Prayer is one of the most powerful tools we possess, but it can often be very frustrating subject for many believers. For many churches, a min percentage of people come to the prayer meetings. Many Christians have a sense of guilt over their lack of prayer or feelings they don’t know how to pray effectively. Some attempt to make it look like they have a great prayer life by impressing people.
It can be helpful to understand what keeps us from praying. There is certainly a spiritual war going on over our investment to prayer and we need to recognize the obstacles so we can overcome. These should not be excuses, but blocks that we can remove from our path.
1. We feel our prayers are ineffective.
For many, they forget that heaven’s timeline does not work instantaneously, so they get easily discouraged when an answer does not come right away. When we do not see instant results, the typical response is to fall back.
2. We do not feel close to God.
Sometimes we fall into comparison and we don’t see ourselves as spiritual as others. We feel far from God, so when we approach Him, we dont carry the boldness we need to ask in confident faith.
3. Distractions.
Today, I believe one of satan’s devices on the church is the realm of constant distraction–filling your day and life with things that are not necessarily evil, but distracting to the priorities of heaven. Keep ’em busy, busy, busy, so they will feel a false sense of accomplishment.
4. We rely on our own strength.
The fact of the matter is that by observing our daily routines, many people do not even need God. Is our day marked with a clear need for God to meet us in our world? This would be made evident in our prayer life. We have what we need so we go about our day in our own strength.
5. God will not hear or nothing will happen.
Many people do not have a level of faith in their heart that believes God hears their prayer. If he does, then they haven’t seen any results, so what’s gonna be different this time.
6. A lack of personal significance.
They lack a sense of “my prayers really mean something.” They carry an unworthiness regarding the importance of who they are and their petitions they bring to God.
7. No one taught us.
The disciples asked Jesus, all things, to pray like He did. They are never recorded as asking, “how to preach or teach” but how to pray. Everything flows from there, but rarely have we ever sat with someone who carried a strong prayer life and learned from them.
8. We don’t know how to talk.
Prayer involves talking to God, but many struggle in expressing their heart in an effective way. They don’t know how to share with another person and God is a person! He wants our hearts more than anything else. But if you struggle to share your heart with anyone, then sharing that with God can be challenging too.
9. Boredom
Many fall into religious duty over and over again. We like to have our routines, so our relationship with God can often fall into a boring pattern of saying the same thing, with little heart connection or ability to hear back from God. Therefore we see payer as boring with no fruit.
10. Disappointment
A massive block for many believer’s prayer life comes down to disappointment, where we feel that God let us down or left us hanging in a past situation. Maybe we pray for someone who did not get healed or even worse, died. In our disappointments, we can accuse God and develop an anger towards Him. Why then would anyone want to pray to someone who they are mad at? This is something that has to be addressed and healed to open the prayer lines once again.
Question: Which block can you relate to the most? (comment below)