Let’s be honest, there are times that prayer is a battle. We want to seek God with diligence. We want to pursue Him in prayer not simply out of empty habit, but with true spiritual fervor yet there are times this escapes us. Why? The Bible would tell us that there are many reasons, the primary being this: we battle indwelling sin (Romans 7:15, 18). In other words, we all suffer from various forms of spiritual A.D.D.

We have all done it before, while bringing before God a vital matter in urgent prayer then all of a sudden “SQUIRREL!” (pardon the Pixar reference – but you know what I mean). Suddenly we are thinking of our ‘todo’ list for the day ahead or the upcoming football game or bacon or whatever. Our minds easily stray all over the place. At other times this prayer battle can shift in various directions. We might subtly feel like our prayers don’t really accomplish much or that when we pray no one is really listening. It can seem as if we are praying to a wall. We know that God is there and really hears us, yet there are times when it doesn’t feel like it. We can  even become so discouraged and distracted that prayer slowly becomes neglected in our lives.

In light of these challenges, we just kicked off a new Core Training Class on Prayer this past Sunday. We began by examining these challenges in prayer and responding to them by looking at the cost of prayerlessness. As we did this we saw that, as challenging as prayer can be, to forsake it even for a moment is so costly, so damaging to our lives, so harmful to our walk with Christ that the battle for prayer is worth fighting. Here are some of the costs we saw together.

When we neglect prayer we:

• Lack victory against sin and the devil (Ephesians 6:18).
• Live in the constant frustration of unattained desires (James 4:2).
• Reject God’s appointed means of receiving mercy and obtaining grace (Hebrews 4:16).
• Forfeit God’s appointed means of obtaining fullness of joy (John 16:24).

Pretty sobering isn’t it? The next time we pick up in this list we will look at another cost of prayerlessness. When we neglect prayer we set ourselves up to:

• Wallow in anxiety, without any sense of God’s peace (Philippians 4:6).

Be sure to join us next Sunday at 9AM in the Percolator Room. We look forward to growing together in learning more about how to pray.

(bullets above excerpted from Dr. Jim Rosscup's Prayer BI 703 Syllabus TMS Fall 1993)