Someone told me that they thought that when our translators interpreted the spiritual light that God gave the earth on the first day with the word "light", they were not far wrong. Light opens up our eyes, it is warmth and represents love, it penetrates the darkness. If we put up barriers to God in our life it is through sin. God and sin cannot live together, it must be excluded from heaven. Sin comes between us and joy, abundance, everything God wants for us. It is like a wall that keeps God's light from penetrating.
When we pray for God to supply our needs, to get rid of what stands in the way of our abundance and joy, that is what God wants for us and what God can supply for us. But sin is like a wall standing between the light of the Lord and the Lord's ability to get to us. Sometimes that wall is created by the sin of those around us, but it is sin that stands between us and God.
Someone else explained to me that a prayer and our work to cleanse sin is more effective for achieving our needs that simple prayer for our needs. A person who is ill, working with God not on her illness directly, but on the resentment she feels toward the people God used to create her. Someone working with the bad results of a caustic mother in law living with them, giving love and caring for that woman to tear down the barriers of God's light rather than asking for direct relief. A person who asks God for health to be restored, instead of asking for God to send his light through the wall of sin, tackling the resentments and angers in their life so God's light can break through.
When we pray for God to supply our needs, to get rid of what stands in the way of our abundance and joy, that is what God wants for us and what God can supply for us. But sin is like a wall standing between the light of the Lord and the Lord's ability to get to us. Sometimes that wall is created by the sin of those around us, but it is sin that stands between us and God.
Someone else explained to me that a prayer and our work to cleanse sin is more effective for achieving our needs that simple prayer for our needs. A person who is ill, working with God not on her illness directly, but on the resentment she feels toward the people God used to create her. Someone working with the bad results of a caustic mother in law living with them, giving love and caring for that woman to tear down the barriers of God's light rather than asking for direct relief. A person who asks God for health to be restored, instead of asking for God to send his light through the wall of sin, tackling the resentments and angers in their life so God's light can break through.