According to a study realized in 2014 by the Pew Research Center, 55% of Americans say they pray every day, 21% say they pray willingly or monthly, and 23% say they seldom or never pray. It shows that prayer is a habit frequent in the life of most Americans, because Christianity has always been a  part of the American culture. Indeed, the motto of the United States is “in God we trust”. However, prayer is also a challenge for some Christians. They try to have a prayer life but it is a challenge for them. In this post, my purpose is to show what are the challenges most of the Christians are facing and what they could do to overcome those challenges.

First of all, it is important to define what prayer is. Prayer is simply the fact to communicate with God. It can be expressed by requests, supplications, intercessions, praise and worship, different forms. It is by this way that we can talk to God and it is one of the ways by what God can talk to us.

Different reasons can explain why some Christians struggle with prayer.  The first reason can be sin. Indeed, sin can lead you far away from prayer, and more particularly far away from God. In Genesis 3:8, the Bible reminds us that it is after they sinned that Adam and Eve ran away from the presence of God when He came in the garden of Eden. The same thing continues until today. Leonard Ravenhill, American pastor, said one day that “a sinning man stops praying, a praying man stops sinning”.  Some Christians struggle with prayer because of sin. They come to church, they sing, they serve, they show that they live a life of holiness, but in the secret, they sin against God. The result is that sin affects their intimacy with God, their holiness, and they have no more strength to pray.

When you let sin affect your life, you give power to the devil to affect you spiritually. At this moment, he has the power to push you to feel guilty to pray when you come in the presence of God. To run away from this presence, you then stop to pray. That is the meaning of this expression of Leonard Ravenhill. In my life, and in the life of other Christians, I saw how dangerously sin can affect our prayer life. Because of guilt, we have no more courage to go back into the presence of God, and it starts to erode our prayer life. We begin to pray less and less, until finally we pray no more. Dear brothers and sisters, even so you are in a situation when you sin continually, because of a sin which is binding you, I encourage you not to stop to pray. If your real desire is to be freed from this sin, continue to pray, because prayer shows to God that despite what happens into your life, you are willing to be freed from this sin. And if you do that, God will intervene, because He always responds to the cry of those who put their faith in Him. 

The second reason why some Christians struggle with prayer is distraction. Indeed, with social media and movies, it is easy for many people to lose the importance of prayer. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, take most of the time of many of us. Then, at the end, we have no more time for God, because we are too tired for prayer. It is distraction. God wants you to spend time with Him first before your social media. God wants you to spend time with Him before your movies. For me, as Christian, and also as someone who is constantly working with social media and movies, it is a challenge not to give more time to those things than to God. But God helps me to refocus on Him every time I spend too much time in it. But it is not the case for many believers. They are addicted and then they do not even realize that they have no more connection with God.

Maybe that by reading this post you now realize that you spend too much time in social media and movies. Maybe that by reading this post, you now realize that you are addicted, and disconnected from the presence of God. It is time to return in His presence. That is why I encourage you to even stop reading this post and to pray now that God restores your intimacy with Him and sets you free from this addiction to social media and movies. If you are in this situation, please do it now. By spending too much time in those things, we can satisfy our flesh, but we become spiritually dry, because God is no more refreshing our soul.

Prayer is needed to be continually connected to God and not addicted to the things of this world. Now, by reading it, you can think that I am saying we should not use social media or watch movies. It is not the case. I am myself, as I said, someone who works constantly with social media and movies. But the Lord helps me to use them in a reasonable way. You have to go back into the presence of God, aak Him to help you to overcome any addiction to social media into your life, and take the decision to reduce your time into those things if you want to see a change. From my experience, do not try to reduce with everything immediately. You will not resist one day. Do it progressively. For example, stop to check use your smartphone from a certain hour. Put your smartphone in another room of your house if you can before going to sleep, or at least put it far away from you. Develop different habits which will make you less and less addict, and more and more connected to God.  You will then be less and less distracted, and more and more conscious that you need the presence of God.

The third reason why some Christians do not pray is because they rely on themselves. They consider that their capacities are enoug to solve their problems, and they do not see the necessity to pray. The have a job, they are smart, they were blessed by God, but prayer is not part of the equation, They do not perceive prayer as a necessity. It is the reason why they are disconnected from God, and they do not even realize it. They would like to pray more, but at the end of the day, they do not think it is really necessary. Then, misleaded by their own minds, they continue to rely on themselves. It is a form of pride.

We can only grow in prayer when we understand that prayer is needed because we depend on God. We do not pray because we give to God a favor to talk to us, we pray because God gives us a favor to talk to Him. And it is because of this favor that should constantly pray in order to depend on Him. But when we do not realize our dependence to Him, we rely on ourselves, and we have no prayer life. Today, if you consider that you do not need prayer because you rely on ourselves, I encourage you to think also that God is the Master of everything you have, and that He can also create circumstances into your life to lead you back to Him. Do not wait to be shaken by God to come back to Him, seek Him now, while He gives you the opportunity to do it. Humble yourselves, and God will show you how wonderful it is to be in His presence. God is powerful, and it is because many of us do not understand the power we have in prayer that we neglect it.

We live in days when Christianity is challenged at different levels, but it are those who put their faith in God and who pray to stay connected to God who will not only grow but also will see the ahcievement of what God promised into their lives. Be from the generation of those who continually pray the Lord to seek Him day after day. You will then make a difference in this generation, and you will raise like an eagle.

Today, pray the Lord to revive your prayer life if it is dead, and pray the Lord to help you to become a man, a woman, of prayer. You will not lose. In the contrary, you will gain, and even much more than what you think.

Prayer is indispensable to your spiritual growth and to the achievement of the plan of God into your life. Start now.