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v. 24. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
v. 25. And when ye stand praying, forgive if ye have aught against any, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
v. 26. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
There are two factors which defeat the ends of prayer. The first is the lack of trust in efficacy of prayer. There are things which people need, which they desire, which they bring to God in prayer, and yet they lack assurance, they exhibit hesitation, fear as to the outcome. But Christ here states that every prayer of faith is heard. It may be that the fulfillment of wishes comes in a different form than the believer anticipated, in a manner more conducive to his temporal and eternal welfare, but the fact of God's hearing prayer is unassailable. The second reason why prayers often have no effect is because of the condition of the person's heart that presumes to pray. There cannot be, in the heart of a praying person, enmity, hatred, rancor, ill will, or any other unfriendly feeling which is at variance with the demand of God that a forgiving spirit must dominate our actions. No matter whether Christians have been wronged with or without reason, whether they feel hurt rightfully or wrongfully, their hearts must be filled with forgiveness toward all men. If they refuse to forgive, no matter what the occasion or the provocation, they thereby erect a wall, an impenetrable and insurmountable obstacle between themselves and God. They make God's forgiveness of their own sins impossible, and God will not hear the prayers of such as have no clean record before Him, whose sins are not daily and richly forgiven them through the Gospel. Since they refuse their neighbor forgiveness, they shut themselves out from God's mercy and goodness, and render their prayer of none effect.