The Sin of Prayerlessness

As Christians we are dealing with a Living God who offers to live inside our hearts and who gives us every spiritual blessing that there is (Ephesians 1:3). So allow me to ask, “How are we treating our God?”

We make time for the things we like. We make time for the things which we find relaxing. We make time for the people that matter to us. We make time for people who we believe can do a lot for us. Let’s be honest. If a rich man or an influential person in our field wanted to spend personal time with us, we probably would look forward to it and move other things around to make the visit happen. This being the case, what does it say about our REAL view of God?

God invites us to converse with Him. He promises to hear our prayers when we ask according to His will. By the way, that isn’t so difficult to do. God is not looking for ways to deny us our requests. He wants our joy to be full!

We owe EVERYTHING to God – our very existence. And we owe our salvation and new life to Him also. Through Jesus God paid a debt for us SO GREAT that it would have put us in a fiery prison forever if we had to pay it ourselves (see 2 Thessalonians 1:8,9). He paid this debt for us so that without compromising His holiness He could have us as His own special people, His own family, potentially as His own friends! And so then, what is our level of thankfulness to the LORD God for all this?

Our thankfulness should be great. And it should be continual. See 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Colossians 3:17. But please allow me to ask you: what does your use of time show about how much you value our Father in Heaven?

It seems that there are a lot of Christians out there who have half an hour a week for singing songs of praise to God at church, 45 minutes to listen to an entertaining message including something of God’s Word, and maybe 5 minutes a day for actual prayer. The rest of the time is spent attending to the business of life but often in a kind of prayerless attitude. By evening, after work and the evening meal, a lot of Christians don’t feel like praying – they feel like watching the evening news on TV and maybe a couple of “good programs” on TV while their children play video games on the tablet, XBox, smart phone or personal computer. None of this activity inspires anyone to seek communion with God. There may be other responsibilities – cleaning up, homework. There may be social activities. But what is the Lord’s place in all of this?

I do agree that it is possible to recognize the presence of the Lord in all our activities of life. But a lot of times the reality is this doctrine is just a convenient excuse for prayerlessness. Some people say “Prayer is an attitude”. But I say if you don’t actually verbalise your thoughts and desires to God and wait before Him with His Word in your heart on a daily basis I’m not sure how effective your “attitude” is going to be in getting answers from God.

If you can’t drop everything at times and get some solid time with God why is that? If you are a mother of small children it would be challenging – but you might be able to get 10 minutes here and there in which God would really touch your heart. If we really desire to seek God out we will find a way and He will meet us.

Either the LORD God is real to you or He isn’t. If He is real, He deserves your full attention on a daily basis. Some people have more demanding schedules than others. If you are a young single man you ought to be able to devote many HOURS to prayer and study every day – and after a while GOD will take you on a journey with Him doing something in His service. A father ought to be able to find one to three hours a day for God. If you are a busy mother it is much more difficult to give periods of time to God like this. But you might be able to wake up early and give half an hour to God without demands from the children. And I think God gives special grace to mothers because they need it. By God’s grace if you are a mother you will not need as much time to enter into spiritual fellowship with God when you turn your heart towards Him. But it will still demand some kind of sacrifice of time.

What I have found helpful is to go to bed early. This means dropping a lot of activities which I might find to be fun. Then I can wake up early in the morning. But when I get up early (and I live in Australia), I have to resist the temptation to chat with my American friends or to read Facebook. I need to spend the time drawing near to God – praying in the Spirit, reading and thinking about the Word, or worshiping God in some other way, for example, using music.

Ask yourself if you are really valuing the presence of the Lord, the promises of God, the opportunity for communication with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords like you ought to. The potential benefits are HUGE. Do you believe this? Ask yourself if there is some SIN or some WEIGHT that is tying you down and limiting or hindering your fellowship with God and your prayer life.

If there is, deal with it today. Ask God to cleanse you by His blood, deliver you, to change your desires, and by God’s grace, start on a path of self-discipline and self-denial until you learn to find absolute delight in the things of God.