Why do we watch YouTube videos? Why do we spend so much time on Facebook and Flickr? Why do we read so many Wikipedia articles? Why do we play our favorite sports and watch our favorite TV shows? Why do we talk to our friends on the phone? Why do we chat? Why do we work? Why do we go shopping? The answer to these questions is either because ‘we want to’ and/or ‘we love to.’
Why do we work? Maybe it’s not because we enjoy our work but because we want to work: we want to make money, and we want to have a career, and we want to have a promotion, and we don’t want to sit home all day long. Why do we play sports? Because we enjoy playing them, we enjoy competing, and we enjoy to spending time with our friends. And we want to be in shape!
If you ask yourself questions about things you do not do, then you get the opposite results: we do not do certain things either because we do not want to, or because we do not enjoy doing them. People are not forced to do things—we choose to do certain things and we choose not to do other things.
I am asking these questions as a prelude to the topic of this writing: why don’t we pray? The answer is very simple: because we don’t want to. Many Christians lie saying it is because they are busy, they are going through a transition period, they don’t know how to pray, they don’t have a place to pray, they forget, and the excuses go on. But the truth it is because we do not want to. If we want to then we make the time, and we make the place, and we remember, and we know what to say. Why is it that we always know what to say on Facebook? We always make time to check our e-mails? We have a place for our computers to access the internet? We remember to check YouTube videos? It is because we want to. We do these things because they are priority to us. We do not pray, because it is not priority to us. It is that simple.
I am not saying these things because I am such a great prayerful Christian, or a godly man. Honestly, I haven’t prayed in a long time. Why don’t I pray? The answer is simple: because I don’t want to. Now here is the hard question: Why don’t I want to? The answer is simple too: because I do not enjoy God. Finally, the question is: why don’t I enjoy God? The answer is because I do not love Him. If I loved Him, then I would’ve enjoyed spending time in prayer. If I loved Him, then I would’ve spend time to know Him. If I loved Him, then I would’ve found Him interesting and exciting to know. If I loved Him, then I would’ve been afraid of losing Him. But I don’t love Him–at least not with my heart—and the Bible says that the greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.â€Â (Matthew 22:37)
It is easy to know that God is great, He is wonderful, He is loving, He is good, He is limitless, He is amazing, He is compassionate, He is lovely, He is gentle, and so on. But it is a completely different thing to be in love with our Heavenly Father. See, our Lord Jesus Christ loved His Father. He did not pray only because He needed to, but mainly because He wanted to. And what He needed in prayer was not asking for things, but He needed the Father–His need was different than our “needs”. The punishment of Christ on the Cross was the separation from the Father—He had never, from eternity past, been separated from the Father but that changed when He died on the Cross. He was separated from the Father so we can know Him, but we refuse to know Him. When we do not pray it is our way of saying: Christ died for nothing. Christ died so we can have a personal and intimate and exciting relationship with the Father, but we neglect it by not praying. Christ died so we can spend eternity with the Father, but we can’t pray for 5 minutes! I think for most of us heaven will be a horrible place because we don’t enjoy the presence of God!
We have our idols and sins and hobbies that fill our hearts from one hour to another hour, until we sleep and wake up and repeat the same thing the next day. So why should we pray! Life is also not that horrible. Yes, we have to pay the bills, but we all have to. So why should we pray! Of course, when something bad happens we run to God in prayer asking for His help. And we don’t even seek Him—we seek His help! We don’t want to know Him, but we want to be known by Him! But do we ever pray because we enjoy praying?! We do not pray because we do not hunger for God. We do not hunger for God because we are being “filled†by sins and idolatry and emotional filth. Of course those sins can never give the peace and joy of knowing and loving God, but we enjoy these sins! We would rather spend hours indulging in a sin because we enjoy it, rather than spending 5 minutes of quiet, focused, and deep prayer because we do not enjoy it.
We do not enjoy the Father because He is Holy and we are not. We have defiled ourselves with so many idols, so many sins, so many distractions, so many desires, so many goals, so many of every temporary and meaningless thing to the point where we have lost track of how wonderful He is to behold, to think about Him, to tell Him that you love Him, to read His word, to know His ways, to be conformed to His likeness, and to live for Him. Not only to live for Him, but also to live because of Him. If He is not a good reason for us to live–to feel secure, to be joyful and peaceful, to have a meaning in our lives, to have a goal, to enjoy life—then what is? Photography? Cars? Internet? What a sad and aimless bunch of creatures we are without an intimate and personal relationship with the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit!
So why should we pray? Simple, because we want to; because we enjoy Him; because we love Him. We all know how horrible it feels to go ask a favor from a friend we haven’t talked to in a long while. Yet, we have no problem doing that to God—we only talk to Him when we need something. Our Lord used analogy to convey spiritual concepts to us, so why do we always try to complicate things? Why lie saying you don’t pray because you moved into a new place and you still haven’t found your prayer routine? You had no problem watching the football game sitting on the unpacked boxes!
We say that Christianity is not a religion based on rigid rules that deal with the flesh, but it is a personal relationship with God the Father. But how can we have a relationship without communication? How can we have a relationship without intimacy? How can we have a personal relationship if we do not pray? If all we do is go to church, serve at church, preach to the crowd, and go to church picnics, then can we still call this relationship “personalâ€? If it is personal, then why do we only practice it in the presence of others? The Bible say, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”(Matthew 6:6)
I am not saying these things to judge you—because I would be judging myself—but to make you ask yourself questions. To think about what made you stop praying; what made your love for God lukewarm; what made you start seeing this extraordinary God as ordinary; what made you take this wonderful gift of salvation for granted. Rejection? Disappointment? Pain? Idols? Sins? Worldly and temporary distractions? Whatever it is, you need to fight your way back into having a quiet, focused, uninterrupted, and intimate prayer life. Life is meaningless without knowing the Father. Prayer is the way to know Him. Is there a more important task than this? ~ Fadi
0 thoughts on “Our Prayer Life is Our Christian Life”
So true Fadi! This really made me think. We spend so much time on a lot of different things, but just not on the MOST important thing.