What Keeps God From Working Through Us

What Keeps God From Working Through Us?

Matthew 17:1-21

I found this sermon in granddaddy's "Matthew" folder. I am not sure who wrote it, but I needed to read it. I know the answer for me to this question and it is surely ME! I am guilty of every point at least most of the time. I get in the way!

1. Unbelief - Matthew 17:17-20; Mark 9:24 - Lack of prayer

2. Unforsaken Sin - Matthew 17:17 - "perverse generation"; Psalm 66:18 - "If I regard iniquity"

3. Laziness - Proverbs 6:6-11 - "go to the ant"; Proverbs 10:1-5, 26; Matthew 25:26; Hebrews 6:12; Proverbs 18:9; II Thess. 3:10 - "What so thy hands find to do, do it with thy might"

4. Rebellion - Prodigal Son --- Absalom vs. David

5. Pre-occupied - John 4:32 "I have meat to eat that ye know not of"; John 4:34 - "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work"

6. Lack of Surrender - Jonah

7. Wrong sense of values - John 4:38

8. Lack of Prayer and Fasting - Matthew 17

9. Fear - "Don't know what to say"; "won't listen to me"; Don't know scriptures well enough"; "be called a fanatic"; "might make someone mad"; "run them further away"; "might rock the boat"

10. Unconcern
Luke 15:20 - "had compassion"
Luke 19:41 - "Beheld the city and wept"
Acts 20:31 - "Ceased not to warn everyone night and day with tears"
Romans 9:1-3 - "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow"
Matthew 9:36 - "Saw multitudes - moved with compassion"

11. Hypocrisy - Ananias and Sapphira

12. Near sightedness - Lift up and look on