Here are five destructive habits that keep you from prayer.
These are the things that many believers do that cause them to become inconsistent in prayer.
Number one, living a distracted life in Matthew chapter six verse six, Jesus says, but you, when you pray, go into your room and when you have shut your door, pray to your father who is in the secret place and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
One of the reasons that Jesus told us to go to the secret place is to help remove distraction from our lives.
All too often. We exchange the heavenly for the earthly, the spiritual for the secular God wants to give us encounters in his presence.
God wants to speak to us. What do we do instead?
We trade what he wants to give us for what the world wants to give us.
We trade his voice for more time scrolling down the social media feed.
We’d rather hear what’s on youtube than what’s coming from heaven.
And because of the pace of life in this generation, we think that everything comes on demand at our convenience, right?
When we want it and because we think that way, we imagine that the same applies to God.
But we have to remember, he is the Lord. We are the servants.
We must learn to honor the Lord’s presence with our time.
We must learn to honor the Lord’s presence with our attention and attention is a form of worship.
We must learn to carve out times in the day where we become attentive to his voice.
We cannot live so fast paced that we never give a moment’s pause in which the Holy Spirit can speak to us.
If that’s your prayer. If you want the Lord to help you to focus in prayer, if you want distraction to be removed from you, that you might give Him the proper amount of attention and write this in the comment section right now.
Let it be your public prayer. Help me focus, write those three simple words.
Number two, letting guilt convince you to not pray all too often.
Believers approach God wondering if he even wants to hear from them because of the sins of the past because of the mistakes they made beforehand.
Some believers believe that God is angry with them or they imagine that God loves them, but he doesn’t like them.
They imagine that his patience is like a thin thread that’s just about to snap and that they’re right on the verge of having God removed from their lives and that he’s gonna take the Holy Spirit with Him but here’s what the Bible says in Hebrews chapter nine verses 13 and 14.
Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity.
Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God for by the power of the eternal spirit.
Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.
Now, look here in verse 14, let’s look at this again.
Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds. He purifies the conscience.
Why so that we can worship the living God? You cannot approach God properly with a dirty conscience.
This is why it’s so important that we embrace repentance and then the forgiveness of God because the enemy acts as the accuser.
The moment you go to pray, the moment you begin to seek the face of the Lord, the enemy comes and begins to accuse you of things you’ve done in your past.
He begins to accuse you of the mistakes that you’ve made and using your mistakes against you.
He tries to convince you that God doesn’t want to hear from you.
He tries to convince you that you’re the one exception that cannot be forgiven and that heaven is shut to you.
He tries to convince you that you’re not worthy to ask for forgiveness that you’re not worthy to approach your heavenly Father.
Now, there may be some truth in that, but we have to remember that the blood of Jesus applies to even those who knew better.
Let me say that again, the blood of Jesus applies to even those who knew better.
So first John chapter one verse nine tells us if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
He’s faithful in that he does it consistently.
He’s just in that he does it based upon the sacrifice that Christ made to you, stop allowing the assault of the enemy, which is accusation to prevent you from prayer.
How much time could you save yourself? How much heartache could you save yourself in prayer?
If instead of wondering if God has forgiven you, if instead of begging God to forgive you, you simply embrace the fact that He already has and therefore you’re free to move into the depths of prayer unhindered by your past number three, overthinking your prayer time.
In Psalm chapter 51 verse 17, the Bible says, the sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
You will not reject the broken and repentant heart. Oh God. So the Lord is looking at the heart.
We see another example of this in First Samuel chapter 16 verse seven.
But the Lord said to Samuel, don’t judge by his appearance or height for I have rejected him.
The Lord doesn’t see the way you see them people judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
You may approach prayer and have a list in your mind. You may wonder, when do I do spiritual warfare?
When do I intercede for my lost loved ones? When do I pray in tongues?
When do I present my request to God? When do I worship?
And maybe you’re trying to apply everything that you’ve learned about prayer.
Maybe you’re trying to apply what you’ve read in the scripture or what you’ve read in books.
Maybe you’re trying to outline your prayer life so that you can be most effective.
But this isn’t the way to approach God at all. God doesn’t respond to systems. He responds to sincerity.
Imagine if I were to take my wife out on a date and tell her, ok, we’re gonna go to dinner and we’re going to be there for an hour and a half and for the first half hour, let’s talk about when we first began to date and then the second half hour, let’s talk about how we love parenting our daughter.
And then the final half hour, let’s talk about our future.
And specifically, let’s talk about any future place we might want to live.
If I outlined our dates like that, Jess wouldn’t really enjoy herself. Why?
Because that would be a system thematic approach to a relationship when you go to pray.
If you’re so distracted by how you ought to pray, then you’re missing the whole point of prayer, especially for over thinkers, this might be difficult to overcome because many times we have sincere and good intentions.
We want to please God. We don’t want to make him angry.
We don’t want him to be upset with us. We want to be effective in prayer.
But remember this, the Lord looks at the heart.
So instead of obsessing about how much time you should pray or in what order you should pray certain things.
How about you just enjoy the presence of the Lord? How about you?
Just allow the Holy Spirit to gently guide you as you set aside whatever time you can to pray.
Number four, waiting on your feelings to make you believe God hears you so often, believers approach the Lord and because they don’t sense his presence physically because they don’t sense his presence emotionally, they begin to panic and wonder if God has distanced himself from them.
I didn’t feel God. Is he angry with me?
The last time I had an encounter with God where I found him physically was years ago.
What’s wrong with me? Did I say something that displeased him? Did I do something that displeased him?
Did I open some door that I’m not aware of? Am I making some mistake that I don’t really?
And because of this, we begin to obsess over this idea of feeling God.
And here’s the problem sometimes an intense desire to have an encounter with God can itself become a distraction or a barrier between you and an encounter with God.
And so people obsess about this idea and they freak out, they become paranoid, it consumes their thoughts.
They can’t help but wonder why can’t I feel God or why am I not experiencing what they talked about in their story or why am I not experiencing what I read about in old books about revival and church history or why am I not experiencing what I heard about in some youtube video or a podcast or reading about online?
And we begin to try to compare our relationship with God with the stories that we’ve heard.
And therefore, we’re waiting for our feelings to confirm something that we should already know by faith.
We’re waiting for our feelings to tell us what the word already tells us.
You know what that tells me when you wait for your feelings to tell you what the word already tells you.
That’s proof that you have more faith in your feelings than you do in the word of God.
Hebrews chapter 11 verse six says this, but without faith, it is impossible to please Him for he that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Stop waiting for your feelings to confirm the nearness of God and just take him at his word.
His word is truth. Number five, keeping track of your prayer stats. Now, I know that sounds almost comical.
I can just picture someone with a piece of paper, logging their prayer times and keeping track of how their prayer life went.
And really sometimes this is the religious approach that many believers take to prayer.
But here’s what the Bible says in Matthew chapter six verse seven.
When you pray don’t babble on and on as the gentiles do they think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again, they thought that God would hear them simply because they prayed again and again, they thought that God would hear them because of how good they pray.
Some people don’t have faith in God.
They have faith in their prayer life, they have faith in their ability to seek God.
Some people don’t have faith in God speaking. They have faith in their own ability to hear God speak.
And this is a prime example of what happens when we become self reliant instead of reliant upon the Holy Spirit’s power.
We begin to track our prayer lives and count it for us if it’s good and count it against ourselves.
If it’s bad. Now, this can only produce one of two things.
Either this will produce despair or this will produce pride. This will produce despair.
If you feel like you’re not keeping the stats like you want to keep them and it will reduce pride if you feel like you’re an expert, you’re keeping all the prayer points like you thought, you should.
Look, Lord, I pray three hours a day for a whole month straight.
Look, Lord, I prayed consistently without distraction and therefore you should answer my prayers.
Well, that is faith in your prayer life and not faith in God.
So let’s be rid this notion that we have to log certain amounts of prayer in before God will be pleased with us.
Because then we become reliant again upon our ability to pray.
You know, I don’t even really track how long I pray. People ask me all the time.
How often do you pray? And how long do you pray when you pray?
And I don’t like to answer that question because first of all, that’s between me and the Lord.
And second of all, I don’t really even keep track of myself.
There are moments, I’m sure where I pray for hours.
And then there are other moments where I probably pray half hour to an hour and then on days where possibly I’m traveling, I might only have 15 to 20 minutes to actually devote to just prayer alone.
But I don’t track my prayer because my relationship with God is not based on metrics.
It’s based on faith, it’s based on his grace. Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t commit to prayer.
And this especially doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t commit to extended periods of time in prayer.
This just means that if we’re keeping track of our stats, that will either despair or become prideful depending upon the results.
Some believers don’t wanna pray because they messed up their stats.
In other words, they pray Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then they miss Thursday and because they have this religious approach to prayer, they won’t pray Friday because they think that God is angry with them or that they don’t deserve to approach God.
They’re bothered at the fact that they feel like they have to start all over again.
So they become so discouraged by having missed a day of prayer that they miss more days of prayer.
And this just shows us why it’s so unhealthy to take a statistical approach to prayer again, God doesn’t respond to systems but to sincerity.
Now we’re going to pray here and I’m gonna pray that the Holy Spirit will help to guide you and help to remind you of these mistakes so that you don’t keep making them.
But let’s go over again these five destructive habits that keep you from prayer. Number one, living a distracted life.
Number two, letting guilt convince you to not pray. Number three, overthinking your prayer time.
Number four, waiting for your feelings to make you believe God hears you.
And number five, keeping track of your prayer stats. Now let’s pray.
I want to ask the Holy Spirit to guide you when you pray and to remind you of these truths when you most need to hear them.
Come on, let’s approach the Lord together, father in the name of Jesus. I pray for that one.
Receiving this now Holy Spirit.
I thank you that you remind us of the truth and you reveal the truth.
And so I pray precious Holy Spirit that you would guide that one and remind them of the truths of your word that they might flourish in their prayer life.
Give them a praying spirit cause them to become faithful seekers of the face of Jesus.
We give you the glory, the honor and the praise in the mighty name of Jesus.
We pray and I want you to say it because you believe it. Say amen.
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Now, if you enjoyed this teaching, then you will love three things. I’ve learned about prayer in that teaching.
I give you three very practical truths that will help to take your prayer life to the next level.