If there is ever a dreaded question among Christians, it is the question on how one’s prayer life is going. It feels as though it is a rarity to find someone who will answer, “It’s going great!”. The more usual response is the slight fading of smiles and the avoiding of eye contact before the confession, “It could be better.” I think it is one of the things that Christians know they should be doing. But it is not a lack of knowledge that is keeping us from praying. The question is, what is? I will offer some suggestions for why we don’t pray and then try and offer solutions to these problems.
I think we think of prayer as being more complex and complicated than it actually is. This might be because of how we’ve learnt prayer. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, prayer is the most mimicked part of our Christian lives. For some of us it started with witnessing our parents and relatives pray, while for others, it started with being asked to repeat the prayer of faith after another Christian, usually a pastor. Because of this nature of mimicking, those whom we mimic most either encourage or discourage our praying. Where it is done by great articulate people, who do it ‘so well’ that we might just get discouraged when our prayers don’t sound like theirs do. In some cases, especially within charismatic circles, there can be lots of jargon and Christian-ese that is used, making us feel like God doesn’t like to hear simple, clear, unembellished prayers.
I am always reminded of the parable in Luke 18:9-14, where we sample two very different prayers, by two very different people: the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee’s prayer is long and full of pride. It recounts all the places he thinks he’s performed well before the Lord – points where others have failed. But the tax collector prays, simply and honestly. He prays in humility because he knows how much he has failed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”. There was nothing extravagant or impressive, just a desperate sinner crying out for mercy. What happened? Jesus tells us that it is the man with the simple prayer who goes home justified. His short, sharp prayer was good enough. Maybe we too can pray short, unimpressive prayers in humble trust that God hears and answers them?
Another reason i think we don’t pray is that we focus on the wrong aspects of prayer. As the fallen creatures we are, we take God’s good gifts and distort them into places for our sin to flourish. Rather than focus on communion with and trust in God, we make prayer about how we sound, how consistent we are and how much better we are at it than others, or others are than us. We make prayer a box-ticking exercise in which we are merely keeping score about how ‘well’ we’re doing compared to others. Is it any wonder that these are the very things Jesus speaks against when teaching on prayer in Matthew 6:5-8? They are the things the Gentiles and hypocrites do, thinking that they are praying so well.
When Jesus teaches us how to pray through the Lord’s prayer, he points out the things that really matter about prayer. Firstly, that we pray as children of the Father, who through Christ can come boldly in prayer. Secondly, that God is worth adoring, as the one worthy of praise – the Hallowed One who has made us and saved us. Thirdly, that our greatest desire should be for God’s reign to become more apparent. First, in our own lives, through growing submission to the Lord, and second, in His kingdom inaugurated through Jesus’ 1st coming, should fully come in His 2nd coming. Fourthly, that we need to trust God for our provision, food and the forgiveness of our sins, and that he will keep us safe from the evil one. Simple, uncomplicated and godly things to focus on.
Another reason I think we don’t pray is because we have an all-or nothing approach to prayer. It is either that I can set apart and pray for an hour or I just quit. This is just impractical! We cannot move from not praying to praying meaningfully for an hour! We are just not built like that. We are built to grow our habits and disciplines; to start slow and steadily grow over time. This means being content to start with 5 minutes, build to 10 minutes and so on and so forth. We can also order ourselves so that we have very meaningful prayer in 10 minutes. We simply need to prioritize it in our schedules and shut out distractions as best we can. A wise man inferred that our use of social media will be a proof in heaven that prayerlessness was not from a lack of time. We can switch our phones to airplane mode, or shut down distracting apps for a few minutes so that we can pray uninterrupted. Or we can download helpful apps like PrayerMate to help us pray more consistently and deliberately.
The last reason I will posit here is that we don’t pray because we don’t start with the gospel. I think the easiest way to start and grow in our prayer lives is to keep the gospel as the center. Often, prayer is taught as a place of simply talking to God about our physical needs. We come to God to get from him what we want. But in its simplest form, prayer is foremost a response to God, His Word and works. This is why the gospel (the Word) is so important. It offers us the place to meet with God, to hear from him and hear of his works, and after this we can respond to what we’ve heard and seen of him through prayer. Let us heed the Sunday School song, “Read your Bible, pray everyday. . .”
We often lack the patience to work diligently at our prayer life. Why not surrender the unhelpful comparisons, shallow goals and unbiblical standards? Why not put away our gadgets and lock those apps to focus some time on prayer? Let’s make prayer simple and personal, something we’re willing to grow in and something that is God-centered at its core. We’ll be much happier and likely more consistent in our prayer lives than we’ve been before.
