Sake of the Prayers and Submitting to Government

62: Pastor Plek, Pastor Joseph, and Catie Sas discuss a plethora of questions sent in for this week's episode!

Questions:

Can you talk more about "for the sake of your prayers"? Are you saying God answers prayers more when I am not living in sin?

Submit to government authorities? How far do I go? What if they force me to be vaccinated?

Where do things like mask mandates and vaccines fall if 1 Peter says to submit to governments or jobs that require them?

Can you talk more about how men should provide, protect, pursue?

I had a question about how the idea of "for the sake of your prayers" was presented. It almost felt like it was talked about as "if you're holy, then God will hear your prayers". I don't think that was the intention, but I felt like it could have been communicated in a different way, like "we hear more clearly from God and communicate in a more genuine way when we are seeking God and pursuing holiness/righteousness". Shouldn't the focus be about where our heart is? If we're not convicted and that's why we're not praying, that's different. But I feel that it's all too easy for the enemy to tell us that we don't deserve God to hear our prayers because we are not holy enough, and isn't that the last thing God would want? Isn't God our loving Abba Father who always has His arms open to us, unconditionally? The alternative seems to be conditional love/presence.

What exactly is joy? The most I've seen are people putting on brave faces that masks pain that nobody wants to talk about.

What do you do, when your fellow believers use the passages of dying to yourself and submission, as an excuse to abuse/bully/mistreat/guilt-trip/harass you? Is allowing them to treat yourself like this and do whatever they demand of you, an act of dying to yourself and love to them?