PRAYERLESSNESS: A CHRONIC DISEASE (PSALMS 14) - Oluyemi Oluseyi Taiwo

PRAYERLESSNESS: A CHRONIC DISEASE (PSALMS 14) - Oluyemi Oluseyi Taiwo

I remember as a young man reading the classic by E.M. Bounds, The Power of Prayer. The author told story after story of great men and women of prayer who would often spend hours and hours in prayer each day. I was excited about the prayer lives of these amazing prayer warriors, yet something that so intrigued me, also disturbed me. These great ones, after spending hours praying, would often cry over their prayerlessness and lack of devotion to prayer. I remember thinking, ‘if these people are guilty of prayerlessness, then who would not be guilty of such a sin?’. 
Prayer is the lifeblood of a Christian’s walk with God, it is an active way to love and connect with others, and it makes room in the heart for God’s correcting voice. The Bible says to ‘pray continually’ (1Thess 5:17), so anything other than a continual attitude of prayer and communion with God is sin. Anything that interrupts our connection to God or leads to self-reliance is wrong.
Prayerlessness is a declaration that we do not need God. Ronnie Floyd, in his great book, How to Pray, said there are two critical statements about prayer that we must understand: ‘Prayer occurs when you depend on God’ and ‘Prayerlessness occurs when you depend on yourself’. Failing to pray is an indicator of a lack of love for the Lord. Prayer, at its heart, is communicating with God. What does it say to him when we fail to find time to talk with him? Do we say by our lack of prayer that we are not at all interested in spending time with the Lord or hearing anything from him? When we do not pray, we move away from any possibility of intimacy with Christ. 
The moment it becomes a habit to live daily without praying (1pet 5:8), the result is death (Rom 6:23). The heart begins to resist the things of God and the spirit man gradually becomes inactive. Truth be told, at times we don’t feel like praying nor reading the scriptures but it’s a device of the devil to lure us away from God. The bible says we should not be ignorant of the devil’s devices (2Cor 2:11), and forget not his mission: to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). The plan of God for us are of good and not of evil to give us an expected end, but the devil is after us because he knows we uphold God's covenant (Rev 12:17). Hence, his attacks on our prayer life. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom but trembles when we pray. The enemy does all he can against our communion with God, against our solitude with God, he tries to prevent us from drawing our breath in the fear of the lord. The moment the devil is able to hijack the place of prayer, then he’s on top of the game in the life of such believer.
Satan’s main strategy with God’s people has always been to whisper, “Don’t call, don’t ask, don’t depend on God to do great things. You’ll get along fine if you just rely on your own cleverness and energy”. The truth of the matter is that the devil is not terribly frightened of our human efforts and credentials. But he knows his kingdom will be damaged when we lift our hearts to God. 

Causes of Prayerlessness
We aren’t communing with God in prayer, so prayer feels like a burdensome, boring, perhaps futile exercise that we rush through in a perfunctory way or avoid. When we do pray, our prayers seem feeble and powerless, which just leads to less praying. If prayer is the native language of faith and we’re struggling with prayerlessness, then the first thing we need to do is look for faith problem. There’s a faith breakdown somewhere and until we get that fixed, our problem will remain (Heb 11:6). When faith is awake and surging in us, prayer doesn’t feel like a burden or obligation. It feels natural. 
Psalms 10:4, ‘the wicked do not care about the lord, in their pride they think that God doesn’t matter.’ Pride leads to prayerlessness, and why is that? It’s because the spirit of prayer and the spirit of pride are contradictory. They’re totally opposite. The spirit of pride is the spirit that makes you concerned about yourself. Self-esteem, self-sufficiency, self-admiration. That is pride. The proud do not pray. The humble are learning to pray. Verse 16, “you will listen, O Lord, to the prayers of the lowly; you will give them courage”. 
Look for fears, doubts, unbelief, indulgent sinful habits, unresolved anger, bitterness, disappointment etc. Ask trusted believers to help you, when you’ve identified it. 
Reasons for Prayerlessness
Prayer is the most powerful tool that God Almighty has given us to live a triumphant life. Sadly, many, including Christians have yielded to the devil’s scheme and have become prayerless and powerless, bringing about great ruin and destruction in their lives. Prayerlessness is not a weakness; it is a sin! God hates prayerlessness so much that he puts the non-praying saint in the same group as the heathen (Jer 10:25).
One of the reasons why people choose not to pray is because they have no delight in God (Job 21:14). They have lost their desire for the almighty, they have turned away from God. Secondly, no knowledge of God (Psalms 14:4). The lack of the knowledge of God results in prayerlessness. How can you pray to someone you do not have knowledge of? In Job 21:15 we see this kind of people only pray because they are looking for profit. They do not seek God for who he is. Instead they think they can use him or get something out of him, only then will they pray, how sad! Simply because he has not met our prayer list.
Consequences of Prayerlessness
The consequences of prayerlessness are too severe to continue to walk in that path:

  • No goodness: Job 21:16 tells us; “lo, their good is not in their hand…” the prayerless will never know true goodness. No good will come to them, only evil. Nothing good will ever be given into their hands.
  • No counsel: this means no guidance, no direction, no clarity of heart and mind.
  • No light (Pro 4:19)
  • Total destruction
  • No gladness (Eccl 5:17)
  • No preservation
  • No protection
  • Sorrow for generations to come
  • Witness suffering
  • Experience wrath (Psalms 79:6)
  • Premature end of life Job 21:21
  • At the end, a bitter death (Rev 21:8)

In conclusion, a fresh encounter with the presence of the living God is a cure for what ails us. If you have ruled out a committed life of prayer and excluded prayer meetings from your normal routine, will you rethink that? Will you ask God how he wants you to live? Will you be willing to try again? Reuben A. Torrey, one-time President of Moody Bible Institute, had this to say in his little book, “The power of Prayer”, “We do not live in a praying age. We live in an age of hustle and bustle, of man’s efforts and man’s determination, of man’s confidence in himself and in his own power to achieve things, an age of human organization and human machinery, human push, and human scheming, and human achievements; which in the things of God means no real achievement at all…. what we need is not so much some new organization nor some new wheel but the spirit of the living creature in the wheels we already possess”. Saints of God, prayerlessness is a dangerous sin most of us need deliverance from. It is time we repent and get back on our knees.

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