A DEVOTIONAL GUIDE FOR “THE TEN
TIMELESS VALUES FOR DISCIPLESHIP”
If you asked most Christians, “Is
prayer important?” the answer would be “yes, of course”. If you asked the same people, “How’s your
prayer life?” the answer would be, “not as good as it should be”. For most of us, when it comes to prayer,
there is a gap between what we say is important and what we do about it. There are all kinds of reasons why this is so
and I want to explore a few of the obvious obstacles to a meaningful and
effective prayer life.
No statement about prayer has ever spoken so profoundly to me as Richard
Foster’s observations, “To learn to pray
we must learn to waste some time on God.”
Nothing inhibits meaningful prayer more than the busyness of our
lives. We live in a world in which we
are driven by production. Time is a scarce
resource and to be successful we learn to make the most of every minute. How often when we try to pray does our mind
begin to race to all the things that are waiting to be done, and we begin to
feel like we simply have too much to do to just sit with God. Bill Hybels wrote a book on prayer entitled, “To Busy Not to Pray”. Prayer is a countercultural act in which we
resist the urge to do and accomplish and in the process learn to trust God with
what we are not doing. While we can
“pray without ceasing” while we are on the go, there is no substitute for
stopping to let God “search our hearts” and to listen for the “still small
voice of God” revealing His heart to us.
One of the truths God has been impressing on me is simply, “God rarely speaks to the back of our heads”.
I think it is true that the fervency of our prayer life is directly
proportional to the depth of our need or height of our troubles. As a result, prosperity can become an obstacle
to our prayer life. Because we so easily
allow our prayers to turn into a laundry list of my needs and the needs of
others, the better our life is the less we pray. God warned the Israelites coming out of the
trials of the wilderness in the exodus that when they got into the land and had
everything they needed they would be in danger of forgetting about God. How easy it is to forget to pray when our
bodies are healthy, kids are prospering, marriage is good, and finances are
sound. It is important to remember that
thanksgiving is a key driver a successful prayer life.
The last obstacle to prayer is one that can develop over time and
through heartache. It has to do with our
own expectations of God and the experience of unanswered prayers. When we mistakenly think of prayer as our
means to get something from God instead of getting to know God, we can end up
disappointed and disillusioned with prayer and with God for that matter. The key to overcoming all obstacles to prayer
is remembering that the goal of prayer to know God and be known by God, to love
God and be loved by God, for there is never a shortage of our need to be loved
unconditionally and listened to compassionately.
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