Kendall the Fire

March 18, 2025

When I talk about the problem of prayer, I realize it’s a ME problem. I sometimes have a problem with prayer. I don’t always pray like I know I should. (Isn’t he the Chaplain and he has a prayer problem? Yes, and if I can admit it, maybe you can too.)  At times I struggle with the consistency of my prayer life. Sometimes it’s the frequency and/or the duration of my prayers.  Is there anybody out there who has ever fallen asleep while you were praying? Anybody who has suddenly found yourself thinking about your “to do” list instead? Anybody who has actually forgotten what it was that you were doing?  Praying is hard work.  But, it is also good work and it’s work we (you and me) should always endeavor to do.

Speaking about the struggles we may have in prayer, the distractions and dryness in our lives, C.S. Lewis once said: “The disquieting thing is not simply that we skimp and begrudge the duty of prayer. The really disquieting thing is that it should have to be numbered among duties at all. For we believe that we were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And if the few, the very few, minutes we now spend on interacting with God are a burden to us rather than a delight, what then?…if we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight.”

So, part of the remedy to the problem is simplicity. Personally, I have found that Life Church’s YouVersion is helpful to me. I’ve always got my phone around and there are many studies and prayer guides that assist me in staying on track with prayer. But, there are many different aids to our prayer lives and I encourage you to find what works for you.

Even so, I think the most important way to address the problem of prayer is to take seriously the pattern of our prayers. So often when we think of prayers our minds go to prayers that we have memorized… The Lord’s Prayer, a bedtime prayer or a meal blessing. A few days ago my son (he’s grown now) was telling a story about going to dinner with some friends. When the opportunity came to offer a blessing for the food, my son and some of those he was closer to in the group began to recite this somewhat humorous, but also very sweet prayer:

“We love our bread, we love our butter… but most of all we love each other! Amen.”

A young woman who was new to the group then added, “and now we will have a real prayer,” and she proceeded to bless the food in a way she felt was proper. That story made me realize that that it’s not whether our prayers are memorized phrases or spontaneous utterances, it is whether or not they are sincere. You and I can pray the Lord’s Prayer passionately and sincerely. Or, we can recite it in purely a ritualistic way without giving the meaning a second thought. Either way, God knows our heart.

When we talk about the patterns of our prayers, what we really need to focus on our attitudes. I’m talking about cultivating an attitude of prayer. You see, prayer isn’t just something you do, it’s a modality you adopt. To put it another way, it is a mode of operation you embrace for living your life—moment by moment. It’s a way of “being.” This is what the Apostle Paul is talking about in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 nrsv when he writes:

¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.  The NLT says, “never stop praying.”

The Bible obviously doesn’t mean with should be praying out loud verbal prayers at every moment of the day. No. But, it means that we maintain a running dialogue with the Holy Spirit all throughout the day. It’s what it means to walk in step with the Lord.

The Greek words ἀδιαλείπτως προσεύχεσθε , literally means “without intermission, pray!”  In other words, we should be mingling spontaneous prayers with all the other actions of our lives.

Again, listen to the thoughts of C.S. Lewis on prayer: “Much of prayer is really a disposition of heart that is in tune with God’s presence in one’s life, so that the more our hearts are in tune with and obedient toward God, the less fuss do we need to make about how vocal and articulate we are in ‘saying our prayers.’ This is provided, of course, that we do not succumb to merely having ‘warm feelings’ or vaguely imaginative thoughts that we mistake for real communion with God.”

In Luke Chapter 11 Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees for not performing the ceremonial washing before a meal. (“Washing” was accompanied by the traditional prayers for cleansing and for blessing of the food.)

For Jesus, walking in step with—and remaining in communion with—the Heavenly Father was way more important than a ritual act and some memorized prayer before eating. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”

Here is how Billy Graham explained it: “God hears our prayers on all occasions, whether we’re praying out loud or praying silently in our hearts and minds. After all, He knows all about us and knows what is going on inside us—both good and bad. The Bible says that God sees ‘our innermost thoughts and desires’ (Hebrews 4:12).

God even hears our prayers when we can’t even put them into words—times, for example, when our hearts are too burdened or confused even to speak. The Bible says, ‘the Spirit helps us in our weakness…” So, as we can see, prayer isn’t a boring activity that we reserve for a fraction of our day… it’s a dynamic ongoing two-way conversation we have with the Lord. To me, that not only sounds more doable, it also sounds more like something I would want to do.

This is the pattern we should pursue in our prayer lives. When we do, we will finally stop viewing prayer as a problem and start seeing it as the sublime blessing that it is.