The Principles of Prayer LI

 Luke 18:1-8, “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying: ‘There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying, ‘Get justice for me from my adversary.’ And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’ Then the Lord said, ‘Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?”’

I have yet to find a verse in the entirety of Scripture wherein God encouraged His children to pray less or spend less time in His presence. God is not a bored faux-friend who can’t wait for you to say your goodbyes and leave so they can get back to their lives, or some disinterested therapist who sits and nods for an hour knowing they’re getting paid to be there and it’s the only reason they’re sitting through the story of one’s perceived childhood trauma about that one time when they wanted chocolate ice cream but all the place had left was vanilla.

There has never been one instance in the history of mankind when God looked down upon one of His servants and admonished them for being too single minded in their pursuit of Him, or insisting they should find a hobby to take up some of their time because they were just too present, and too focused on their prayer life and spiritual growth.

God is ever willing, even eager, for His children to approach Him, fellowship with Him, spend time in His presence, and have dialogue with Him, and in this case, moderation is not the best course of action. The more we pray, the better it is for our spiritual man, our spiritual growth, and our spiritual walk.

The more we pray, the clearer we hear His voice, and the quicker we are to discern the voices of others pretending to be Him.

When we begin to weigh every element of prayer on its own, we realize they are equally indispensable if the desire of the heart is to know more of God, feel more of God, and be ever more in His presence. Whether discussing frequency, length, focus, distractions, or the absence thereof, these all come together to form effective prayers that do more than just echo off the walls, but that reach the heart of God and to which He responds in kind.

That there will be roadblocks on the path toward a robust, fruitful, engaging, and effective prayer life is a given. It’s something to be expected, if not something to be looked forward to. Perhaps it’s just the way I’m built, but every time I feel resistance in my attempt to spend time with God, I press in all the more and make it my singular priority and focus for the day until it is accomplished.

If we allow the enemy to keep us from God’s presence once, be certain he will try to use the same situation, circumstance, emergency, chore, or individual to do it again and again. The devil is a proponent of the idea that if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it, and if he can find that one thing that will get us off our knees, out of our prayer closet, and back to the chaos of everyday life, that one thing will become so commonplace as to be mathematically improbable.

How many times can you change the battery in your smoke detector only to have it start beeping five or ten minutes into your prayer time? It happened to me a couple of weeks before we left for Romania. After the second go round of incessant chirping, I even lowered myself to reading the instruction manual. Yes, I made sure it was a fresh battery, yes, I made sure it was properly secured, but even so, when the house was empty and I was getting into that place of solitude with God, it would start up again, breaking my concentration, distracting me, and snapping me out of that mindset of worship.

The third time it happened, I took the battery out altogether, laid the detector on the floor, and proceeded to have my alone time with God. Once I was done, I put the battery back in its housing, reattached the detector to the ceiling, and wouldn’t you know it, not a chirp since.

Identify your distraction, and insulate yourself from it. If you know it to be your phone, and the constant rings and dings that inform you of a new message, request, or e-mail, turn it off for the time you spend with God. If it’s your dog, suddenly getting antsy and scratching at the door to be let out, put it outside for the time you’ve allotted to be in God’s presence. If it’s the children being children calling your name every fifteen seconds, wait until they’re off to school, or have gone to the park.

The purpose of the distraction is to keep you from being in fellowship with God. It’s to keep your prayers from going beyond mere words to something deeper and more profound. It’s not that the devil is jealous of the time you spend with God; it’s that he knows the more time you spend with God, the less effective his plots, schemes, temptations, and devices will be. It’s not because he wants to be your friend instead of God; it’s that he knows the more time you spend in God’s presence, the stronger you become, and that’s not something he wants to see. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.