What Are the Root Causes of Prayerlessness?

This is part two of a mini-series on prayer based on our discussion in Sunday School. Read Part 1 here.

Andrew Murray sums up the experience of prayerlessness well: "How many there are who take only five minutes for prayer! They say that they have no time and that the heart desire for prayer is lacking; they do not know how to spend half an hour with God! It is not that they absolutely do not pray; they pray every day - but they have no joy in prayer, as a token of communion with God which shows that God is everything to them."

See, prayerlessness doesn't necessarily mean we never pray at all. It simply means that we don't pray very deeply, or with much commitment, or with any joy.

Sure, we still think its a good idea to pray, and we generally still pray before meals, before bed, at church, and all the usual places. We tell ourselves that if we had more time, we would surely spend it in prayer. It's just that we're too busy, right?

Prayerlessness, of course, displeasing to God, as we've established in the last post. But here's the thing: Prayerlessness is not the real problem. The majority of the time, its merely a symptom of a far more serious problem. And its not poor time management. The problem is a deficient spirital life.

So what causes the deficient spiritual life? I believe we can identify three main causes.

First, there is our problem of self-sufficiency. Obviously, when we don't pray, what we're really saying is that we think we can get by on our own power. This is utter foolishness. If we were thinking rightly, we would understand that the busier we are, the more we ought to pray. Do we really want to be solving our problems apart from God?

Second, there is our problem of worldliness. The Bible is clear that there are two types of people: people who walk according to the Spirit, and people who walk according to the flesh (Galatians 5:16). When our lives are filled with dissipation (Ephesians 5:18), all the desire to pray is choked out of us.

What does a life of dissipation look like? It can simply be overindulgence of worldly pleasures...some of which might not be evil in and of themselves. We are tempted to gorge ourselves on television, entertainment, movies, the internet, facebook, news, sports, or even work. All of these things can be good, but when we saturate ourselves with them, we are living lives of unbalanced dissipation.

The more we indulge our flesh, the more fleshly-minded we become, and the less we are inclined to pray. How can we if our faculties are all occupied with satisfying our flesh? (When's the last time you sat down and watched 5 hours of T.V. and then had a burning desire to pray?)

Third, there is the problem of our lack of faith. Jim George says: "Prayer is an act of faith. It is talking to someone you can’t see about something you don’t have with no visible means of attaining it." If we lack the faith to believe that God answers prayer as he has promised (even if the answer does not come instantly, but perhaps 25 years from now), or that God is indeed even listening, we will find scant reason to pray. We must constantly remind ourselves that God indeed commands us to pray, and has promised he will hear us because of the blood of Christ.

So, if you're struggling with prayerlessness, take a moment and reflect whether one of these reasons reflects what's going on in your heart. If so, let's repent of it today and get serious about prayer. Or, perhaps you think there are other reasons that I missed?

Next time: How do we fix our prayer life?