Struggling to Pray?

Many believers struggle to pray. Three decades of heart-to-heart talks with countless believers have uncovered this common secret. We talk about prayer. We ask others to pray. We proclaim the power of prayer. We share prayer concerns, even promise to pray. Though, for many, the practice of individual prayer, beyond meals, is more aspiration than application. We just don’t pray. And most of us think it’s just us. We think most other believers pray more than us.

Why is it so hard for so many to pray?

The quick, superficial answers are “we’re too busy” and “their faith is weak” (of course we change the pronoun for that one!). Yet, in my experience, those answers leak. They don’t hold water!

First, how much time do you think it takes to talk with God?

Based on what you say you believe about prayer, is there nothing in your daily routine that would be less important than praying?

Of course, it’s easier to judge another’s faith than to help him learn something we may not do so well ourselves. Be honest, how often do you audibly speak to God? And how often do you receive a clear answer?

If we look beyond the broad, general, often misleading, stereotypes of being too busy or lacking faith, I think many believers struggle with the specific components of prayer – speaking and listening. Sure, we engage in speaking and listening with other people every day. Though, even in those conversations, communication gets difficult when you can’t hear the other person. Just ask your grandparents!

As we speak to others, we’re often reading nonverbal messages and adjusting our tone, volume, speed, and content accordingly. These nonverbal messages play a big role in keeping us focused during conversation. Just consider the vast miscommunications resulting from the disappearance of nonverbal cues as we increasingly rely on digital messaging.

Since we can’t hear God’s voice in the moment and we can’t see his posture, we can easily find ourselves wondering and wandering as we attempt to pray. Though, the more one learns about Jesus, the more accurately she perceives Jesus’ attentive and caring posture as she talks with Him.

Misunderstandings about God’s expectations may also thwart our speaking to God. I’ve talked with many believers who think that God wants to trust them in difficult circumstances. They think that their emotions or their perceived weaknesses somehow disappoint God. Their misunderstanding of God’s desire for them leaves them withdrawing from Him in shame. God’s desire is not to trust us in difficult circumstances. Instead, God wants us to trust Him as we face difficulty or uncertainty. This backwards theology keeps people from praying and trusting God when they need Him most.

How often have you stopped talking to someone who just refuses to respond? Unfortunately, many believers have landed here with prayer. We’ve not been taught how to listen and look for God’s responses to our prayers. If we have not learned to listen and look for God’s answers, it’s easy to think our words to Him are worthless. So, we stop talking to Him.

As I shared in my last post, God rarely shouts over the noise in our lives. He prefers intimacy over command-and-control, so He whispers. Though one must focus to hear a whisper within our loud, chaotic, fast-moving culture. That kind of focus is most often learned and refined, rather than simply natural or acquired.

God most often responds to my prayers through His Word, the Bible. Though I’ve found just telling a friend to read the Bible seldom helps him find responses to his personal prayers. There’s a couple of reasons and solutions for that.

First, new believers are often intimidated or quickly get lost reading Scripture alone.

So much of understanding the specific messages of a passage of Scripture may come from the larger context of the story or a broader understanding of God or Bible history. Their lack of this understanding leaves many new believers discouraged and easily distracted while trying to consistently read Scripture. Unfortunately, the common response of other well-meaning believers is to offer a reading plan which guides the new believer on what or how much to read each day but seldom addresses the real challenge.

This is where the larger community of believers becomes an integral part of one’s personal growth. New believers should be reading Scripture with others, even when home alone. Yes, you read that right. New believers should ask people whom they trust for guidance, and more mature believers should be connecting new believers to teachers, preachers, and writers who offer solid insight into the specific Scripture that we’re encouraging them to read. With today’s technology, this has never been easier.

When I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I was fortunate to have a pastor who connected me to sound Biblical teachers and writers. He instructed me to read short passages, sometimes just a verse or two, of Scripture each day while reading the insights of C.S. Lewis, Thomas & Alexander Campbell, Oswald Chambers, Billy Graham, Charles Colson, Max Lucado, Charles Stanley, David Jeremiah, Dallas Willard and many more. A couple of years later, I enrolled in seminary and my list grew longer, vetting each new potential mentor through mature believers whom I trusted. While I usually only referred to one or two each day, I’d rotate them based on subject, tone, or availability. These living and dead teachers and preachers joined people in my local church, seminary, and friends in ministry as my Spiritual mentors. I’ve tried to read Scripture every day since September 1989, and I most often have a trusted mentor or two offering insights.

The Bible is the living Word of God. That means that God often uses His Word to offer responses to my specific prayers as I align my view of the world with my understanding and recollection of Scripture. I’m giving Him my full undivided attention and in doing so, I hear His whispers – some encourage, some challenge, some reward, some convict – though each is wrapped and delivered in His grace and love for me.

I find more mature believers have a different struggle with listening and looking for God’s responses to their prayers through Scripture.

Many have the Biblical and contextual understanding. They’ve sat through years of teaching and preaching. Though they still struggle to read Scripture and therefore they struggle to hear God’s whispers.

Familiarity is their obstacle. They’ve heard the stories of the Bible countless times. They’ve heard endless preaching and teaching illustrations and perhaps read countless commentaries. As soon as they read or hear the introduction of a passage, they know right where it’s going. They’re not expecting anything new, so they don’t hear anything new. Their eyelids flutter and their minds wander. If they’re trying to read alone, they’re quickly developing a grocery list, thinking about an upcoming interaction, or anticipating tonight’s game.

They may even argue that they don’t need to read Scripture to pray or see God at work in their lives. God clearly responds to some prayers through circumstances rather than Scripture. Though, His consistent whispers through Scripture validate or invalidate what we see through circumstances. Since the circumstantial responses are rarely noticed or understood by most people consistently, the door is left open for some to attribute God’s circumstantial responses to our prayers as luck, human effort, or just circumstances instead of God. When not reading Scripture, it’s also easy to use the world’s values to interpret circumstances as God’s responses to our prayers, though He may not wish to be blamed for what we have wrongly interpreted as a blessing or curse.

So, what about the crisis you’re facing right now?

In my previous post, He’s Waiting to Hear from You, I committed to give you my personal, yet unorthodox, way of listening for God’s whispered response to my prayers when my back is against the wall and my life is noisy.

First, let me give you some context. I’ve already told you that I’ve tried to read Scripture daily since 1989. I have also taught several weekly Bible studies year-round since January 2000, and a few more September thru May each year. I’ve taught verse by verse through the Bible almost three times and read through it a few more times. As I prepare to teach, I typically have a few physical books around me and thousands at my fingertips through Bible software on my MacBook Pro. I find an average of 500 resources on any given book of the Bible I’m teaching, and I usually choose about eight to ten trusted sources to reference as I prepare my teaching.

I share that context not to brag or because my approach is complicated. To the contrary, I want you to see that while I can get deep in the weeds with Bible study and teaching preparation, my approach to hearing God whisper through the noise of my life is amazingly simple.

I struggle with the same familiarity issues that most of you do, perhaps more so. I can open the Bible in hopes of finding answers to my prayers and quickly reflect on what I know or have taught about a passage and get lost in those reflections instead of listening for God.

Before I tell you what I do, let me just acknowledge that your preachers may frown on this. My seminary professors and classmates as well as peers in ministry may too. They don’t tend to like the randomness that I’m going to share. If you’re one of them, I only ask that you let me have it privately. Though, if you must throw punches publicly, I’ve shared this publicly, so I’ll respect your choices. I do ask that you consider my results and that what appears random may be trust.

Here's what I do when my life is loud, and my prayers are desperate:

• I find five or six daily devotionals, each written by someone I trust and respect as being Biblically sound and spiritually mature. I tend to vary my choices by author, tone, and tendencies of their messages. Some writers have a consistent focus on convicting the reader while others consistently focus of encouragement, grace, spiritual growth, what to do next… This variety of illustrations and approaches tends to break me free of the trap of familiarity.

• Each night, I determine what time I need to leave my house or engage in commitments at home the next day. Then I determine what time I need to awake to do so. Then I set my alarm for a half hour before that time and commit to purposeful praying – speaking and listening for the bulk of that half hour. * Yes, I do tend to pray about other things throughout my day.

• I start my morning by speaking to God about the specific issue troubling me.

• Then I randomly, or trustingly, choose a single devotion in one of the five or six devotionals I have with me. If I do not sense a direct connection to my issue or an underlying issue, or if the tone is simply not connecting with me that morning, I set it aside and choose another devotion either within that devotional or another devotional. I’ve been doing this for years and I rarely read three without something touching my heart or thumping me between the eyes.

• Then, regardless of how relevant I thought the reading(s) was to my issue, I thank God and commit to reflect on it throughout my day.

• I’m no longer surprised at how often the relevancy of what I read, or even skipped over, becomes clear later.

I’m not suggesting this approach for teaching preparation or Bible study. Though when I find myself too burdened to hear God’s whispers, this has been a tried-and-true approach for me.

Thanks for Reading,

John