Why Prayer Is So Hard (But Doesn’t Have To Be)

Often, prayer can be easy and comforting. Other times, prayer can feel like talking to a brick wall. Why is it that sometimes it's easier to pray than others? I'm answering that question in today's video and sharing how to overcome the challenges that can make praying harder than it needs to be. Enjoy!

Sometimes I will have these seasons where I just thoroughly enjoy praying, and honestly, this is most of the time because it is the one time during the day when I can just cast my cares on God and know that He hears me. I'm reminded that I'm not alone, and it's then that prayer brings much comfort, healing, and restoration to my soul, which is much of the purpose of prayer for us to connect with God, and to refill our souls with Him.

But if I'm honest with you, there are times when prayer isn't that easy, and it feels more like a struggle than a blessing. I wonder if you've ever experienced that before or maybe you're experiencing that right now in your own prayer life.

In today’s video, you will learn:

•  🙏🏾 5 reasons why you’re having such a hard time praying.
•  🏔️ How to overcome what’s really stopping you from praying.
•  ✨ How to ensure your prayer life is a blessing and not a burden.

You probably feel a lot of anxiety when talking to God, and hearing from Him feels challenging. So let’s chat about what’s stopping you from living your best prayer life. 

PRAYER IS A PRACTICE

Prayer is something that has to be learned. We aren't just born with this innate gift to pray, not most of us, and not me at least. It's something that we have to get used to doing. If you are new to the faith or you are new to the practice of prayer, it's not going to always be smooth, especially when you are just getting started. 

So first, we have to understand that prayer is a practice and this is why it's not always easy to do.

If you think about it, that goes for any practice that you try to learn or implement in your life. If you're just learning how to play basketball, you're not going to automatically know how to dribble. You’ll need someone to teach you how to do it, and then guess what you're going to have to do? You are going to have to practice. I love that in the book of Philippians, the apostle Paul tells the church in Philippi to instead of worrying to pray and then he tells them to pray about everything.  (Philippians 4:6) 

Then at the end of his letter to the Philippians, do you know what Paul says? In Philippians 4:9, he says:

All that he’s instructed the church to do, including prayer must be practiced. This means he didn't expect them to get everything right off of the first try. He's saying, I just want you to keep trying and keep practicing because that is how you get better.

Sometimes prayer is challenging just because we don't do it often. It's challenging because we're just getting started and I know that that can be so frustrating. I deal with this with my kids. Oftentimes, whenever they're learning something new, they just want to be experts at it from the beginning. They want to automatically know how to do something well, and I find myself constantly reminding them, listen, you are just learning this. You're going to make mistakes and that’s ok. It's going be challenging. There are going be some bumps in the road, and that's how this is supposed to go so that you can learn from those mistakes and then get better.

Your prayer life with God is going to be similar. It's going to take practice. It takes practice to know how to pray and how to hear from God. Practice isn’t easy, but it’s the only way to get better. So keep praying, no matter how messy or awkward those prayers feel. If you keep going, it will get easier along the way. 

WE DON’T LIKE SILENCE 

I've said many times, and I’ll say it again today because it’s true: prayer is simply our conversation with God. When we think of a conversation, we think of one person talking and then another person talking, and it's this continuous flow of back and forth dialogue.

But if there's a moment of silence where neither of you has anything to say, it can feel kind of awkward, can’t it? Sometimes we feel that same awkwardness in our prayer life with God when it feels like things are silent. In such a loud world, our difficulty with silence is the second reason we have a hard time praying. 

Honestly, the silence might just be a natural pause in the conversation to hold the moment and to remember the last thing that God spoke to you, but if you’re not comfortable with silence, prayer can become hard.

But silent moments or seasons don’t mean that God is not there. It doesn't mean that He doesn't hear you or your prayers aren't working. It's natural for God to sometimes feel silent or actually be silent in our prayer lives.

This is challenging for us, however, because we're not comfortable with silence as we let our minds run to untrue thoughts that God's mad at us, or not really there. Sometimes, we need that silence. 

In my interview with Patrice Burrell, she talked about practicing moments of silent prayer and the practice of sitting before the Lord in silence and not talking, and not necessarily expecting to hear anything, but just truly embracing and enjoying His presence.

We live in such a loud society. There is noise everywhere, and one thing that we don't often realize is that our souls desperately need moments of stillness and silence. I believe that’s why when we come to God to pray, we sometimes don't hear anything.

It's not because He's ignoring us; it's because He's giving our souls something that our souls rarely receive: the beauty of resting in silence and solitude. There's something about being still and silence that fills our souls like nothing else. However, when God calls us to moments of silence, we become afraid and so we might start talking, and moving, and making something up to do because we're uncomfortable, but we should really embrace those moments.

Think about Psalm 23 where the Psalmist says that the Lord leads him beside still waters to do what? To restore his soul. Prayer is hard because sometimes it feels uncomfortable, but it's in those uncomfortable moments where we need to rest in God's presence and know that He's in the process of restoring our souls. 

UNREPENTANT SIN IS HURTING YOUR PRAYER LIFE

Anything that hinders our relationship with God will make our prayer life that much more difficult and nothing hurts our connection to Him like sin.

Unrepentant sin will have an impact on our prayer lives. The good news is this is the reason God sent Jesus. To forgive our sins so that we can enjoy a flourishing relationship with God. Now we have the power to turn from our sin and approach the Lord with confidence. I want to note here that repentance is a process, and a gift not to condemn us and make us to feel bad, but it is a freeing practice that we can participate in when we pray to God to release our sin to Him, confess our sin, receive His forgiveness, and come to Him confidently.

WE DON’T EMBRACE OUR STATUS AS GOD’S CHILDREN

Christian author and theologian Timothy Keller once said this: “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.”

As children of God, we have access to God. We can talk to Him, we can ask Him for what we need, we can hear from Him, all though prayer. But if we don’t embrace our status as children of God, prayer will be difficult. We’ll feel like we’re inconveniencing God, or asking for too much. We’ll pray small prayers, instead of approaching God confidently. Hebrews 4:16 encourages us:

Not only do we have access to God, but we can approach Him confidently, boldly, always. Why? Because we are His children. 

THE ENEMY DOES NOT WANT YOU TO PRAY

This also means that as God’s children, His enemy is our enemy which is even more reason for us to pray. Prayer is a spiritual practice that gives us spiritual victory and the enemy knows that prayer is the way that we can defeat him. This is why Ephesians 6 warns us that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against forces in the heavenly or spiritual unseen realm. That battle will effect our prayer lives, because the enemy will strategically attack us in our prayer as a means to disarm our spiritual power. 

So we can trust that the enemy is going to attack our prayer. Whenever you think of any kind of battle between two enemies, one thing that your enemy is going to want to do is cut lines of communication with your allies because then you can’t call for help. The enemy of our souls thinks very much like this. If he can stop us from praying, he can cut off the source of our victory against him.

Maybe he's attacking you with distracting thoughts. Maybe you feel anxious when you start to pray. Maybe you start thinking about past mistakes and all these bad thoughts come into your mind or you just can't focus or you keep falling asleep. Whatever tactic the enemy is using, I want you to pray about that too. When you start to pray, say: “Lord, I feel like I'm under attack. Please clear my mind so that I can connect with you at this moment.” 

The Bible tells us to pray about everything, so we should pray about anything, even when it comes to how we pray to God. Pray about your prayer. 

Please believe this is something that God desperately wants to help us with. He wants us to pray to Him. He's opened the door for us to pray to Him, so He's surely going to help us in this area as well so that we can be victorious in all areas of our lives.

So when the enemy is discouraging you from praying, do the opposite and pray more. He expects you to quit. He will try to make prayer so complicated that you give up praying. Don’t. Keep going, keep trusting God, and keep praying without ceasing, and with all kinds of prayers, as the Bible tells us.

In fact, did you know there is more than one way to pray, and knowing the different prayer types can help you pray more powerfully? I invite you to watch this video where I share the 10 types of prayers God always hears. 

For more encouragement, download my free Bible Study called “Worry-Free” to learn the 3 lies feeding your worry and the truth to set you free at belovedwomen.org. Thanks for watching and until next time, be beautiful, be blessed, and beloved.