Barriers to Prayer

As Philippians 4:6 reminds us, we should be praying to God. Rather than worrying or procrastinating, and with thanksgiving on our heart (thus being positively expectant of good responses), we should let our requests be made known to God. But is it always as easy as this?

Introductory Questions

What gets in the way of your praying?

Why is your prayer life (at times) unsatisfying or seemingly ineffective?

Why do we find it so hard to pray?

Why do we lose interest so quickly?

Why does prayer sometimes seem pointless?

Might there be barriers, possibly of our own making, that are disrupting our prayer??

Our prayer life could be compared to our car – if all the parts (that make up the car) are not in good working order (and if they haven’t been serviced recently), then when we turn on the engine and press the accelerator and try to take off ... we just won’t get the result we want!

Barriers

(1)    Inadequate Faith

To get the most out of prayer, we have to believe that God not only hears our prayers, but that God also can act in response to our prayers. We read in Acts 12, that even though the church community were praying fervently to God for Peter, when Peter arrived at their front door, they found it very difficult to believe that Peter had been enabled to escape. While God still honoured their commitment to pray, there remains the lesson about our level of expectation. If we don’t have high expectations concerning the outcome of our prayers, then it is less likely that we will pray, and also less likely that we will stick with the task of praying.

What do we do about inadequate faith? We should continually remind ourselves about how God has been faithful to us and to others in the past. We should listen to the witness of the Scriptures about how God has positively and creatively interacted with humanity. We can read books and hear stories about God’s remarkable activity within lives and communities. And we can be courageous, leave our comfort zones, and follow God’s leading into new areas of service or ministry or witness; finding God to be with us always just as it was promised.

Another aspect of ‘inadequate faith’ would be the very passive prayer, where we expect God to do everything, and we are not prepared to even dip a toe in the water. Often God’s answer to our prayer can only come as we get on the move, and find that place where God is already active and working. There are certain times where God expects us to not just be pray-ers, but also to be actively part of the solution. This might include those little character adjustments, where we need to take some simple steps forward.

(2)    “Unanswered” Prayer

Many of us can be dissuaded from engaging in prayer because of a sense of previous prayers having gone unanswered. However, in the cold light of day, we may come to realise that our prayers were indeed answered, just in a different way to what we expected, and more to the point, in a different way to what we wanted. The “no” that was actually for our own good and the good of others, was God’s answer, in preference to the “yes” which would have led us down the wrong track. Other answers are still emerging over time ... it’s just that we’ve lost patience. Some positive responses from God are right there to see and embrace, it’s just that they look so much different than we imagined – and we could be simply just looking in the wrong place.

One of the biggest unanswered prayers in history, or so it seemed, was the people of Israel’s call for a Messiah – one that would liberate them from their oppression. The reality is that God answered in the most effective and remarkable of ways by sending Jesus, who not only could liberate one people group but all people groups. This would just require a new way of looking at life, and seeing that the evil that causes oppression comes from deep within, and that it’s what abides within a person that needs to be dealt with if the world is going to be truly set to rights.

Sometimes it can be the resolute refusal of other people to cooperate with good and Godly purposes that can block God’s best work for a time. Sometimes there is just the plain reality that our living environment on earth is subject to all sorts of instability, various diseases, poor human decision-making, and wicked violence – all leading to tragic outcomes. Sometimes we can be overly fixated on relatively small matters while God has to attend to the very biggest of pictures (only really known to God). This reminds us that part of faith is to continue to trust God through times of uncertainty, pain, confusion and disappointment.

(3)    Prayerlessness

Often prayer also takes a back seat when we cannot seem to be still enough for long enough. I think this is the problem that Jesus detected in Martha (Luke 10:38-42). It was not wrong for Martha to be busy in providing hospitality for Jesus and the others, but Jesus had detected that this was something that was so habitual for Martha, that she was in great danger of missing the special moments in life – like taking the opportunity of sitting at Jesus’ feet and enjoying his visit and listening intently to what he had to say (exactly what Martha’s sister Mary did).

Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing”. Then if Luke’s readers read on into chapter 11, they will find out more about that one thing! I, for one, have had to learn to think less about my ever-present ‘to-do list’, and more about what God might want to teach me, or how God might want to lead me through a particular day.

In James chapter 4 and verse 2 we read, “You do not have, because you do not ask”. Rather than allowing feelings of despondency to build unhealthily, and rather than continuing to feel bereft of what we need, we should make the time to take the most appropriate course of action – to bring the matter before God in prayer.

(4)    Unconfessed Sin

God wants to forgive us when we sin. Yet God does want us first to reflect and be regretful and sincerely repent (i.e. change our ways). This is called confession – it’s getting something off our chest so that it doesn’t affect us anymore. Confession changes a negative dynamic into a positive release. However non-confession refuses God’s offer of forgiveness, and thus tends toward inhibiting our relationship with God. Isaiah captured this dynamic perfectly when he wrote:

See, the Lord’s hand is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.

Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, 
And your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear (59:1-2).

So, our prayer-life would continue to struggle while we turn a blind eye to our shortcomings or don’t take any remedial action against our bad behaviour. It would be somewhat presumptuous of us to expect answers while knowingly tolerating or ignoring our sinfulness.

The guilt and sometimes shame that we carry can be so very destructive, as we let it hang over us and bear down upon us. This is why James uses such strong and urgent language (in chapter 4) about dealing with any sinfulness – “Cleanse your hands ... purify your hearts (thus encompassing both the outer and inner life); then ... lament, mourn and weep” (v.8-9).

(5)    Relational Conflict

God considers the quality of our relationships with other people to be highly important. Our love for our neighbour shows the integrity and sincerity of our love for God. There is little point praying for certain good outcomes, while we are perverting God’s Kingdom by acting harshly or selfishly toward others. Paul in Romans wrote:

If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all (12:18).

Included here would be our spouses, family members, friends, work colleagues, neighbours, all the people at church; then I’ll take this further to all the people who could potentially be a part of our church community, and even the whole retail, trade and service industries. We can’t control how other people speak or act; but we can control how we respond, and remain responsible for the words we use and the actions we take on all occasions.

Where conflict arises, as much as we can, we should seek restoration and reconciliation. How can we properly look toward God seeking the best for ourselves, while holding ill-feelings toward others! Such efforts toward restoration may take some effort and extended time, but this is what God requires of us. As long as we are doing the best we can in this area, God will not only hear our prayers, but certainly also aid this reconciliation process.

The worst soul-destroying emotion is bitterness – this eats you up inside, and starts to pervert all your relationships. We have to work on such areas as blaming others and holding grudges through seeking new understanding and applying forgiveness. We read in the ‘Lord’s prayer’ how our forgiveness is dependent on our willingness to forgive others (Matthew 6:12). God wants to connect with that other person (who has previously offended us) just as much as he wants to heal our particular hurts.

One rider here – even Paul concedes in the earlier verse from Romans that it may not be possible to find peace with certain others – this has been seen in the area of repeated abuse. Sometimes we will need to separate ourselves from someone for our own protection as they have proven unwilling to change.

(6)    Uncaring Attitudes

In the same way as for relational conflict, we shouldn’t expect much success with prayer while we persist with attitudes that have not become conformed to the Jesus way of compassion and care. If we don’t really care about the plight of others, especially the least fortunate, then prayers focussed on our needs and agendas would seem rather thoughtless, even arrogant. Proverbs 21:13 reads:

If you close your ear to the cry of the poor, you will cry out and not be heard.

It is hypocrisy to cry out to God for our own needs, while at the same time ignoring the needs of another ... need (that even in a small way) we could personally do something about. We should also be moved with concern when there are large-scale international tragedies. This is about embracing feelings of human solidarity – when one person is hurting, the whole human community hurts with them. This is also about accepting that all human beings have been created in the image of God. In the face of all the injustice, cruelty, violence and greed that exists, wanting God to do all the work in the world, while we prefer to remain passive, places ‘blockades’ around our prayers.

We have to note that it is often very tiresome coping with and helping other people, especially those people who seem so very needy. However ‘compassion fatigue’ is something we should never give in to!

(7)    Resistance to Change

This would be resistance to change both on a personal and societal level. We understand the way Jesus wants us to live, and the way the Kingdom of God operates, but we are just not willing, for whatever reason, to adopt the appropriate decision-making and new behaviour patterns. The most common reason we resist, is because we are actually comfortable with the way we are – the status-quo has served me well – and we don’t want the boat we are sailing in to be rocked. Such a person will pray, but, being set in their ways, will then go on to act as if they hadn’t prayed at all.

In James chapter 1, we read about a person who is “double-minded” ... a person who is in ‘two minds’ – this double-minded person, “must not expect to receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:8). A “double-minded” person is quite keen on the notion of belief or faith, and the benefits that this might bring to them; but is unwilling to make this faith central in their lives, allowing other agendas and priorities to be in that central place.

This often plays out as follows (the first part we speak, and the second part we just think):

Ø  Dear God, I would like to be more like Jesus, but not if that means ...

Ø  Dear God, I would like to get to know Frank better, but don’t let him discover too much about me

Ø  Dear God, please bring more people to church, but not Fred or Joan and definitely not anyone who is going to be difficult

Ø  Dear God, I would like to get more involved, but not if it’s going to take up too much of my spare time.

Also, we can tend toward putting conditions on our willingness to follow God’s leading:

Ø  Dear God, I will go there, as long as this won’t happen

Ø  Dear God, I am prepared to do that, as long as you do this for me.

This is all a far cry from the model prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10)! James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures”.

Now is the Time to Pray

So, indeed, let us pray!!!

Now that we have prayed, we can experience the peace of God which surpasses all understanding (Phil.4:7). This peace will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. We know that no matter how God answers our prayers and however long this takes to become apparent, we are safe in the knowledge that the risen Jesus walks with us and the Holy Spirit surrounds us – we are under God’s protective custody! Our needs may still be there in the short-term, but now they do not have the same capacity to make us anxious. Thanks be to God!