WHY WE DON’T PRAY

Why we don’t pray?  What is the reason Christians don’t pray?  Now many Christians don’t pray. 

It is pretty obvious because if we would pray, we would walk in a greater measure of power, we will walk in a greater measure of revelation of God’s word.  Pray will create other habits in our Christian life that will be evident. 

The six reasons why Christians don’t pray today are

1. The devil

The devil gains the most from prayerless Christians.  God wants us to pray because God created a family.  God sees us as his children.  God created this marriage; we are the bride of Christ.  We are his sheep.  We are his people.  So, God wants us to talk to Him.  You cannot have a relationship without communication.  So, it’s pretty much the blood of our relationship, our communion with the Lord. 

And guess who wants to stop and break that and take away, that communion? No other but Satan.  If you remember Daniel.

Daniel 6:10 says, that the king made a law that no one should pray to no other God except the king.  Satan is behind the scenes and he wants to push his agenda, to push prayerlessness among believers.  He will use that by filling us with excuses.  He will use that by filling us with laziness.  He will use that by filling us with business, sometimes with sin. 

Whatever he can do.  He will use everything in his arsenal to drive you away from prayer because once you get to pray, you’re unstoppable.  Once you develop a prayer life, you are a conqueror.  You can move mountains with God. 

Look at every man of God, you will find one common denominator.  They had a great relationship with God and they also had a prayer life from the Old Testament to the New Testament. 

So, when the devil can take away the prayer life, he can take away your destiny, your spiritual walk with God.

• Our original Sin

It has been human nature t run or escape from God.  Adam and Eve one day when sinned, and the consequence of that sin was they were hiding from God.  Instead, of running to God they ran from Him and they hid in some bushes, covering themselves with leaves.  And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.   Even some of us who are born again still exhibit a carnal mindset and carnal behaviors.  And what we do, is run from God.  Some of us you now, don’t know what to say so, we simply just hide in bushes of business.  Some of us think prayer is boring and so we rather just cover ourselves with leaves of self-righteousness and try to prove and please God by doing good works.

But all of that is not enough because what prayer is, it’s a place for the presence of God.  It’s where you encounter God.  It’s where your life changes.  So, prayer is not just” God I am sorry” “God thank you” and “God bless me.” Prayer is an encounter with the presence of God.  And Satan doesn’t want that to happen.  And sin is the result of prayerlessness and prayerlessness is the result of sin.  Praying man will stop sinning and sinning man will stop praying. 

• Previously unanswered Prayer

This is another reason why we don’t enjoy praying or feel like praying and living a prayerless life.  Answered prayers add to the joy.  Unanswered prayer adds to your disappointment.  It is not easy to handle unanswered prayer.  And a lot of our prayers get not answered because they were not prayed with the right motive. 

Maybe it was not the right thing we were asking God for, maybe we held on to unforgiveness and unconfessed sin.  Maybe we treated a spouse wrong, as it says in Peter that if we do that our prayers will be hindered.  Maybe it was because of our unbelief or maybe it’s just what we prayed for, we knew it was God’s will it just did not happen and we got disappointed.  And I want to let you know that Satan will use that offense to pretty much create a blockage between you and God. 

You have to learn to step over the things, you don’t understand, so that you can step into what God has for you.  Every single person on this planet who has a great prayer life has some prayers that still did not get answered.  Sometimes they get answered later on in life and sometimes they just don’t get answered.

But you may say, what keeps them going?

The answer is what keeps them going is the presence of God.  They don’t go to pray to use God, they go to pray to love God.  And so, maybe you’ve had these moments where prayers were not answered.   I want to encourage you to give prayer another shot.

I want to encourage you not to trip over that, but step over that.  There are things you and I don’t understand.  God is bigger and bigger than us and He doesn’t owe us an explanation but we owe Him allegiance.  And so, you owe God your life.  And God doesn’t need you, you need God. 

You know if you take fish out of the water, the water is still water but the fish will die.  If you take trees out of the soil, the soil is still soiled, the trees will die.  If you take me and you out of God, we are going to die but God is still going to be God.  So we need Him. 

But there is going to be a time when God will explain why certain things happen and why certain things were not answered.  But until we are on this side of eternity my friend, we got to kick every disappointment, every offense including unanswered prayer.  Push that aside and don’t let it stop you from your intimacy and your connection to God. 

• Lack of a plan for prayer

People don’t have a plan for prayer and therefore they find prayer boring and uninteresting.  What I mean by the plan is this, is that you know it’s well to make prayer a priority, it’s good to make prayer, privacy in prayer, and shut the door behind you.  Jesus said, “Find your room, a place for prayer.  He tells us to pray to our Father.  That’s the person of prayer.

But there is also a very important component of prayer and I call it the plan of prayer.  And some people get in there and they don’t know what to do.  You can go through the Lord’s prayer.  If sometimes you don’t have any kind of prompting or leading, read the scriptures as you are in your prayer closet in your quiet time.  Read the scriptures and after that pray the Lord’s prayer. 

Break the lord’s prayer into a few components.  Like our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name.  So, talk to God about your relationship with Him.  Our Father in heaven, you know, and then your kingdom come, your will be done.  Talk to God about His agenda for this earth.  Pray for the nations, pray for your city, pray for your pastors, pray for your leaders then give us this day our daily bread. 

Ask God for your needs.  Then forgive us our sins as we forgive those people who’ve sinned against us.  Talk to God about your relationships.  Then it says that don’t lead us into temptation.  Talk to God about your weakness.  Then it says deliver us from evil.  Talk to God about things that have a stronghold on your life.

It could be simple things like sugar, caffeine, and you know maybe some kind of an unhealthy obsession you have with something or someone.  Ask God to deliver you from that and then at the end, you proclaim His goodness.  Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, and so, there is just kind of a plan.  There are other plans like tabernacle prayer.  There’re other plans liked from thanksgiving to confession, to intercession, to speaking in tongues, etc.  There are plans of prayer of Jabez, there is a prayer of Solomon.  There is the prayer of going through the redemptive names of God.

Sometimes you can sit in your quiet time after finishing reading the Word and just choose one of the prayer patterns and just go through them.  You may say,” Well but that seems mechanical,”

It’s fine God sees your heart.  It’s all that matters and then you’re directing your prayer to the Lord.  As long as you don’t make it mechanical and don’t make it about methods and rules but about your heart and your relationship with Him.  The kind of approach that you have the kind of plan you have; God will bless it.  And so maybe that’s what your problem is, why don’t you pray because you may feel like I have nothing to say or it’s repetitive, it’s the same. 

Try this method, try this plan, and see if it changes something in your prayer.

• They feel like praying is pointless

You may think what’s the point of prayer it won’t change my life, it won’t change my future.  It won’t.  My faith is sealed, my future is pretty much secure and prayer is not going to do anything about it.  But what I want to say is that’s not true. 

In the Bible, Ahab was supposed to be punished.  He prayed and fasted.   God extended mercy.  Nineveh was supposed to be destroyed.  They prayed and fasted.  God extended mercy.  Hezekiah was supposed to die, he prayed.  God extended mercy.  Israel was supposed to be wiped out by God.  Moses prayed; God extended mercy.  So, in other words, though prayer doesn’t change God but it will change your circumstances.  And when sometimes it doesn’t change your circumstances it will change you.  Prayer is not pointless.  There is a power that will flow in your life through prayer.

So, you got to do, you got to show up and start praying and talking to God because there is power in that.  If you think that everything is sealed and decided and there is nothing you can do to change your future.  I’m going to tell you you’re wrong. 

Prayer and fasting change nations, change continents, and changes communities.  It changes families, and it changes destinies. 

• God will do what he wants to do regardless of whether I pray or not

Like if God said it.  It settles it.  God’s promise means that He will do what he promised He will do; my prayer is not needed.  God does not need any help. 

Indeed, God doesn’t need anyone’s help.  God will indeed do what He said He will do but God also wants to hear your voice.  God also invites us to pray.  God also tells us to ask.  Jesus tells us to ask so that our joy will be complete. 

The Bible also tells us to bring a request to God and he will give us His peace.  Like for example we see that Jacob prayed for the fulfilment of God’s promise.  You know he couldn’t have kids but God says through Abraham’s seed generations and nations will be blessed.  But Jacob can’t have kids and Jacob prays.  We see that Israel cried out for the promised land.  When they were in Egypt, they cried out for deliverance but God promised them Exodus.  He promised them this.  Why should they cry out?  But we see that God was sent to Israel, not as a fulfillment of His promise but as an answer to the city of Israel.  God promised Abraham they will be in Egypt.  They are in Egypt, they are crying out for that deliverance, they are crying out for that promised land.  Why do they, why do they need to cry out?

What’s the point God is going to still do what God had promised to do.  But when God comes and sends Moses, he sends him as an answer to a cry, not as a fulfilment of His promise. Why? Because God wants to co-labor with us.  God wants to partner with us.  God gave this earth to us.  We are on the lease right now from God on this earth and God wants to do stuff on this earth through us.

Prayer gives license for heaven’s interference. ‘If we want heaven to get involved, we have to give heaven a license and that is our prayer.  God says invite me into your affairs.  And so, many of us, we treat prayer as pointless and therefore we don’t see the activity of God in our life.  We do see God’s miracles in our life because we don’t include God.  And we have this view, this very weird view of God

 sovereignty.

That God just decided everything.  He is going to do everything.  And honestly whatever you think It is just not going to make a difference.  So, if you think you will sit there with your hands crossed your hands and do nothing. That’s not biblical.

That’s not in the New Testament and it’s not in the Old Testament.  We see God tells Elijah that if he shows himself to Ahab that He will send rain.  Yet the great man of God Elijah doesn’t trust God.  He goes and prays and he prays hard.  And the bible says in the New Testament that Elijah is a man of fervent prayer and God answered his prayer by sending the rain. 

We see later on as well Daniel prays for the Exodus of Children of Israel from Babylon.  Well, if Jeremiah prophesied that after seven years they’ll be out, why pray? 

But see the man of God did not have that approach.  They didn’t see prayer as pointless nor did they see prayer as the only way to get what God promised or to get what they want. The only way to get what God promised or to get what they want. 

Prayer was a way of communicating, it was the way of conversation, it was the way of relationship with God but they prayed because they believed it matters.  We see that God promises the Holy Spirit.  Yet Jesus goes to God the Father and He is asking the Father to send the Holy Spirit.  Why ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit if the Father already promised to send the Holy Spirit? 

The church is praying.  Why pray If God said He will send the Holy Spirit because see God’s promises, but the answer that He will send into your life will be a result of your prayer.  Not a fulfilment of His promise.  It will be both fulfilment of His promise and an answer to the prayer.  And I wonder sometimes how many promises of God we fail to see because we are not partnering with God in prayer.   So, if that is what pray lessness does to us.  We will see God fulfill his word; we will just miss it.  Meaning our involvement in it will be absent we will not be participating in it because we are not praying.  That’s what we miss out on when we live a life of prayerlessness.

Jesus did not lead a life of prayerlessness. He was the son of God.  He was busy.  He prayed being baptized in the water.  He prayed before choosing disciples, He prayed when He was on the mount of configuration, and as he prayed His face was changed.  He also prayed after John the Baptist was beheaded ad then he walked on water. 

Jesus prayed before going to the cross in the garden of Gethsemane, three times.  He prayed on the cross.  Jesus prays now for us.  So, if prayer doesn’t matter, if prayer is just a chore, if prayer is just something like” Oh it’s just for those people who have nothing else to do.  Then why did the Lord Jesus Christ currently occupy an office of a prayer warrior?  Prayer matters, God wants to hear my brothers and sisters.  God misses you, come on, it’s time to come back to your prayer room.  It’s time to come back to that intercession time. It’s time to renew and be recalibrated to your prayer life.

I invite you back to return to the things you used to do and if you never had a prayer life, I want to ask you to please do not waste your life.  Live a life of prayer.  If you think that prayers take time, you are wrong.  Prayer saves time. 

You will see so many stupid decisions you will avoid when you begin to pray.  You will see so much temptation you will avoid when you pray because watch and pray unless you enter temptation, so much ticket, so much damage in your life if you simply spend time with the Holy Spirt, with the Heavenly Father, and with the Lord Jesus Christ, and your Holy Bible in your private room, in your secret place.  You will either live in a secret sin or a secret place but you can live in both.

THANK YOU

PRAY IS THE KEY