In church and in Christian circles, there appears to be a partition being placed in our minds about prayer.  A partition, or wall, placed by the enemy that is a slow burn to turn us away from prayer, our direct connection to God.  Just over the past few months, I have encountered three different groups of people that identify themselves as Christians.  The first group was people who think they are unworthy to pray and/or God won’t listen to them.  They believe in God, but just not that He will listen to them when they pray.  When I say ‘I am praying for you’ to them, either they change the subject, or they appear uncomfortable and end the conversation. I found this to be a surprising reaction from someone who labels themselves as a Christian.  

There is a second group I have met that call themselves Christians, but prayer seems like a foreign concept or even shocking to them. When I share with them that I am praying for their sick child or a lost pet, they cannot fathom that I should bother God with such things.  They say, ‘After all, there are wars going on in the world, why does God care about a lost pet or one sick child?’ Yet, God does care, He cares deeply.  

There is a third group of people that when I say ‘I am praying for you’, they immediately freak out and want to know what bad thing has happened that they need prayers. They expressed concern that I knew something they did not and asked me to tell them what horrible thing had occurred to cause me to pray for them. This reaction saddened me. We are to be praying for each other regularly.

If Satan can blind us to the importance of prayer through these or other ways, he disrupts our conversations with the Father and our advocate, Jesus. Prayer is how we grab a hold of the spiritual realm and connect to Jesus.

Prayer is like air, it is needed daily and constantly, prayer is not a nice-to-have.  When the enemy decreases your desire to pray or your desire to even receive the prayers of others, you have a problem.  When you have a problem, pray. When you try to pray and the enemy enters your prayer life to distract you by luring your mind to wander, you have to fight. Pray for the strength to fight. Use the enemy’s attempts to decrease prayers to instead increase them. Then we really will be praying without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).