We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results.
R. A. Torrey

With this discussion today, we will begin a study on prayer. Together, we will explore why prayer is so difficult and what we can do to make it easier. WE will discuss how and why we pray. We will discuss how God works in prayer. And, hopefully, each of us will emerge from the study renewed in our zeal to come to God in prayer so that he might change us and make us into the image of Jesus.

Robert Murray Mccheyne said, "What a man is on his knees before God, that he is – no more, no less." If this is so, then many of us are humbled because of what we are. For most Christians in modern times, prayer is a struggle with no end.

Prayer is perhaps the most commonly lamented part of the Christian walk. All of us have probably confessed struggle in prayer at some time or another. Yet, nothing is more vital or fundamental to our walk with Christ than our prayer life. Perhaps these two facts – the frustration of prayer and the necessity of prayer – explain why it is the topic of more books, lessons and sermons that practically any other issue in Christian life.

What is prayer? It is, of course, many things. It is supplication. It is praise. It is thanksgiving. It is confession. But, in all of these ways, prayer is one thing and one thing only: it is conversation with God. Prayer is that one way in which you and I can still today communicate with God. We speak, he listens. He speaks, we listen. WE seek direction. He gives guidance. We confess our sins. He gives forgiveness. We speak our anger. He soothes our pain. Prayer is our way of relating to God – it is our way of deepening our friendship with God.

When we look to the first conversations in history, they are the conversations of man with God. When Adam first walked the earth, he did so in relationship to God. His every word was prayer to God. They walked side by side. And since Adam’s sin, the faithful, through prayer, have sought to restore that close walk with God – to know Him as immediately present and ever close. To know that when the sky is dark, He is there. To know when friends forget and enemies draw near, God is as close as our next breath. This closeness to God – this constant communion in our daily walk with God comes through our prayer life.

So why is prayer so difficult? Has God withdrawn Himself in our day? Does He no longer wish to commune and converse with His children? Or is it that we are the problem? Is it that somewhere in our lives we have developed habits, ideas, and beliefs about God, ourselves and prayer that restrict us – confine us and condemn us to limited, weak and ineffectual prayer lives? You’ll have to answer that question for yourself, but I feel quite confident when I say that God has not changed – and, so, the problem must lie with me.

So what is it that keeps me from praying as I should? What attitude or belief or behavior prevents me from being the kind of prayerful person I need to be?

The greatest battle we face in our discipleship is the battle with self. It is the battle to subdue our selfishness to God – to submit ourselves to His will rather than our own. C. S. Lewis once said that there are two choices in life: We may say to God, "Thy will be done" or God will say to us "Thy will be done". If we submit to God, heaven is our reward. If we demand God let us have our way, hell is our destiny.

Since prayer is a direct reflection of our relationship with God, then prayer cannot exist without humility because God cannot have His way with the prideful. Humility is the fundamental requirement of discipleship – and, as such, is the primary requirement of prayer.

We’re going to spend a few moments discussing the ways a lack of humility inhibits our prayer life.

First, think about what being a person of prayer means. Being a person of prayer means that you believe in something greater than yourself. Kneeling in prayer is an admission that there is something you can’t do – something you have to turn to another for help with. Now we as Christians may not find that statement troublesome. But if we look closer, perhaps even some of us within the household of faith may have to admit that we don’t like the implications of this fact.

The truth is, many Christians are practical atheists. By that, I mean that many people who are baptized believers in Jesus Christ live their everyday lives – perhaps good, moral lives – without a single thought of God or His will our how their actions and thoughts and words may or may not be glorifying to God. A lack of humility leads to self-reliance. A self-reliant person cannot submit to God for help or direction. A self-reliant person cannot grow in prayer.

To become great prayers we must come to God not as people who have answers and plans, but as people who are reliant upon Him for answers and guidance. We must come in weakness and lostness – turning to Him for our strength and salvation.

The proper attitude in prayer is that everything we do is empowered by God – this is what Paul meant when he encouraged us to "pray without ceasing". Many of us reserve our prayers for the "big things" in life – when people are sick or have had a loved one die or have suffered a great catastrophe. But a right understanding of prayer and a right understanding of what God wants to do in our lives and what we need Him to do results in the attitude

A woman asked G. Campbell Morgan, "Do you think we ought to pray about even the little things in life?" Dr. Morgan, in his typically understated British manner, replied, "Madam, can you think of anything in your life that is big to God?"

As long as we live as though prayer were an afterthought – as though prayer were an act we do to please God rather than a deep need on our part – we will be losing the battle to have a deepened prayer life.

A lack of humility leads us to seek after accomplishment. A lack of humility drives us to busyness.

One of the things you’ll hear me discuss often in my lessons is busyness. The reason is twofold: (1) busyness is a plague of epidemic proportions in our society, and (2) I am in constant struggle myself to overcome busyness in my own life – I find my own relationship with God and the church and my family put at risk by my own tendency to allow myself to become too busy.

Carl Jung once said, "Busyness is not of the devil, busyness is the devil." While that’s probably an overstatement, there is strong truth in it. We cannot build a prayer life with God if we are too busy to pray.

Prayer is conversation with God. How many of us would expect our marriages or our friendships to grow if we didn’t take time to develop them? How much time do you spend with your wife? Your children? Your fishing buddies? All of these relationships grow because we devote time to them. Our relationship with God is no different. We must slow down so that we can grow closer to God. We must devote time to prayer.

Some early Christians described busyness as "moral laziness". It’s just easier to flit through life in a flurry of activities and obligations and duties than it is take time to grow into the important things in life – relationships with others; service to God. Have you noticed that in our society, we determine what we think about people by what they do? When we meet someone we often ask "What do you do?" – the real question is "who are you?" "what are you about?" "what do you believe?". But we are transfixed by what people do – because our society worships at the alter of busyness.

When you read through the Bible, look for the word "achievement". You’ll find that it’s not mentioned. The very thing that our entire world is caught up in dwelling on is absent from the Word of God. Whether we are pushing our children to get high-paying jobs or pushing ourselves to have bigger houses, nicer clothes, or fancier cars, we seek achievement.

Yet the way of Christ is not the way of achievement, it is the way of service. The way of the prayerful life is not the way of

Martin Luther once said that he had so much to do he had to spend at least several hours in prayer in order to accomplish his goals. We must come to see prayer as the path to achieving what God wants us to achieve in life – rather than believing by filling our days with activities and busyness we will somehow become what God wants us to be.

E. M. bounds once said "Prayer honors God; it dishonors self." A lack of humility not only causes us to rely on ourselves and to be busy, but a lack of humility drives us to take pride in what we have done. Satan’s greatest weapon is to get us to turn to ourselves and to convince us that we are good on our own and apart from God.

Prayer requires us to be honest with ourselves. Real prayer is from the heart – and prayer from the heart has to confess its unworthiness – our sinfulness and weakness and failure. Such admissions are difficult in a prideful person. We want to believe we are good and right and strong – when, in our heart of hearts, we know that we are weak and sinful. Real prayer requires us to admit our need – pride requires us to declare our self-sufficiency. Real prayer looks inward and faces our helplessness. Pride requires us to look sideways and compare ourselves to those around us. Such comparison is the beginning of pride. Remember the parable of Jesus – the tax collector and the Pharisee? The tax collector looked inward at his own unworthiness. The Pharisee looked sidewise at the sinfulness of his fellow man.

Humility is at the heart of Christ. Paul’s great passage in Philippians 2 tells us of Jesus’ humility – and tells us that this is the mind which we should have.

Self-reliance, busyness and pride are all the results of a lack of humility – and are all the enemies of prayer. Until we can confess our need for God, and stop running from God in busyness, and commit ourselves to the "constant forgetfulness of our own achievements", we will find prayer a struggle. But if with God’s help we can learn humility, prayer will open up God’s power to us.

In our next lesson, we will discuss three misconceptions about prayer that many of us unwittingly fall into believing that further isolate us from effective prayer.

I hope that each of you will commit yourself to prayer. Martin Luther once said, "faith is simply prayer". Prayer is at the heart of our relationship with God. Seek Him out. Test Him in prayer. Lean on Him. Trust Him in prayer.