Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5), the Bible tells us. We think: surely you don’t mean literally, Lord?
As Christians we have a remarkable privilege; the one who not only made the world but contains to sustain it, and who the powers that run the world obey, has offered us constant conversation. We can chat with him. The power behind the powers behind what we call physics is not an impersonal law or mathematical equation but a lawgiver, mathematician, and artist.
Prayer should stupefy us. “You mean, this all-powerful God who keeps galaxies spinning is interested in you telling him about your day and might alter the course of the entire cosmos because you asked him if you could have a parking space?”
Yes.
So, throughout the day as I speak with my best friend—the almighty ancient of days, who speaks and the earth melts (Psalm 46)—he might choose to change the entire course of history because he loves me and wants to meet my needs and discipline me towards the good.
If that’s true, why don’t I pray more?
I think it’s helpful to move beyond the rhetorical and think about where it is that my (and our) prayerlessness arises from. Here are eight scattered thoughts:
1. Technique
We think we know how to do things and so we forget our dependency, replacing it with pride in prowess. We are self-reliant because we feel, even though we wouldn’t be so crass as to admit it to ourselves, that we can handle it on our own.
2. Pragmaticism
We don’t attempt things that are difficult or won’t work without the Lord intervening—in our own lives or our churches—and so the desperate need to pray doesn’t force us to learn how to.
3. Comfort
Our lives here in the West are comfortable, lack much difficulty, and some Christians appear to not suffer at all. We have little to pray for because our lives are comfortable.
This is obviously not true, but what is true is that comfort smothers our ability to sense our need or that of our neighbours. We are lulled into dormancy.
4. Fear
We are too full of our own fear to pray about the things that we are afraid of. The terrible irony is the cure for many of our everyday fears is to get into the presence of God. The fearful needs others who understand their fears to come alongside them and lift their heads.
5. Disappointment
For some, after too many attempts to ask God to intervene in painful situations that appear to have been answered by the savage silence of a brassy heaven, our drive to pray diminishes. Prayer requires hope, hope stings for the disappointed enough that it’s easier to not summon it up. The disappointed need comfort, and others to hope on their behalf.
6. Unbelief
We don’t actually believe that God loves us and is for us. We might think we do but at the end of ourselves it turns out that we don’t.
7. Distraction
We keep those black glass bricks of Babel in our pockets, dopamine dispensers ready to fill any moment of boredom. We never have the space in our minds to think, let alone to think before the face of God, let alone to start to actually pray.
8. No one taught us to
This is true for many: no one taught us how to pray. I don’t think anyone taught me (except Jesus), and I’m no great prayer warrior.
A new Christian the other day said to me, “I was really struggling with prayer, so I prayed and asked Jesus to help me. I prayed for an hour. I love it now.” That, dear friends, is what faith looks like. That’s the whole ballgame: I didn’t know how to do it so I asked the master and he taught me.
We desperately need prayer
We need to pray, for ourselves, our churches, and our nations. British Christianity is in a bit of a pickle and full of the wondrous grace of God at the same time. Perhaps it is ever thus, but that doesn’t change the need to urgently intercede for our communities. Imagine what might happen if we did.
I’ll have missed some reasons we don’t pray, follow up and let me know if you think of some, but the truth is that we need to do something about it. I’d suggest we repent, first of our prayerlessness and then of the reasons why. Then let’s ask God to teach us to pray. It might just change the world. It will definitely change us, which amounts to almost the same thing.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
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nuakh 