Why Is It So Hard to Pray?

It’s hard to pray because we have to humble ourselves,

It’s hard to pray because we have to get over ourselves,

It’s hard to pray because coming to the end of our
stubborn & sinful selves is hard.

When we pray, we die to self & death hurts.
That’s why our flesh fights so hard against prayer.

When we pray, we are entering into real warfare against our flesh

When we pray we ask God to send His Angels against the flaming
arrows of all our accusers.

When we pray we ask God to defeat the demonic influences that
are motivating lying attackers.

Although accusers are not afraid of us, they are terrified of the One within us

They fear the one who is for us & they despise that we are praying to the One
who has crushed them & will destroy them.

It is hard to pray because our focus is too often on praying itself & not on God.

We learn about prayer not so that we might know a lot of facts about prayer,
but so that we might pray with our focus on God.

By His sovereign grace, we know Him & we know He is there & that He not only
hears but listens

We know He is not silent but that He always answers our prayers & always acts
in accord with His perfect will for our ultimate good & for His glory.

When we recognize God’s sovereignty in prayer, we are also reminded of His love.

We see Our Lords grace, holiness & righteousness,

We are confronted with the harsh reality of our own wretched sin in the light of
His glory & grace.

We will always to some degree in our lives find it difficult to pray, but, we must always pray.

We don’t actually believe in the power of prayer—
We believe in the power of God, and that is why we pray.

So, when we pray, we are reminded of who we’re not—

We’re reminded that we’re not God & that we’re not in control.

We’re reminded that God is sovereign & in control & so we must recognize that prayer
is our daily & continual surrender of our perceived control over our lives to the One
who has control of our lives & circumstances & cares about them more than we do.

If we think for a second that our feeble prayers changed God’s mind & His perfect will,
We would stop praying altogether.

We’re sinful.

We don’t know everything,

We can’t control anything.

But God is omniscient & omnipotent

He has our ultimate good & His glory in mind & we can trust Him.

Sometimes, God’s answer to our prayer is “no,”

Sometimes “wait,”

Sometimes “yes,”

Sometimes “yes & it’s way beyond what we could even imagine.”

We will always to some degree in our lives find it difficult to pray, but, we must always pray.

We must also pray for God to help us pray,

Treating prayer not like a grocery list but more like a letter of love,

We don’t simply talk to God but we commune with our closest & most loving companion.

Adapted from Burk Parsons