“I am not good at praying, I become too
distracted when I pray. Praying must not
be my spiritual gift.” Have you said
that before? I sure have. For the longest time I have believed that my
distractions in prayer meant that I was no good at praying and therefore prayer
is not my gift.
I have come to recognize in my
own prayer life that the enemy attacks me the most when I am on my knees. One lie that has crept into the minds of many
Christians is that Satan will not mess with you as long as you are praying. That would be awesome if it was true, because
then I would constantly pray as Paul tells us to in Romans 12, and then never
fall into temptation. But the fact is,
your enemy is performing all out war on you as you plug into the Father’s will
through prayer.
See if you catch my drift by
reading these verses below.
Colossians 4:2 says “Pray continually,
being watchful in it with thanksgiving”.
Likewise, Ephesians 6:18 says,
“…praying at all times in the spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end be on alert, with all
perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.”
And even still, Jesus instructs
his disciples in the same manner. In Mark
14:38 he says, “watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
That last verse speaks directly
to my heart. You see, I want to pray
constantly, but my flesh is week. Often
times, if not every time I pray I get so distracted that I finally give up
praying, and my lame excuse to that is, “God did not give me the gift of
prayer.”
Let me extrapolate this idea. Our minds have been conformed to this world
and not transformed by the truth of God.
Through your television, your mind has been trained to be distracted and
handle distractions as if they are a normal occurrence of life. If you watch 4 hours of TV a day, then you are
taking in on average 100 commercials, 4-8 shows each one with a different plot,
climax, and each show having many different scene changes, and to boot, this is
how you are choosing to relax your mind, but allowing it to become distracted.
Therefore, when you pray, you are
not able to put your mind at rest because it has been trained that during
peaceful moments, it should be processing many different scenes, images, and
thoughts, as it does while it watch TV.
What has happened is this world
has conformed us to its many distractions, and we have to renew our minds daily
to know how to pray again.
You do have the gift of prayer,
and prayer will enable you to do many things in life as you turn to your Father
who is in heaven. But you have to renew
your mind, or train your mind to be still.
And yes, this means work, a lot of work.
You need to dismantle ideas and thoughts as they begin to enter the
coral of your mind.
When you are praying,
you cannot allow yourself to think about your to do list or the latest movie
you saw, rather, you are focusing on the glory of your Father. And when the enemy tries to distract you through
outlandish thoughts or innocent small ideas, you crush them upon arrival.
Christian, if you are distracted
in your prayers, it is not because you do not have the gift of prayer, but because
you are not being watchful in your prayers.
Your enemy is looking for ways to devour you, don’t think that you are
invisible because you are on your knees.
