What Keeps Me From Asking God? Part 2

As I introduced in my first article, I have been a part of making the email prayer bulletin because—though I believe strongly in our call to pray as a church—prayer is not something that always comes easy for me. 

My previous post looked at three common barriers to asking things of God: prayer is often ‘messy work’,  there’s a nagging lie that prayer won’t accomplish anything, and a tendency for prayer to become moralistic-flag-planting.

Here, I’ll address three more common barriers to prayer with the hope that by naming them something will resonate with you and encourage your heart towards prayer. So let’s dive into some of the fears and habits that hinder us in coming before God through prayer.

I am afraid of relegating God to a Cosmic Santa

Pastor David Mathis, in his book Habits of Grace, points out “prayer is not finally about getting things from God, but getting God. Born in response to his voice prayer makes its requests of God, but is not content to only receive from God. Prayer must have him.”

First, it’s probably helpful to note that I am not primarily addressing the main point of prayer—getting more or God—in this article. Instead, I highlighting what it means to ask of God, which flows out of first knowing him. And then, going back to the quote from Pastor David, notice the words “finally,” and “only.” Pastor David is not saying it is holier to not ask things of God. But often this is how I feel. At times, as a kid, I took pride in not being too demanding of my parents, and I can take a similar pride in not appearing needy before God.

Good fathers are not Santas. This is most true of the richest Father of all. And because we are dependent on God for everything our relationship includes a lot of asking of him and it should! My kids ask for all kinds of things: to get glasses of water, to check out their cool creations, to help with zippers, to buy light up shoes, and to let them have one more blueberry. When I think about my own kids, I am much more concerned about the tone of their asking than the fact that they are asking. I want them to ask. It is typically a sign of a traumatized child if he would rather be parched than come to you to ask for a cup of water. God wants us to ask and delights in giving us good things.

I am terrified that God will not answer as I wish

Moving past the blueberries and on to the scarier things of life, I also come from a family with some deep scars from the bad theology of “they didn’t get better because they didn’t pray hard enough and didn’t believe hard enough.” Every time I read Jesus say, “Ask, and it will be given to you,” my heart winces a little and I start qualifying it in my head to make sure the prosperity gospel folks can’t have the verse back. Answered prayer is not dependent on the strength of my faith, but the strength of the Giver, even when his answers don’t make sense to me.

But sometimes my cynical qualifying leads me to fear how God might answer my prayer. I know that, no matter what, God will be good; but does he really understand how awful (fill in the blank) is in my little world? 

This was never more clear in my life than in the birth of our daughter who was born prematurely at 24-weeks gestation. During the week I was in the hospital it was unclear what would happen and God gave me grace to not explore in my mind all the options of what might go wrong. God sustained us in a tangible way, and the shadow of death passed us by. I remember the deep gratitude to God I felt the first time I was permitted to hold her and I knew in my bones God was good.

The problem was, after clearing what looked like would be the hardest part, the waves kept coming and my fear grew and grew. Would her brain bleed really turn out to be nothing? Would she ever make it to 2-pounds? Would the intense labor of working with her to nurse work out, or would she end up needing to feed by a tube? Then, things got even harder when we brought her home and her care was no longer mediated by nurses and doctors. I would fall again and again into the illusion that I could control the situation. The deeper my illusion of control, the deeper my fears and temptations ran. The little questions kept piling—and keep coming to this day—such that I have had to fight to keep engaged but not be afraid. And right when I think I get my heart right to trust the fatherly-kindness of God for my daughter, the next little wave threatens to capsize my miniature faith, which keeps fighting to believe, “I know you are my kind Father!”

The story that arrested my heart in high school, and continues to arrest me, is the raising of Lazarus. When Jesus came and Mary and Martha reproached him for not coming sooner, Jesus could have told them to pull up their boot-straps and get over their grief. After all, they only needed to wait a couple more minutes for the story to end happily! But that isn’t what he does. He stops in the middle of the pain and weeps.

Even when I am weary of fighting this battle over and over, the humanity of Christ is my comfort. He is the one interceding for me in my fears. And I don’t need to understand the middle of the story right now. I know the beginning and I know the end of my story—our story—his story—and I will hang on to every indication of his goodness. I know he is ready to meet me in my fear and my mess and when I am running on empty.

Distraction and overwhelm creep in to change my priorities

The biggest hindrance to prayer is never bothering to carve out the time simply to pray.

Time is a resource given to us by God. Like money. I know that money belongs to God; that I should be content with the amount we have been given; that there will be enough to supply for our needs; and that we should give it and use it to reflect that Christ is our treasure. Functionally though, I treat the resource of time in a different way than money. I sometimes act like my time belongs to me, for me to control. I tend to believe that being discontent with my lack of productivity in a given time is virtuous and that there isn’t enough time in the day to be generous with it toward God and others.

When I begin to feel frantic I have begun to pray, “Lord, help me to trust that you have given me enough time today to do what you are calling me to do.” After I calm down and realize that there will be enough time, not for my to-do list, but for “God’s to-do list,” which sometimes involves things like a sudden change in plans when kids do crazy things and such. As I pray this prayer throughout the day, I keep reorienting my time towards my real treasure. 

This does not mean we all need to head for the convent. A big part of the Reformation was reclaiming the value of God's gift in giving us work. But we ought to keep assessing our rhythms of worship in relation to when we wake up, when we go to bed, and how we spend each moment in-between. After all, if you are a member of Cities Church, you have covenanted to this. My husband and I keep having the same conversations about how in each season of life we must carve out time for prayer and worship. The enemy of my soul does his easiest work by simply distracting me.

Bonhoeffer in Life Together says,  “[The Word] can come only from the outside. In himself [the Christian] is destitute and dead. Help must come from the outside, and it has come and comes daily and anew in the Word of Jesus Christ.” As I lean into prayer—as I wake, in family devotions, during dishes and laundry, and in Psalms and music, and again anew as we celebrate the Resurrection every Sunday and meet in prayer in our Community Groups and Life Groups and throughout our days—we step into the eternal dance of Christ and his Bride. 

Press into the “help from the outside daily and anew” with me, dear sisters.