionary preachers are being relegated to sermonizers and flippant “pulpit orators” because the view has become distant and opaque.

Why? Because the regarding of iniquity has disconnected our clarity from God’s will. This same visual blindness has dumped us into the same pile of endless rhetoric that has “life supported” the secular pulpits for years.

When we become “make believe” in our messages, we are not the first to notice. Our children are the first to see and the first to imitate.

Lying becomes a relative judgment. Deception becomes a game of cat and mouse to see who gets the cheese. And the Word of God becomes just another resource for messages to preach. Have you wondered just how so many of our youth mock at Biblical righteousness? Have you ever considered why the boldness of the rebellious is not longer taken to those outside the church, but they withstand us in our faces now?

As Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses;

The hour demands that we return to preaching righteousness. The Church of Laodicea was condemned because they left their first love. How did they leave it? Because they regarded iniquity, and let the withstander’s voice become the silencer of the pulpit.

How could we have repented if God will not hear sinners?

I think God hears everything. But He knows the attitude, reasoning, and motive behind it and answers accordingly.

The only prayer God hears from the unregenerate is the prayer of repentance.

According to Paul, ALL have sinned.
Just because someone believes in the sinners prayer does not mean they don't believe in repentance or preaching righteousness

He heard Job's Prayer... and Cornelius's prayer..

Acts 10
1There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band,

2A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.

3He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius.

Of course God hears the sinners prayer. It's just a prayer of repentance is all. If someone says it and isn't serious, I'm sure God knows that too.

It's not the sin that keeps our prayers from God, but his mercy. God wants to restore our relationship. But when we regard, keep, cater to, withold iniquity, (sins you put before God) God's mercy causes Him to refuse to hear and look upon us. But, when we approach Him with repentance and contrition, He willingly applies His imputed, (placed with grace, unearned and undeserved) righteousness.

I believe that the one thing which moves God to act upon the pleas of man, whether saint or sinner, is FAITH, for without this essential element it is impossible to please Him. I do know that God hears the prayers of sinners, other than repentance, else what explanation is there for one receiving healing while yet a sinner. I asked God to remove the desire for cigarettes from me LONG before I repented, received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and was immersed in the waters of baptism "in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" for the remission of my sins.

Just something that I believe is worthy of consideration when pondering this mater.

Does God hear the sinner's prayer?
 

Bro. PaPaDon,

I agree with your great post. And no doubt when Paul in Romans !2:3,

was telling the church at Rome, to think soberly, according as God hath

dwelt to every man THE measure of faith. God gave every man a little

faith to begin with.

Blessings,

Falla39

It was Abram' Faith coupled with contrition that allowed him the imputed righteousness of God. Babylon had no benchmark of God's will and plan that was still considered. The law of Hammurabi was the only righteous edict and it was far removed from the state of Abram's Ur.

But God call him out and imputed righteousness to restore a relationship.

Abram believed in the supreme, living, God. And heard the command to leave, seperate himself, and he did. The beginning works of repentance.