Your Prayers Can Be Hindered, You Know

John Piper has an excellent sermon on 1 Peter 3:7ff. Men, let's love our wives and live with them in such a way that our prayer life remains unclogged. There are many Christians in the US, but perhaps God is not able to use us effectively because we're making poor choices that lead us away from holy living.

The whole sermon is good. I especially liked this part:

"Jesus does not kiss a drunk wife. He may carry her off the street and back to bed. He may be utterly patient with her, and set before her hot coffee and fresh starts. But he will not kiss a drunk wife.

What do I mean? I mean that when the bride of Christ, the church, is drunk with the world, she may turn to him for a brief kiss of prayer, but her breath wreaks so bad of worldliness that he turns his face a way.

'Be sober for the sake of your prayers,' Peter says. But whoever sobered up by coasting? Nobody coasts into sobriety. Not physical sobriety, and not spiritual sobriety. Sobriety happens when we begin to use sound judgment about our lives. Sound judgment about how we spend our time. Sound judgment about the spiritual climate or our homes. Sound judgment about the worldliness of our leisure. Sound judgment about the music we listen to, the movies we attend, the TV we watch.

Nobody sobers up without intentional steps to get the bottles of worldliness off the shelves, out of the cabinet and out of the house. When that happens, then the spiritual breath begins to clear up and the kiss of prayer is not hindered."