The Power And Purpose Of Prayer Series

There are many things that we can have someone else do for us, but prayer is not one of them.

Given this important understanding of prayer; most of us can think back to a time when prayer might have been more important to us than it is now. But what usually takes place is the rush and hustle of life begins to nip away at our priorities and the “garden of prayer” that we once enjoyed has now turned into a wasteland full of weeds.

Without prayer, our spiritual life begins to deteriorate.

Let me give you [from Pastor Richard O’Ffill] Five symptoms of what happens when we begin to neglect prayer:

1) “Heartfelt prayer soon becomes only empty words and a form.”

There was a time when you prayed with spirit and passion, but now it is just an empty form. Words strung together mumbled through lips half asleep or words that are hastily spewed out in a moment of dire need, or perhaps words repetitiously pronounced to signal time to eat.

2) “The values of those who neglect it, inevitably begin to slip away from Christ toward the emptiness of the present age.”

When your prayer life begins to slip and the words become empty, gradually your values also begin to slip. You begin to go along with the secular worldview instead of holding onto the Biblical worldview. Those theories of science that contradict God’s word are not so outlandish any more. We start to slide down the slippery slope.

3) “Progressively we begin to think, feel, and talk less frequently about God and spiritual things.”

As our prayer-life diminishes, it is not that we deliberately leave Christ out of our lives and conversations; it is just a natural result of the first two symptoms of no prayer life.

4) “Private time alone with God becomes less and less frequent until at last it disappears altogether.”

We once had a living, vibrant private worship and prayer time but it becomes less and less important to our lives and even inconsistent with how we live until finally don’t even attempt it any more.

5) “Resisting sin becomes less and less important until it is resisted only when it would have the most serious consequences.”

Steps to Christ page 94- “The darkness of the evil one encloses those who neglect to pray. The whispered temptations of the enemy entice them to sin; and it is all because they do not make use of the privileges that God has given them in the divine appointment of prayer.”

When having a consistent time of communication and relationship with God, sin is something that we naturally want to avoid because we can feel the separation that it causes in the relationship, but as we have cut off the communication, the things that once were repugnant to us become attractive to us and unless we know we will get in some serious deep weeds, we just follow our inclinations.

I don’t believe that we can pray too much because we are told in 1Th 5:17 “pray without ceasing,” but prayer can become our goal; so that we can with much pride be able to stick out our spiritual chests and say that “I have a devotional life.” That has become the gold standard of the Christian life.