If you have ever wondered why some prayers seem to move heaven while others fall to the ground, Prevailing Prayer: What Hinders It? is a short, plain-spoken answer. In it the evangelist D. L. Moody sets out to show what kind of praying God actually honours — not a technique or a set of magic words, but a cluster of heart-conditions that Scripture rewards. This study guide walks you through the book’s aim, the way it is built, its central themes, and how to read it today, so that you finish not only understanding prevailing prayer but beginning to pray that way. The full text is free to read on Ochorus.

What the book is, and Moody’s aim

Prevailing Prayer is Moody’s practical handbook on the praying that lays hold of God. First published in 1884 and drawn largely from his own preaching, it is less a treatise than a series of searching, illustration-rich talks. Moody was not a trained theologian but a former shoe salesman turned evangelist, and he writes exactly as he preached: directly, warmly, and with a story on every page. His question is deliberately practical. He assumes that his readers already believe prayer is a duty; what he wants to expose is why so much of our praying seems to accomplish so little.

His aim, in a sentence, is to move Christians from praying that is vague, self-centred, and unexpectant to praying that is definite, clean-hearted, and full of faith. He opens by insisting that the great figures of the Bible were not a special class of super-saints but people like us who learned to pray.

Those who have left the deepest impression on this sin-cursed earth have been men and women of prayer.

Dwight L. Moody

That conviction runs through everything else. If Abraham, Hannah, Daniel, and Elijah prevailed with God, then the same door stands open to any ordinary believer who will meet God on the terms Scripture lays down. Moody points to the apostle’s reminder that Elijah “was a man subject to like passions as we are” (James 5:17) precisely to close the distance between the reader and the praying saints of old.

How the book is organized

The structure of Prevailing Prayer is its genius, and it is worth grasping before you start. After an opening chapter on the prayers of the Bible, Moody devotes one short chapter to each of what he calls the great elements of prayer, taken in turn: adoration, confession, restitution, thanksgiving, forgiveness, unity, faith, petition, and submission. A closing chapter gathers up striking answers to prayer as evidence that the whole thing works.

The elements are not a checklist to be recited in order so much as ingredients that together make prayer prevail. Moody begins with adoration because he believes worship must precede asking; we come first to honour God, not merely to petition him. He moves to confession, noting that the people who had most power with God were the quickest to own their sin. Then comes restitution, one of the most bracing chapters in the book, where he argues that a wrong un-righted is a real hindrance to prayer:

If I have at any time taken what does not belong to me, and am not willing to make restitution, my prayers will not go very far toward heaven.

Dwight L. Moody

Thanksgiving follows, then forgiveness, which Moody calls perhaps the hardest element of all and the one that keeps more people from power with God than any other. Unity comes next, illustrated from the one-accord praying of the early church at Pentecost (Acts 2:1). The book then rises to its heart in faith and petition, before ending, deliberately, on submission — the will bowed to God’s. Reading the chapters in sequence, you watch Moody build a whole picture of the praying that God answers.

The central themes

Several threads bind the elements together. The first is the priority of a clean and forgiving heart. Moody is convinced that most unanswered prayer is hindered prayer — blocked by unconfessed sin, un-made restitution, or a refusal to forgive. Before he ever asks us to pray harder, he asks us to deal honestly with God and with our neighbour. His chapter on forgiveness leans on the petition “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12) as a test of whether we have really been born of God.

The second theme is faith. For Moody, believing prayer is the hinge on which everything turns. He points to the promise that the one who lacks wisdom may “ask of God” but must “ask in faith, nothing wavering” (James 1:5), and he draws a sharp line between doubt and trust:

Unbelief sees something in God’s hand, and says, ‘I cannot get it.’ Faith sees it, and says, ‘I will have it.’

Dwight L. Moody

The third theme is definite, importunate petition. Moody has little patience with prayers that circle the globe and ask for nothing. Leaning on “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Matthew 7:7), he presses readers to name what they actually want and to expect an answer. He is equally clear about the opposite danger — asking with a wrong motive — quoting the warning that some “ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss” (James 4:3).

How often we go to prayer-meetings without really asking for anything!

Dwight L. Moody

The fourth theme is submission, and it is where Moody keeps his boldness from tipping into presumption. Prevailing prayer, he insists, is offered in faith yet surrendered to God’s wisdom, praying as Christ prayed, “not my will, but thine” (Luke 22:42). He would rather have God choose than choose for himself. Finally, the whole book is carried by the biblical examples. Moody teaches prayer chiefly by holding up those who prayed and were heard — Zacchaeus making fourfold restitution (Luke 19:8), the church of one accord, and above all the promise of Christ: “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).

Who should read it

Prevailing Prayer is for any Christian who wants to pray with more reality and power, and who suspects that something is quietly hindering their prayers. Because the chapters are short and full of story, it suits the beginner who is only learning to pray as well as the seasoned believer who wants a searching tune-up. New Christians will find a clear, unintimidating map of what prayer involves. Those who lead others — pastors, parents, small-group leaders — will find each element easy to teach and to model.

It is especially valuable for anyone who has grown discouraged, who has prayed and seemingly gone unanswered, and begun to wonder whether prayer changes anything at all. Moody meets that discouragement head-on, not with sentiment but with self-examination and hope. Readers who prefer systematic theology over anecdote may find his style loose, but even they will be sharpened by his relentless practicality. This is a book to be obeyed as much as understood.

How to read it today

Read it slowly, one element at a time. The book is built for it: take a single chapter as a day’s reading and let its one question sit on your conscience before moving on. Moody assumes you will stop and act, not just turn pages.

Keep your Bible open beside the book. Because Moody teaches by example, the chapters are stitched together from Scripture, and you will get far more if you look up the prayers he cites — Hannah’s, Daniel’s, Elijah’s — and read the surrounding stories. Keep a notebook too, and turn each element into a personal audit: Is there a confession I am avoiding? A restitution I owe? A person I have not forgiven? A petition I have never dared to make definite?

A few of Moody’s nineteenth-century illustrations feel dated, and his English is the plain King-James-shaped prose of his day; read past the period detail to the point underneath, which is remarkably timeless. And remember his framing conviction:

It is as important for us to know how to pray as it is to know how to work.

Dwight L. Moody

Read prayerfully, and let the book become a school of prayer rather than merely a book about it. If it stirs you to bring definite requests to God with thanksgiving, in the spirit of “be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6), it will have done its work.

For reflection

These questions can be used alone, journalled, or discussed in a group as you work through the book:

  1. Moody argues that most unanswered prayer is hindered prayer. As you read the elements — adoration, confession, restitution, thanksgiving, forgiveness, unity, faith, petition, submission — which one exposes the biggest hindrance in your own praying?
  2. Is there a restitution you owe, or a person you have refused to forgive, that may be standing between you and God? What would it look like to make it right this week?
  3. Moody says unbelief sees the gift in God’s hand and says “I cannot get it,” while faith says “I will have it.” Where do you most need to move from wavering to trust?
  4. Name one definite thing you have never actually asked God for. What has kept your prayers vague, and what would a concrete petition sound like?
  5. How do you hold together bold, expectant asking and genuine submission to “not my will, but thine”? Which side do you tend to neglect?

To go on with Moody himself, turn to The Way to God, his warm invitation into the assurance and new life that make a life of prayer possible. Then set Prevailing Prayer beside a companion classic: E. M. Bounds’s Power Through Prayer, which presses the same conviction from a different angle — that God’s work is done not by better methods but by praying men and women. Together they form a short, bracing course in the praying that prevails, and all three are free to read in full on Ochorus.