Years ago, pastor Tim Keller wrote in his book Prayer:
Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change—the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.
If all of this is true about prayer, and it is—praise God—why do Christians so often struggle to pray consistently?
Acts 2:42 lists prayer as one of the practices to which the early followers of Jesus committed themselves, and plenty of other biblical passages make the importance of prayer quite apparent. Prayer is, among other things, the primary means by which we communicate with the God of the universe. It is central to developing and maintaining an intimate relationship with God, keeping us from seeing him as a sort of far-off deity who is not interested in being in relationship with us. In a perfect world, prayer would be the most joyous rhythm of discipleship that requires little convincing. But, it is not so.
So why do Christians so often struggle with prayer? Here are seven common reasons:
1. Many simply don’t know how.
A lot of Christians struggle to pray simply because they fear they don’t know how! We even see the disciples of Jesus grapple with this concern in Luke 11:1, where the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord teach us to pray.” Jesus gives us the Lord’s prayer not to prescribe the only way to pray (see Matt. 6:5-13), but because He knows that being unsure of how to pray can be a real obstacle to relationship with God.
I can speak from personal experience here: as a child growing up in the church and eventually as a believer in my teenage years, I was always timid about praying because I was afraid I wouldn’t “do it right.”
Pastors, church leaders, parents, and anyone else who finds themselves in a position of spiritual leadership and influence are wise to model real prayers, not polished prayers. We can help people who are unsure about how to pray by demonstrating what it’s like to pray in authentic, vulnerable ways with them. We can teach others that God is interested in hearing what is really on our hearts, and that He is unconcerned with our verbosity or profound prayers.
2. Prayer becomes a performance.
In giving the Lord’s prayer, Jesus warns against praying “to be seen by people” and “babbling like the Gentiles” (Matt. 6:5, 7). To reiterate a point from above: God is more interested in hearing our authentic selves than He is in being an audience to some kind of prayer performance ladened with spiritual words we think may please Him.
When prayer feels like a performance, a lot of Christians simply opt out. Prayer is meant to be a real, honest, unpolished conversation with a Father who loves us. It is not intended to be a speech for an audience of many or of One.
3. Busyness takes over.
What doesn’t get scheduled can be easily squeezed out. We make time for what we want to have time for, and sometimes the busyness of the day just takes over. Intentionally setting aside time to pray is important, and this intentionality doesn’t have to make it any less intimate.
Jesus built prayer into His daily rhythm. Mark 1:35 says, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up, went out, and made his way to a deserted place; and there he was praying.” What time should you set aside to pray each day? Is it early in the morning? On your lunch break? Set a reminder in your phone and meet with God consistently and intentionally.
4. Prayer is seen only as a life raft in a crisis.
Of course God hears our prayers amid personal crises and tragedies, but prayer is not meant to be some kind of emergency device we only deploy when we feel powerless and unable to improve our own circumstances. God wants to be in relationship with us, not just fix our problems. First Thessalonians 5:17 says, “Pray constantly,” and the idea here is to pray throughout our days, no matter what may be going on.
5. Distraction decreases focus.
We are a distracted people. Phones, notifications of all kinds, mental to-do lists, and more take our attention at every turn. Jesus acknowledged this sort of issue generally in Gethsemane when He said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). No matter how much we want to pray, sometimes we are so easily distracted we can’t do so.
Fight distraction by picking a place to pray, putting your phone in another room, and doing something with your hands—like journaling—while you pray. Focus is possible, but it may take some effort.
6. Discouragement takes root.
For some, the struggle with prayer is rooted in discouragement that arrives before answers. Some Christians may try praying, not get the kinds of answers they want from God, and simply conclude prayer “doesn’t work.” Of course it isn’t implicitly wrong for us to want God to answer us in a certain way, so long our desire isn’t in conflict with what God says is good and right. But when we decide whether or not prayer “works” based on the productivity of God rather than the presence of God, we miss some of what makes prayer so wonderful.
Prayer is a means by which we experience the love and fatherhood of God. We ought not use it as some kind of cosmic vending machine or wish-granting mechanism. We can make requests of God, of course, but we must remember this isn’t the core function of prayer.
7. Prayer only happens alone and never in community.
Finally, some Christians can struggle with prayer when it functions only as a matter of personal spirituality and not within the presence of the broader Christian community. Private prayer is good and important, to be sure, but praying together with other Christians can breathe a special kind of energy into our prayer lives.
The early church prayed together, not to impress each other or as a matter of performance, but to encourage one another and turn each other’s eyes to the presence and promises of God. Such should be our practice.
Don’t Give Up!
When prayer is difficult, and especially if we feel some kind of shame because prayer is difficult, it can be so easy to just give up, wondering if God will even really care. We must not give up on prayer! God wants to meet us even in our most poorly-worded, vulnerable prayers. Psalm 62:8 encourages us this way, “Pour out your hearts before him. God is our refuge.”
The goal here is not to measure our “success” in prayer by how often we do it or whether or not God gives us what we want. Our primary goal in setting aside time to pray ought to be in seeking the heart of God and talking to Him like we would talk to a Father who loves us deeply and eternally.
If you want to learn more about prayer or you could use some help establishing a more consistent prayer life, check out our Prayer study in the Rooted Rhythms collection.
