14 Ways to Sabotage Your Prayer Life

1. Pray only when you feel like it.  Disregard any fanatic ideas of praying “day and night” or “without ceasing.”
2. Try to impress God with pious prayer performances so that you can win max­imum spiritual credit.
3. Pray publicly with an eye to exhibiting your “spiritual maturity” for others to admire.
4. Let your prayers degenerate into mindless repetitions.  Re­cycle the same old phrases even when your mind is far away.
5. Imagine that it taxes God’s ability to meet your needs and respond in the best possible way to your prayers.
6. Convince yourself that God doesn’t really care about you and your silly little struggles and trials and tears anyhow.
7. Pretend that God doesn’t like to be bothered, and that he’s “put out” by your numerous cries and appeals.
8. View prayer as a way of putting God’s arm behind his back.
9. Demand instant results.  Dismiss the idea that God would have you persevere in prayer, or that your loving Heavenly Father might be free to answer, “No.”
10. Imagine that prayer won’t make any difference anyhow.
11. Shrink prayer by equating it with asking.  So bypass all that fluff (like praise, confession, thanksgiving) and go straight to the real thing:  your requests.
12. Reserve the worst hours of your day for prayer.  This way you can give to God what has the least value to you.
13. Think of prayer as doing God a favor.
14. Reduce prayer to a mental exercise, a sort of self-therapy to put the mind at ease, and in this way remove God from the picture entirely.  How about that, prayer without God!

Disaster in Japan

For images from Japan, see the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” galleries.

Here are a couple of very good options for contributing to disaster relief and the spread of Christ's love in Japan:

- Through SEND International

- Through Samaritan’s Purse

I appreciate the Prayer for Japan that John Piper recently posted:

Father in heaven, you are the absolute Sovereign over the shaking of the earth, the rising of the sea, and the raging of the waves. We tremble at your power and bow before your unsearchable judgments and inscrutable ways. We cover our faces and kiss your omnipotent hand. We fall helpless to the floor in prayer and feel how fragile the very ground is beneath our knees.

O God, we humble ourselves under your holy majesty and repent. In a moment—in the twinkling of an eye—we too could be swept away. We are not more deserving of firm ground than our fellowmen in Japan. We too are flesh. We have bodies and homes and cars and family and precious places. We know that if we were treated according to our sins, who could stand? All of it would be gone in a moment. So in this dark hour we turn against our sins, not against you.

And we cry for mercy for Japan. Mercy, Father. Not for what they or we deserve. But mercy.

Have you not encouraged us in this? Have we not heard a hundred times in your Word the riches of your kindness, forbearance, and patience? Do you not a thousand times withhold your judgments, leading your rebellious world toward repentance? Yes, Lord. For your ways are not our ways, and your thoughts are not our thoughts.

Grant, O God, that the wicked will forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Grant us, your sinful creatures, to return to you, that you may have compassion. For surely you will abundantly pardon. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus, your beloved Son, will be saved.

May every heart-breaking loss—millions upon millions of losses—be healed by the wounded hands of the risen Christ. You are not unacquainted with your creatures' pain. You did not spare your own Son, but gave him up for us all.

In Jesus you tasted loss. In Jesus you shared the overwhelming flood of our sorrows and suffering. In Jesus you are a sympathetic Priest in the midst of our pain.

Deal tenderly now, Father, with this fragile people. Woo them. Win them. Save them.

And may the floods they so much dread make blessings break upon their head.

O let them not judge you with feeble sense, but trust you for your grace. And so behind this providence, soon find a smiling face.

In Jesus’ merciful name, Amen.

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Imprecatory Psalms

In Psalm 69:22-28 David cries out to God in a prayer of “imprecation.” That means cursing or condemning: his appeal is that destruction would be brought upon those who are God’s and his enemies. “Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous” (69:28 ESV).

What do we do with such fierce verses? Are there people who, as enemies of God, should be the target of such prayers today? Here are three key Christian responses to the imprecatory Psalms:

Recognize that you deserve God’s righteous wrath. You and I are only spared justice and welcomed into God’s friendship by sheer mercy. We’ve sinned and snubbed God’s honor—regardless of whether our sins are glaring or more socially acceptable. Take no comfort in the idea that you’re “not that bad.” Fair compensation for our sin would be spiritual and eternal death (Rom 6:23).

Follow the biblical line of thought to that destination where the longing for justice points. That is, listen to your heart as it cries out for enemies of God and of his people to get what they deserve, and then see how he deals with that injustice. How does the Scripture story unfold so as to provide resolution for the guilty sinners? Answer: the cross. We’re “justified” (i.e., declared not guilty) through the death of Christ in our place (e.g., 2 Cor 5:21; Rom 3:24; 5:8). And this justification, this pardon for violations of God’s just and holy standards, is realized in any given person’s life not on the basis of deserving but as a gift, a gift to all who believe in Jesus—who entrust their lives forever into his care.

Then redirect your righteous rage against God’s enemies who insult and abuse and even murder Christians, and release it at the cross. That is, transfer your soul fury into prayer that injustices committed will be dealt with—fully and finally—in the way God has established in his New Covenant, the final chapter in his grand plot of conflict resolution. Refuse to cultivate hatred for enemies, but instead obey Jesus: “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28 ESV). In fact, if we harbor hate in our hearts, we’re saying that the cross was not sufficient to satisfy a just God! Don’t go there. Be content with his good plan for meting out justice in this world, and pray for the Lord’s life-changing hand to bring more and more sinners into his justifying grace.

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Prayer Is Hard

Prayer is difficult! Sound strange to say that? How hard is it just to talk to God—to tell him your concerns? You don’t have to yell or speak some fancy language or have lots of merit points to talk to God: just pray, talk (out loud, silently—or even “talk” with your posture, with your eyes, from the heart). Prayer is simple.

Okay, true enough. But acquiring and preserving the inclination to pray is hard. The longing and readiness to make time to be still before the Lord are easily destroyed. Why is this? There are several reasons.

First, Satan never opposes Christ-followers more than when we pray. After all, we’re no threat to his evil schemes on our own—that would be laughable, we’re like a fly to his bulldozer. But when we call out to the Almighty, Satan cringes. So if you mean to pray, be assured that Satan will come against you fully armed! Prayer is hard because prayer is war.

Second, prayer is hard because we’re proud. We want to be applauded as bright, successful achievers who can say, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” But prayer is that place where you fall flat on your face and see with painful clarity that your work is not what counts: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7).

Third, prayer is hard because we’re pragmatic. This outlook asks, “What works?”: we act, plan, organize; we live to check off the “to do” list. Pragmatists love visible, tangible, temporal effects—like numbers, dollars, bricks and mortar. But this fixation on human action and earthly results pushes soul-probing prayer down the list of priorities to a place where it shrivels up.

Fourth, distraction also ruins prayer—multi-tasking, busy-ness, frenzied lifestyles, the inability to quiet down and sit still. Our culture values maximum juggling of activities (email – work – text – shop – errands – study – clean – write – call…). Juggling is “in,” and yet how much can you really concentrate on each ball that’s in the air? But God says “Be still” (Ps 46:10). Jesus says, “Come and rest” (Mt 11:28-30). Are we willing to go against the current of a busy culture?

Fifth, we also find it hard to pray, of course, if we’re harboring sin in our hearts. Any time known sin is allowed to linger or (worse yet) is nurtured in our twisted hearts, we effectively put a lid on our own prayers. For example, God commands husbands to treat their wives with loving consideration “in order that your prayers may not be hindered” (1 Peter 3:7): sin torpedoes prayer. Failing to fight sin is an attitude—whether we admit this or not—that says we don’t take God seriously and we don’t really care to speak with him in prayer.

So, watch out for these spiritual land mines—they’re deadly!

But having said that, take heart: God invites and commands us to pray (Matt 7:7; 1 Thess 4:17), and he’ll help us. Remember, greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4). Draw near to him, and he’ll draw near to you (Jas 4:8). The Lord is at work among his people “to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). And he’s able to do far more than we ask or imagine for the sake of our spiritual progress and his greater glory (Eph 3:20-21)!

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Summer Struggles

Now that we’re into the thick of summer, I encourage you to be on the lookout for certain temptations that come with the season.

For one, there’s the unspoken but pervasive pressure to let your priority on church involvement slide due to summer’s special attrac­tions: away at the shore, on vacation, gone camping, off to see relatives, going to a game, etc. Of course, it’s good to get a break—we all need it. And it’s good to keep up with loved ones living far away. But a reasonable summer break can quickly morph into a vanishing act in which your church family hardly gets a glimpse of you. Don’t shrug off the church this season; the body needs you and you need the body all year round!

Another trap along the trail has to do with summer apparel. Are you prepared to glorify the Lord by dressing with modesty and discretion? Modesty may not always be the top fashion, but if you mean business about following Jesus, then there will be more important things than conforming to trends. People who want to grow deeper in trust toward Christ find it a great relief when those around them don’t make their bodies “exhibit A.” So ask God to search your heart (Ps 139:23-24): deep down, are you trying to catch other people’s attention through your summer style? And a related question (especially for guys): are you prepared to honor the Lord this summer in the way you use your eyes—and do you realize that “just looking” isn’t just looking (Matt 5:28)? Fix the eyes of your heart on Jesus (Heb 12:2) for true satisfaction!

A third summer threat is the tidal wave that can wipe out your devotional life. Predictable schedules in other seasons encourage consistency of spiritual practices (e.g., Bible reading, prayer, fasting, meditation): we’re creatures of habit, and that has its advantages. But summer rolls in and regular patterns are thrown to the wind as we dive into so much “enrichment.” I hope you have a very refreshing summer. But don’t lose your bearings: first things first. Plan ahead and build protected “space” into your schedule (including time for the family together) so your spiritual life can flourish. You can’t afford to put spiritual life on hold for a season!

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How To Sabotage Your Prayer Life

"My dear Wormwood," writes the senior demon in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, as he broaches "the painful subject of prayer.... The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether.... If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of his intention. Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him and toward themselves" (pp. 19-23).

In keeping with the model of Screwtape, allow me to offer fourteen ways to divert, distract, disconnect, and otherwise sabotage your prayer life:

1. Pray only when you feel like it. Disregard any biblical talk of praying "day and night" or "without ceasing."
2. Try to impress God with pious prayer performances to win maximum spiritual points.
3. Pray publicly in order to exhibit your "spiritual maturity" for others to admire.
4. Let your prayers degenerate into mindless repetitions. Recycle those same old phrases even when your mind is far away.
5. Imagine that it taxes God's abilities to meet your needs and respond in the best possible way to your prayers.
6. Convince yourself that God doesn't really care about you and your silly little struggles and trials and tears.
7. Pretend that God doesn't like to be bothered, and that he's "put out" by your numerous cries and appeals.
8. Think of prayer as a way of putting God's arm behind his back: prayer as leverage.
9. Demand instant results. Dismiss the idea that God would have you persevere in prayer.
10. Imagine that prayer won't make any difference anyhow.
11. Reduce prayer to and equate it with asking. So when you pray, bypass all that extraneous praise, confession, and thanksgiving and go straight to important stuff: requests.
12. Reserve the worst hours of your day for prayer. This way you can give to God what has the least value to you.
13. Think of prayer as doing God a favor.
14. Reduce prayer to a kind of mental exercise, a kind of self-therapy to put the mind at ease, and in this way remove God from the picture entirely. Imagine that, prayer without God!

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Inauguration and Religious Talk

I was impressed by the pomp and circumstance of last week’s presi­dential inauguration. And it really is quite remarkable how this transfer of power has come off peacefully for these 200+ years. There’s a lot to thank God for when it comes to our nation’s story.

There was a great deal of religious talk involved. Pastor Rick Warren, for example, delivered his much-anticipated invocation, and it was a God-focused, God-honoring prayer. He wasn’t shy about making his plea in Jesus’ name—in fact, by naming Jesus in four lang­uages he helped the world see that Christ isn’t some contrived Western deity but the life-transforming Savior and Commander-in-Chief over all that is.

By contrast, there was spiritual fog and confusion at Washington DC’s National Cathedral the next day—“The National Prayer Service,” involving Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and professing Christian leaders of Catholic, Ortho­dox, and Protestant backgrounds. This interfaith event featured “newly written prayers meant to emphasize liberty and diversity” in light of Obama’s embrace of religious liberalism (washingtonpost.com). Rev. Sharon Watkins gave the sermon, quoting “a wide range of religious leaders and traditions, from Ghandi to Islam to Cherokee Indians, urging the new president to remain focused on ethical and religious values such as common good, justice and compassion.”

But there’s an elephant in the room—do you see it?

It’s this: the Bible consistently testifies that Christian ethics and good deeds must be grounded in faith; right conduct is rooted in and results from conscious personal faith in Jesus Christ. The New Testament has stinging warnings for wandering churches that separate a regimen of deeds from dependence on the grace of God (e.g., Gal 1-2). Yes, true Christian faith leads to good works (Gal 5:6; Jas 2:14-26), but ethics and morals not springing from trust in the One who changed our hearts and set us free from guilt eternally amount to self-promotion if not self-justification. Further, good deeds that lack accompanying words of witness highlighting the supremacy of Christ, the only Savior (John 14:6; Acts 4:12), are woefully inadequate.

The frightful messages coming out of this event were that you can be a Christian without Christ, that ethical decency is the essence of Christian experience, and that all religions are basically variant paths to the same broad “common good” and the same beige god. All in all, a remarkable failure to represent Christ and Christianity faithfully.

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Praying God's Word

Since God is God and not our peer, and since God has spoken (i.e., revealed himself and his purposes in human language through his holy, inspired Word, the Bible), it would follow that we’d want to pray to God about the matters HE has already brought up. How foolish it would be for us to sit down in God’s presence and talk (i.e., pray), prattling on and on about our agenda and disregarding his (i.e., the Bible). This was my point last Sunday: we ought to prioritize “praying the Word,” taking what God says and turning it around in the form of prayers to him. We can do this in various ways. Let me mention two:

First, by echoing prayers recorded in the Bible. Jesus gave “The Lord’s Prayer” (Matt 6:9-13) as a model, but there are hundreds of other biblical examples too. Psalms consists mostly of prayers (praise, thanks, confes­sion, lament, longing…). Let these heart-cries become your own as you read and reflect on them. A few other biblical prayers are: Gen 32:9-12; Josh 7:6-9; 2 Sam 7:18-29; 1 Kgs 8:22-61; 1 Chr 17:16-27; 29:10-19; 2 Chr 20:5-12 (desperation); Ezra 9:6-15; Neh 1:4-11; 9:6-38; Job 42:1-6; Ps 51 (confession); Ps 67 (mission praise); Isa 37:16-20; Jer 32:16-25; Dan 9:3-19; John 17; Acts 4:24-31 (a knock-out praise); Eph 1:15-23; 3:14-21 (a lofty vision!). If you pray these texts, watch out!

Second, by turning every kind of Bible passage into prayer. Take promises for example: thank God for what’s promised; confess past failures to trust the promise; ask for help to rest in what’s promised. Or commands: confess failure to obey; plead for power to obey; ask for discernment how to obey (e.g., when to love your neighbor by saying yes and when by saying no). Or warnings: ask God to humble our hearts so we’d gladly heed his warnings (rather than being resistant); thank God for guarding us against some danger by giving the warning. Or stories: ask for wisdom to identify the main thrust of the story; then pray for power to obey what’s taught; give praise to our Great God for how he acts in the various biblical narratives (e.g., his prison rescues in Acts 5, 12, and 16!). Whatever the genre, let it catapult you to God in praise, confession, thanks, and petitions in related to his message!

What happens when we “pray the Word”? The Lord lifts us up from the earth-bound bog of anxieties and self-groveling, setting our sights on the majestic peak of his glory. Our prayers are enlarged, our faith is built up, our fellowship is enriched, and our hearts are moved with awe at God!

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Waiting for the Morning

We live in tumultuous times. Granted, a “Bubonic Plague” isn’t wiping out half our population; obviously, things could be worse. But the convergence of escalating campaign tensions, a “once in a century credit tsunami” (Greenspan’s expression), and the other life challenges we face can discourage and depress: this is a moment when our faith in Christ is on the stand. I urge you to find time today to let the life-giving, perspective-providing Word of God in Psalm 130 (NIV) speak to your soul [brackets indicate my comments]:

1) Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; [Let your weakness, fears and afflictions prompt you to turn to God and not just to stimulate greater self-motivation; “the depths” is a place of helplessness from which we need the Lord to lift us up. Can you admit to being there?]

2) O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. [Of course, calling for mercy means confessing sin—we’re not just down or downcast because of bad stuff “out there” coming at us, but also because of our own wayward, rebellious hearts.]

3) If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? 4) But with you there is forgive­ness; therefore you are feared. [Notice this absolutely crucial connection—really important: awareness of God’s mercy and forgiveness does NOT lead to an attitude on our part of taking sin lightly (“You can always confess later…”), but to an attitude of deep awe and reverence: God is “feared.”]

5) I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. 6) My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. [Faith involves waiting—yet waiting has no meaning if all is well, if all is easy, sunny and smiley. God builds all kinds of “waiting rooms” into our lives, and he does so for our good: waiting is just what the Great Physician has ordered for us. How do you handle life in the “waiting room”?]

7) O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. 8) He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. [Notice the adjectives describing the Lord’s love and redemption: they are “unfailing” and “full.” Notice the reach of God’s redeeming love: from “all” their sins. Amidst the tsunamis of today, with our minor crises and even some major calamities, let the strong, unshakable love of God calm your soul and undergird your faith!]

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Itching Ears

As the shadow of his martyrdom looms ahead, Paul the Apostle warns young Pastor Timothy: “The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Itching ears...

In a recent meeting with a study group, we read 2 Timothy 4:1-8 and asked, “What do our ears itch to hear?” We had a wide-ranging and sobering discussion that helped reveal our deep vulnerability to messages that “scratch where we itch.” Our ears long for:

FLATTERY. We want people to make much of us. Our ego yearns to be fed and pampered. Pride makes us susceptible to self-exalting, human-centered messages. We want to feel special and heroic and beautiful and important… And yet, this itch results in ignoring or forgetting about God—very dangerous!

ENTERTAINMENT. We long to be wowed, amazed, impressed; we want that “ooh-and-aah” and the emotional impact from top talent and great performers. There is a certain vicarious “high” we get from being in the audience of great entertainers. The problem is that many facets of the Bible’s message are not entertaining. Do we filter those out?

SILENCE ON SIN. We want to dodge the blunt confrontations of Scripture that shed light on our wickedness and rebellion against the Lord. Our devious hearts long to hear messages that make our sin seem small and our righteousness appear large. Warm-fuzzies scratch where we itch, but penetrating spiritual surgery with the ruthless-yet-redeeming Word of God’s love scares us.

GOSSIP. We want to hear how others have messed up—how foolish or careless or nasty or hypocritical or ignorant or geeky or ugly or incompetent those around us are. Them—not us (of course). Gossip’s twisted satisfaction takes joy in other’s flaws and failures—we get a warped ego boost from the feeling of superiority gossip generates.

Churches need to be on guard. The pressure on pastors to deliver messages that "scratch where people itch" is strong! Lay leaders need to stand with their pastors to call for and support faithful, balanced, honest biblical teaching and preaching. And we must all have the courage to deliver the truth without doctoring it or maneuvering it to please human listeners.

For this cause we need the Lord's help! Join me in praying that our desire in the church would be for God’s Word (4:2), and that this longing would overpower the itch for sinful messages. Pray as well that we’d embrace the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) and not just favorite verses. Pray for “ears to hear” God’s truth!

The Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God is an exciting yet very difficult topic. Difficult because the word “king­dom” has all kinds of distracting con­no­tations for us. First, we tend to think in spatial terms when we hear the word—a kingdom is a place, a territory. Second, the vast majority of today’s kings and queens are relatively impotent. By contrast, the New Testament envisions "kingdom" as dynamic, active kingship; it means the reign of God, the Lord in saving action. And further, the Bible’s conception of kingship involves serious authority (unlike that of figurehead royalty in many modern monarchies): if the king commands it, it is done. Period.

Yet it’s exciting, even exhilarating, when we realize God’s kingship is dynamic and powerful. When Jesus announces in Mark 1:15, “The time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news,” it means he’s taking over and we’re invited to join in his bold, life-changing, victorious cause! Caesar can haul out all the spears and chariots he wants to, but the King of Kings is launching a greater, deeper, bigger revolution to transform people’s lives from the inside out. As they say in Narnia, “Aslan is on the move.”

But remember, Jesus also teaches us to pray, “Thy kingdom come” (Matt 6:10). Even though God’s reign is dawning, the fullness of his royal power is restrained until the Last Day. God’s reign is “now but not yet”; the end of times has been inaugurated in Jesus’ first coming, but it will only be consummated with his second coming.

It’s like we live between D-Day and VE-Day: the decisive blow has been dealt to the Enemy and the outcome of the war is now clear (in WWII it became clear after D-Day that the Allies would win; in spiritual terms, the death and resurrec­tion of Christ confirmed ultimate victory). But battles rage on, and in this age the Enemy fights us fiercely—all the more so as he realizes, with fury, that his doom is sure.

So let’s join together, fighting with weapons of love, resting in our solid hope, and seeking the fullness of God’s reign by going about his business for our times to make disciples among all peoples (see Matt 24:14; 28:18-20; 2 Peter 3:8-9), in the joy and for the glory of the Lord!