Obstacles to Prayer - Taking It to Our Knees

Obstacles to Prayer

LifeTalk

“I want to live a life where prayer is the first thing that I do, the second thing, the third thing, and the last thing after the prayer has been answered.”

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Many of the obstacles to prayer are things that we have not given sufficient attention to, or we think that they’re somehow normal, appropriate, or of no real concern. These are the things that present themselves as rather casual issues that are of little importance. But they can (in fact) be major obstacles to an effective prayer life.

In this podcast we’re going to outline a handful of these destructive factors that too often lay hidden in our lives. And in wondering how or why our prayer lives seem so ineffectual or hollow, we might ask if any of these factors have found a place of residence in our lives.

 

Obstacles to Prayer

Sin.

Sin is an intentional living outside of the will of God that places us at odds with who God created us to be. Sin is described as “anything that separates us from God.” If we are engaging in such behaviors, we come to prayer already separated from the God to Whom we are praying.

Self-Centered Agendas.

We tend to live out our lives based on our agendas and our perception of what is in our best interest. Therefore, we do not come to prayer seeking God’s direction, God’s will,

God’s insights, or God’s perspective. Rather, we come with a prepared agenda where we wrangle with God in order to achieve these agendas or obtain the resources to achieve them.

Distractions. 

Prayer becomes the thing that we squeeze into the many demands in our lives. It’s something that sits somewhere near the bottom of the rather extensive checklist that outlines our obligations and duties. We intend to give prayer space and time, but it often falls prey to the many other demands that press prayer off of our calendar.

Shiny Object and Squirrels.

There are many things that vie for our attention. In reality, most of those things are not imperative to life and living, although we grant them that exact status. It’s often assumed that if something in our life demands our attention it’s because ignoring it will have dire consequences, when in fact deferring the majority of these things is unlikely to result in any consequence of consequence. As such, in the perpetual bombardment of an unnecessarily busy life, prayer is easily set aside.

Lack of Faith. 

We are lacking in faith. The lack of faith either inhibits our prayers as we feel that we bring very little to the process, or we bring little to the process because we don’t necessarily believe in praying anyway. We must remember that the size of our faith only becomes an issue when we refuse to use the faith that we have. So, use the faith that you’ve got to increase the faith that you don’t have.

Unmet Expectations.  

We come to prayer with expectations regarding the outcome of our prayers. If those outcomes are not achieved, we feel that prayer is ineffectual or irrelevant. If it fails to generate our prescribed outcomes, we’re quick to label prayer as irrelevant or entirely powerless. Our assumptions rest in the belief that our expectations are the ones that are right for our situation, rather than being the one’s that we should explore in order to determine what might actually be right for us.

A Jaded Heart. 

We feel that God has not answered our prayers in the way that we wanted, or in the time frame that we wanted, or maybe He didn’t answer them at all. We have found God disappointing, demanding, less than generous, absent, or a God that crushes our desires despite how passionately we bring them to Him. We refuse to understand that God cannot fulfill many of our desires because it is the fulfilling that would do the crushing.  Therefore, we either refuse to pray any longer, or we do so in such a limited fashion that it can barely be defined as prayer.

The Lure of the World. 

The world is full of enticing things that have no depth and lack any substance whatsoever. And therein lies the absurdity of it all. We chase after that which we believe will do the things that we’re chasing them to do. And once we actually catch them (or in some cases realize that we can’t because nobody does), we’re struck with the reality that these things weren’t what they appeared to be, or they didn’t possess the resources that we had errantly endowed them with.   

 The Insurance Policy.

Is prayer some supplemental thing that we do out of guilt, or a sense of obligation, or to cover the holes that we might have left in our efforts to tidy up our lives? Is prayer that safety net that we keep in place just in case the world fails us, or we fail ourselves? Is prayer that supplemental insurance policy that we hold onto ‘just in case?’ Prayer is not insurance. Rather, it's the assurance that we won’t need insurance.

There are many things that create obstacles to our prayer. And we would be wise to thoughtfully inventory our lives and ferret out anything that would create and sustain any such obstacle regardless of what it might be.

You will find all of these outlined in my book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Rigorous Prayers for Life’s Greatest Challenges.” This book is a fresh, entirely relevant, and thoughtfully targeted thirty-day devotional that will bring the power of prayer to ‘life’ in your life. You will find “Taking It to Our Knees” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

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