MFM H/Q Sermons

Glorious Sunday Worship Service
March 1st, 2026

Topic: WHEN PRAYERS BECOME LIMITED
Text: Psalms 78:41, Romans 14:23, Matthew 23:14, Psalms 66:18
Minister: Dr. Daniel Olukoya (G.O. MFM Worldwide)

Psalms 78:41 (KJV) says: “Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.”

Prayer is the greatest privilege that God has given to us on this side of Earth. The awesomeness of the power of prayer has not been made to bear clearly in the life of the modern man.

A time will come in your life, beloveth, if it has not arrived now, when the most important thing in your life is for God to answer your prayers.

Prayer is the greatest expression of power. It is the blank cheque that God gave to all His children. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of thousands of blessings.

Thank God that when people begin to come to MFM, the first testimony they normally give is that their prayer lives improve.

Prayer is that master strategy that God gives to defeat our enemies. It is the ordained way of God to bring His power to bear in our lives. Anybody can say what they like, but prayer is still the greatest of all forces. The greatest blows sent to Satan are blows made by prayer warriors. That is why one of our early Pentecostal fathers said, “Satan laughs at our toil. Satan mocks our wisdom but trembles when we pray.” When there are dark clouds around us, prayer can make the dark clouds withdraw. Prayer is more powerful than all the forces holding this planet in place.

Prayer can suspend the laws of nature and the universe.

Therefore, beloveth, there is no other power on earth that the enemy of our soul hates and fears as the power of prayer. O that the anointing of breakthrough prayer will fall upon us! O, that the mysteries of prayer be opened unto us, and we will experience dumbfounding breakthroughs!

Remember that Jesus said, “My house shall be a house of prayer.” Not a house of dancing, or disco, or preaching. It is therefore a very tragic thing when certain forces limit the effectiveness and power of our prayers.

In Genesis 18, you read a very interesting story about Sodom and Gomorrah.

God told two men that He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. The two of them tried to change His plan for different reasons. Abraham, as an intercessor, was praying on behalf of the city. Though he was not personally involved in their sins, he was just interceding for them because he had pity on them.

But Lot, his cousin, the obstinate, self-willed man, tried to prevent God from destroying the place because of his selfish interest. Then you begin to see a scenario playing out. You see Abraham talking and negotiating with God through prayer to try to prevent God from destroying the place. Abraham negotiated with God from 50 to 10 people.

But there are times, beloveth, when things have gone too far and prayer does not bring a change. In the process of interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah, it got to a stage when Abraham realised that they had gone too far in their evil. It was clear to Abraham that God was not going to change His mind, unlike when Jonah got to Nineveh and God said, “Okay, I will leave them alone.”

What we are saying is this: there are situations beloveth, that we can get involved in, and they will limit our prayers. A situation can arise when somebody has gone too far, and then with the way you have pushed yourself, prayer becomes useless now.

That is why I keep telling you here that the greatest prayer meeting is still in hellfire. Plenty of prayers in hellfire, but they are prayed too late.

What are these things that limit the effectiveness and power of prayer? They are about ten of them. It is important for me to explain these to you because most of the problems that many of us complain about just need one single prayer point for the thing to collapse and flee. But if these limitation powers are in place, much as you have prayed an effective prayer, something will say, “No, it cannot happen,” because those powers are limiting it.

It is a mystery of the spiritual realm that you can actually limit the activity of God in your personal life. The Bible says that Jesus could not do plenty of miracles where He was born because they limited Him. God is as big in your life as you accept Him to be. It is as simple as that, beloveth.

Let me go quickly to these prayer-limiting powers. Prayers become limited:

1. When you ask amiss, your prayers will be limited. Asking amiss means you are praying the wrong prayers. You are praying violently, but your violence is in sincere ignorance because you are praying the wrong things. Some of the things you pray about are not what you should pray about. This is why our eyes need to be wide open because in the spiritual realm, what you see is not sometimes what you fight. So, you must be careful not to pray useless prayers because you are praying amiss.

It is possible for a person to pray the wrong prayers from the cradle to the grave. It is like that vision of our father in the Lord many years ago. He said there was this angel that came down from heaven with plenty of blessings and presents to give to people. There was a long queue of people who wanted those things.

This old man of God said that he found the scene very strange and interesting. Why? The angel was crying bitterly, and the people were crying bitterly, saying, “Give me; I want this gift”, and the angel was saying, “I want to give, but look at the plates you brought; they are dirty. Clean the plates.

This continued like this. The angel did not give, and the people did not clean their plates. They were praying the wrong prayers. Asking amiss will limit your prayers.

2. When it is offered to make God act contrary to Himself. You want God to do for you what He said is not possible in His word. God has said, “Thou shalt not do this,” but you want Him to answer the prayer and make you a special candidate. No, it is not possible. If you do that, prayers will be limited.
3. When there is unforgiveness in your heart. If you are in this fellowship today and there is somebody that has offended you that you are not ready to forgive, then do not bother to pray at all. This is a very serious matter. It is a very strange thing, and people read it in The Lord’s Prayer every day.
4. When it is prompted by selfish personal motives. This is why some pray and do not get results because their prayers are selfish prayers. All the time, it is I, me, myself, my family and me alone. It does not work like that.
5. When you are praying with an idol in your heart. You have already made up your mind on what to do. You have already taken a decision inside. After you have personally decided on what you want to do, you start praying. The Bible says that anybody that comes to God with an idol in his heart, God will answer him according to the idol in his heart.

When you pray to God with an idol in your heart, it is like you write your cheque and expect God to just sign it. You are praying with an ambitious mindset. You are asking for the will of God when you already know the will of God but you do not like it, so you are praying against it.

Many years back, there was a beautiful lady I used to know. I knew her in her terrible tribulations. When I began to probe into the origin of the tribulations, she told me a strange story. She told me that many years ago, when the Great Apostle Babalola was still around, that she was the most beautiful girl in their church at that time. When it was time for her to marry, she went to the man of God and said, “Baba, I want to marry. Pray for me to find a good husband. Or better still, sir, pray that God should show you whom I should marry.”

So the man went to the mountain like men of those days used to do. He prayed and sought the face of the Lord. When he came back from his prayer, he sent for the lady. The lady said that she went, and Baba said, “I have prayed, and the husband God wants you to marry is in that room. I will now invite him so you can see.”

So Baba brought the man to her, and the first thing she saw was that the man was shorter than her, and then he had only one eye. Baba said, “This is your husband.”

She laughed in disbelief and said, “Baba, I do not think I can marry this one o. With all my beauty, is this the person I will marry? No sir.” So, she politely turned him down and went to marry the man who was an idol in her heart.

As I am talking to you now, the fellow she married died young, her second husband died, the third husband died, and the fourth one died. All because of the idol in her heart.

Sometimes, what you want is not what you need. We have to be very careful.

6. When you are praying with your back towards God. What does that mean? It means you are showing much love with your mouth, but your heart is far from God. That is, you are praying while defying God’s commands. You are ignoring His standards and hoping that God will overlook your disobedience. You are disobeying Him and praying, and this is spiritual insanity because you are upsetting the person who answers your prayers.

It is so sad sometimes because you see a person, and juju, he does not have. Candle prayer, he cannot do it. Magic, he does not have. The only thing he has is prayer and the Bible. And then he is offending the God of the Bible and praying. It is a waste of time.

7. When it is being used as a substitute for obedience. That is, there is disobedience in the heart, and you pray just to remedy a situation when you know that all you need to do is to obey God.

When Achan stole in the camp and Israel was defeated, Joshua lay flat on the ground and started to pray, but what was needed was not prayer. Prayer was not the remedy in that situation. What was needed was to get the sin out of the camp.

So when you are praying instead of repenting, you limit your prayers. When God gives you an instruction, He expects you to carry it out. If He says, “Son, go to that place,” the answer is “Yes, Lord,” not “Yes, but…” You have to obey; if you do not obey, you cannot use prayer to substitute your obedience.

8. When it is faithless praying. You are just praying with no faith at all. In Romans 14:23, we see something. It says:

Romans 14:23 (KJV): “And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”

To pray in unbelief is just as bad as not praying at all. To pray with the evil heart of unbelief is just like a dog chasing its tail and not getting anywhere.

9. When it is hypocritical praying. Look at what Matthew 23 tells us.

Matthew 23:14 (KJV) says: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”

There are people who pray lengthy prayers for show. There are people who come and say they are praying. But it is all just mindless ramblings that have been uttered hundreds of times without thought of heart, so it is not prayer at all. All hypocritical prayers will limit the kind of results your prayer will bring.

10. When it is coming from an unclean heart.

Psalms 66:18 (KJV) says: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:“

Unconfessed sin in your heart will limit the power of your prayers, because sin separates from God. So to seek to approach the Creator, who is a holy and pure God, with an unholy and impure heart is crying for limited prayers. That is why we need to really examine our lives and seriously pray for ourselves. Many prayers seek nothing, ask nothing, and expect nothing. The disciples went to Jesus and said, “Lord, teach us to pray,” not “teach us how to pray.” A lot of people know how to pray, but they do not pray correctly. A lot of prayer bounces off the root of the mouth.

If our prayers are to be a force to be reckoned with, we must pray correctly and remove the limitations. When you are praying the kind of prayers that are limited in approach, it is as though you are not praying at all. We need to go back to the lost art of spiritual praying with effect. We need to cry like the disciples prayed to Jesus: “Lord, teach me to pray.” They did not say “teach me how to work miracles” or “teach me how to preach”, no. If you teach me to pray, all these things will come.

PRAYER POINTS

[Before Message]

1. Every power blocking my total deliverance, you are a liar; die in the name of Jesus.

[After Message]

1. Every power limiting my prayers, you are liars; die in the name of Jesus.
2. Every power drinking the blood of my prayers, today: die, in the name of Jesus.

MFM H/Q Sermons
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