Mike Focht 8/28/2026
Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will declare what He has done for my soul. I cried to Him with my mouth, and He was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. But certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Psalm 66:16-19
Here, we find the psalmist correcting us concerning our prayers. He is declaring what God has done for His soul, confident and assured that the Lord has heard his prayer. Yet in the middle of his joyful witness, he makes a simple truth clear. There is something that can hinder our cries to God—iniquity in the heart.
Now, on some level, we will all have a measure of iniquity in our hearts. We will not be totally cleansed from the plague of our hearts until heaven. Even so, the psalmist is not trying to encourage perfection. He is correcting those who think they can regard iniquity in their heart and still cry out to God as if they are not.
To regard iniquity means to cherish some inward wicked desire. The psalmist describes a type of prayer that is double-hearted and full of guile. The psalmist is not trying to describe the repentant sinner casting themselves at Jesus’ feet because they agree with God against themselves. The picture here is of an individual coming to God seeking a request while also continuing to protect and enjoy some inward sin that they cherish and love.
It is impossible to seek God with all our heart and keep a section of our heart set apart from God and His purposes so that we may secretly enjoy the pleasures of sin. Those who try to do so will cry out to God, but their prayers will be hindered. God will speak to them about their sin and not just their prayer. If they ignore His conversation about their sin, He will not regard their prayer. It is like a person coming to God, saying, “I want to talk to You, just not about that!”
We know that God sees the heart. Nothing is hidden from His sight. He will not live in the non-reality of our duplicity. God is seeking to correct anyone who thinks otherwise! In the process of growing in spiritual maturity, we must be aware of this sinful tendency of the heart. The minute the Holy Spirit brings any cherished sinful desire to our knowledge, we must immediately confess and turn from it, and not justify or protect or ignore it. Then we can turn to God and cry like the psalmist, Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me!