The Prayer Predicament

Neglect of Prayer

“The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.” – F.B. Meyer

This quote strikes a chord with me. I find that to “pray without ceasing” is not always easy to do. I regularly find myself getting distracted when it comes to prayer. Yet, the reality is that I must pray if I’m going to have any measure of victory in my life. Just the other day

I was talking about this dilemma with some close friends. We were discussing the prayer life of some popular Christians of old. Men like George Muller for example. Where did they find the time to pray for 1, 2, or even 3 hours a day? Where do we find the time? Then it occured to me. Maybe I’m going at this from the wrong angle. Rather than trying to pray for an hour at a time, maybe I should break it down over the course of the day.

Jumpstarting Your Prayer Life

Do you realize that if you take 5 minutes to pray every hour that you will have spent 1 hour and 20 minutes in prayer over the course of a 16 hour day. If you increase that to 10 minutes an hour then you just spent 2 hours and 40 minutes in prayer! Now let me be clear here. I’m not trying to create some “formula” for prayer. Prayer is an ongoing conversation between us and the Lord. We should be praying throughout the day as we go about our business. But when it comes to more fervent prayer, where do we start? When do we do it? For how long should we pray? No, I’m not trying to give a formula here, I’m just trying to show you how to jump start a prayer life that may have gone stagnant recently. But here’s the thing, once you start praying, it’s easier to remember more things to pray for, then, 10 minutes won’t be enough. You’ll find that by seeking to dedicate a short amount of time to prayer, you end up spending lots of time in prayer. Amazing when you look at it this way, isn’t it? Humbling too! Now I realize that I have no excuses not to be praying more regularly. But the reality is that it has been hard for me lately. This brings me to my next point.

Resistance to Prayer

I came across another quote recently that spoke about another reality of prayer.

“When we go to God by prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him, and therefore he opposeth us all he can.” -Richard Sibbs

So here is the predicament of prayer. When we don’t pray, we put ourselves in a more vulnerable position to fall into sin. When we do pray, we put ourselves in a position that will face more spiritual opposition. Satan tries to distract us from praying because, when we stop praying regularly, it makes us weaker. Satan wants us to believe that somehow, we might be better off not praying at all. But the reality is that he desires to destroy us whether we pray or not. So what should we do about this prayer predicament? We must pray, and pray without ceasing! Because as we draw nearer to God, Satan will flee from us. So be encouraged, and weather the storms of spiritual opposition and distractions that try to keep you from praying. Like all storms, these will pass in due time, and you and your prayer life will be stronger because of it.
Now if you’ll please excuse me, I need to go pray!

~ F.B. Meyer Quote via Lee Bezotte on Twitter
~ Richard Sibbs Quote via Britt Merrick on Twitter