Obstacles to Prayer
Like all real and good things that take practice, prayer doesn’t always come easily. In fact, as we grow in prayer, we can expect to have seasons where it is downright difficult to pray. There are a lot of reasons for this. When the newness of a habit begins to wear off and we settle into a pattern, we begin to experience new challenges to our disciplines of prayer. It is important for us to remember that difficulties in prayer are not necessarily a sign we are doing something wrong. In fact, experiencing difficulty in prayer can be a sign that we are doing exactly what we need to do. Here are some of the common difficulties that face a person who is learning to pray:
Dryness describes the times when we just aren’t feeling it during prayer. Prayer can feel like a chore, like we’re just going through the motions. We experience a dip in our enthusiasm and don’t receive the same exciting feelings we did earlier on in the practice. While this can sometimes mean the presence of something bad in our lives, much more often it means that we have actually established the habit and it is becoming a normal part of our lives. That’s a good thing. Many of us have been taught that if something is routine, it isn’t special or worthwhile. We get persuaded that only things that are spontaneous and immediately gratifying are authentic. That isn’t true, as any mature relationship will reveal. Just because I tell my kids ‘I love you’ when I leave for work each morning doesn’t mean it’s not important or that it doesn’t help the relationship even if I happen not to be enthusiastic about saying it on a given day. Many good things are not spectacular all the time–they are good for us to do anyway.
Seasonality describes the regular ups and downs of the spiritual life that are affected by the yearly cycle of our lives. There are seasons of life when it is harder to focus on prayer than others (during busy times, stressful times, times of personal crisis, etc.). It is okay to acknowledge that we are not able to do the very most and best that we would like all the time. Seasonality makes us honest that our prayer sometimes has to take a different shape or intensity, and that’s okay. We should not use this as an excuse to become lazy, but neither should we forget that different stages of life are, in fact, different. When we can admit this without shame, we can find it an opportunity for creative adaptation of our patterns of prayer to meet the needs of these seasons. We can come to experience God in new ways when we seek Him through life’s changes.
Stability is a discipline found in Christian spiritual writings going back for many centuries. It describes the habit of not making unnecessary changes in our lives so that we can learn to be patiently attentive and resilient to what is actually happening around us. We will talk more about this in the future, but for now we might note that those times of dryness or seasonality may be precisely the way God is trying to grow us into maturity. Difficulty may not be a sign things are going poorly–they may be a sign that we’re doing exactly the right thing and need to keep it up.
Even so, prayer is not a self-help project. We cannot fall into an unhealthy rigorism that suggests to us that if we only try hard enough we will not have to endure any difficulties. That produces in us a kind of toxic view of ourselves that tempts us to think that by our own efforts we can become perfect in our relationship with God. This is a false view of self. When we give into that temptation, though, certain other obstacles draw nearer to us.
Legalism is a kind of perfectionism we apply outwardly to others when it comes to devotion. It is the tendency to turn our “Rule” into “rules” that, if not followed, make a person bad or unworthy of love from God or their community. Legalism is a toxic spiritual habit because it produces pride in us as we go about evaluating the sincerity of someone else’s prayer. More often than not, though, legalism is how people respond to their fear of losing control and feeling powerless. It can be tempting to grab for control to give us a sense of strength when we otherwise would feel vulnerable. But legalism blinds us, in the end, to our own relationship with God, and so makes us enforcers while we grow hollow on the inside.
Scrupulosity is legalism that we turn inwardly on ourselves. It is a hyper-self-focus that turns into an attempt to perfect ourselves. Over time, we cease to rely on others and on God because we start to only trust ourselves. Like legalism, scrupulosity is about control and a lack of trust that others can help us or that we are not enough of ourselves to help ourselves. Scrupulosity manifests as an obsession with rules as we create tests we always fail and prove again and again how unworthy we are to be loved. Like legalism, scrupulosity turns us hollow and eventually results in despair.
Laxity is a kind of carelessness with our pattern of prayer. It appears within us as a creeping refusal to continue in discipline and diligence as we grow in love for God and others. It sometimes pops up as the voice that says, “it doesn’t matter what I do” and can even put on the religious-sounding words of “well God is just going to do the work, He doesn’t need me.” But God tailors His grace within us to call upon our participation with His work. Our decisions and actions matter, and He wants us to remain active participants in the relationship we have with Him. Laxity is just laziness, it can also be what’s left after we grow exhausted from legalism or scrupulosity–eventually they make us feel like: I’m never going to get it right, so why even try?
Humility is the answer to all of these obstacles. It is the posture of the heart from which we live as though we are never enough of ourselves to help and save ourselves, and also as though we are sought after and loved by a God who will do all that is necessary to draw us near and make us whole. In short, it is a return to prayer that says simply to God: “I’m not enough to do both parts of this relationship. You’re here, and I’m here, and I need you to be you so that I can be fully me. May it always be so.”