I Want To Pray At Least Thirty Minutes, But Unable To Pray Even For Three Minutes, What Must Be The Reason?
Question: Brother, I want to pray for at least 30 minutes on a daily basis, but I am unable to pray for even 3 minutes. What must be the reason? Can you please guide me. Do I come under a witchcraft attack?
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name!
First of all I should tell you that you that you are not alone in this struggle of prayerlessness, but I and many many many other saints of God whom I know personally too, many times struggle to pray and concentrate for even few minutes because of a lot of distraction in thoughts and a kind of spiritual oppression by the evil one. Satan know that if you pray, he cannot stop you because it will set God's power in motion against him supernaturally. So the evil one knows that if he can make you stop praying by distracting you, then nothing from your side will be a threat against him and his kingdom.
So what does the Bible say regarding this issue we will see from the Scripture? The apostle Paul revealed regarding this important issue regarding prayerlessness saying, "25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. 26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom 8:25-27). The above verses point to the fact that we hope to see what God says even when it does not happen immediately, with persistence in believing which makes us do something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success we stick on to believe that God will bring what He has promised to us in His word or in a vision to pass. Paul the apostle says that likewise, in prayer we soon end up becoming clueless as to what to pray for, as we should pray, because of our fleshly weaknesses to get distracted by our own thoughts, thoughts from the enemy of our soul [(i.e.) Satan & his minions] and from the environment around us, but the great comfort and spiritual reminder that he further gives point us to a supernatural personal power that is within us to overcome this difficulty in prayer. It is the Holy Spirit of God who is within us and makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God as He is the only one who searches our heart, who also know the will of God, who knows how to connect the need of our heart to the will of God like a lawyer who prepares a case to win according to the rule of law and goes before a judge to get a verdict in our favor, and then likewise exactly pray to God for the exact need in the way God wants us to pray in the will of God which will bring result and favor from God because of being heard by him. Sometimes if you notice, when we cannot pray and are in battle against the impasse of the evil one, suddenly we feel and hear groanings which causes panting from our heart to connect to our mouth to come out which cannot be uttered with words. This groan is nothing but a prayer that goes to God in emergency through us. Such prayers of groan in our difficulty will pull out the child of God out of prayerlessness with a endowment of a sudden anointing to pray from heaven. Praise the Lord!
That is why when we cannot pray at all being distracted, we should go to a private place of our room and stay there silent before God and should ask and invite the Holy Spirit saying, "Lord Holy Spirit I love you, I do not know what to pray for, please pray through me! ...[and then stay silently before God (Psa 46:10)] until He brings a burden to pray, thoughts to pray for, and even groans that cannot be uttered which will break the impasse of prayerlessness."
1) START PRAYER WITH THANKFULNESS AND PRAISE: Always start your prayer with thankfulness from your heart, put in words of thankfulness for simple things like a beautiful day, rest, friends, families, food, clothes, peace of God, joy, etc....and again start to praise God for all the simple things of life as we have seen (Psa 100:4; 22:3). This will bring the Presence of God to come strongly on you to make you focus on things that God wants you to pray for. This is the attitude of preparation for a prayer to continue for atleast half an hour. If you start rightly, you will continue longer and end rightly.
2) MAKE PRAYER A HABIT: Then make prayer a habit daily, anything you practice despite difficulty or delay in achieving success, if you continue for 21 days mark, according to psychologists, it becomes a habit ingrained in you. Jesus developed the habit of getting up early before dawn and he used to pray daily before sun would come up for the day to start (Mark 1:35). Take effort and make it a habit to learn from Jesus.
3) CHOOSE YOUR ENVIRONMENT: Jesus told us to go in to our room, when we have shut the door, [i.e.] with no one around to distract us, then told us to pray to the Father who is in the secret place, the Father God who sees and hears such secret prayers will be pleased with us of our seeking him privately undisturbed without distractions and then will openly reward us for all to see (Matt 6:6). Susanna Wesley the mother of John and Charles Wesley, who went on to become great evangelists, revivalists and theologians, once expressed that her children knew to be quiet whenever they saw their mother throw her apron over her head – they understood this was Susanna’s private time of prayer with the Lord. If such a busy mother with so many kids to take care of can find a creative way to find a private time with the Lord, why not us? May God help us to have our private time without fail consistently. We can never be too busy to find time for God, lest He find no time for us.
4) NEVER LOSE HEART: Jesus beautifully said to the end of end time generation saying, "men always ought to pray and not lose heart," and spoke of a parable and explained about a persistent widow who got justice from a ungodly judge, how much more God the righteous judge will bring justice to us against our adversary the devil when he tries to oppress us with his prayerlessness and distractions to keep us from fulfilling the purpose God has for our lives. In other words, the key Jesus spoke for a persistent prayer life is to never lose heart, one day if we miss our private prayer, the next day we should try and succeed. If the next day we try and fail, ask the help of the Holy Spirit and try the next day further. Only by our persistence of faith we can develop a prayer life that is consistent and powerful against all the evil enemies of our soul and spirit (Luke 18:1-8).
5) FAST AND PRAY: Fasting makes our flesh to line up to our spirit (Mark 14:38), and then there are certain type of devils that only gets fearful to run away from us only when we begin to fast and pray which builds great faith in us of the possibilities of God (Matt 17:20-21). When we fast, automatically our flesh starts to cry out and we add our voice to it and start to cry out further to God (Matt 6:16-18), that is when, we get aligned to the ways of God by suppressing the flesh (Isa 58:5, 6). At least once a week may be on Saturday night or any one day, set your mind to fast and seek the Lord every week for victory to be experienced consistently through out the rest of the week.
Praise the Lord!
The above reasons that we have seen are the main hindrance to prayerlessness. If we could with the Help of the Holy Spirit overcome the above hindrances, soon prayer will become a habit that we will continue to enjoy in our lives. I personally think right from the Scripture that God promises to a believer, that there can be no witchcraft that can work against a genuine believer, when you fear it, it will work against you. Satan works through our fear, so do not either learn or hear the ways of pagans who are involved in such activities, and it will never be able to touch your prayer life (Num 23:23, 21).
Much Blessings....
Answer: Greetings in Jesus wonderful name!
First of all I should tell you that you that you are not alone in this struggle of prayerlessness, but I and many many many other saints of God whom I know personally too, many times struggle to pray and concentrate for even few minutes because of a lot of distraction in thoughts and a kind of spiritual oppression by the evil one. Satan know that if you pray, he cannot stop you because it will set God's power in motion against him supernaturally. So the evil one knows that if he can make you stop praying by distracting you, then nothing from your side will be a threat against him and his kingdom.
So what does the Bible say regarding this issue we will see from the Scripture? The apostle Paul revealed regarding this important issue regarding prayerlessness saying, "25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. 26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom 8:25-27). The above verses point to the fact that we hope to see what God says even when it does not happen immediately, with persistence in believing which makes us do something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success we stick on to believe that God will bring what He has promised to us in His word or in a vision to pass. Paul the apostle says that likewise, in prayer we soon end up becoming clueless as to what to pray for, as we should pray, because of our fleshly weaknesses to get distracted by our own thoughts, thoughts from the enemy of our soul [(i.e.) Satan & his minions] and from the environment around us, but the great comfort and spiritual reminder that he further gives point us to a supernatural personal power that is within us to overcome this difficulty in prayer. It is the Holy Spirit of God who is within us and makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God as He is the only one who searches our heart, who also know the will of God, who knows how to connect the need of our heart to the will of God like a lawyer who prepares a case to win according to the rule of law and goes before a judge to get a verdict in our favor, and then likewise exactly pray to God for the exact need in the way God wants us to pray in the will of God which will bring result and favor from God because of being heard by him. Sometimes if you notice, when we cannot pray and are in battle against the impasse of the evil one, suddenly we feel and hear groanings which causes panting from our heart to connect to our mouth to come out which cannot be uttered with words. This groan is nothing but a prayer that goes to God in emergency through us. Such prayers of groan in our difficulty will pull out the child of God out of prayerlessness with a endowment of a sudden anointing to pray from heaven. Praise the Lord!
That is why when we cannot pray at all being distracted, we should go to a private place of our room and stay there silent before God and should ask and invite the Holy Spirit saying, "Lord Holy Spirit I love you, I do not know what to pray for, please pray through me! ...[and then stay silently before God (Psa 46:10)] until He brings a burden to pray, thoughts to pray for, and even groans that cannot be uttered which will break the impasse of prayerlessness."
1) START PRAYER WITH THANKFULNESS AND PRAISE: Always start your prayer with thankfulness from your heart, put in words of thankfulness for simple things like a beautiful day, rest, friends, families, food, clothes, peace of God, joy, etc....and again start to praise God for all the simple things of life as we have seen (Psa 100:4; 22:3). This will bring the Presence of God to come strongly on you to make you focus on things that God wants you to pray for. This is the attitude of preparation for a prayer to continue for atleast half an hour. If you start rightly, you will continue longer and end rightly.
2) MAKE PRAYER A HABIT: Then make prayer a habit daily, anything you practice despite difficulty or delay in achieving success, if you continue for 21 days mark, according to psychologists, it becomes a habit ingrained in you. Jesus developed the habit of getting up early before dawn and he used to pray daily before sun would come up for the day to start (Mark 1:35). Take effort and make it a habit to learn from Jesus.
3) CHOOSE YOUR ENVIRONMENT: Jesus told us to go in to our room, when we have shut the door, [i.e.] with no one around to distract us, then told us to pray to the Father who is in the secret place, the Father God who sees and hears such secret prayers will be pleased with us of our seeking him privately undisturbed without distractions and then will openly reward us for all to see (Matt 6:6). Susanna Wesley the mother of John and Charles Wesley, who went on to become great evangelists, revivalists and theologians, once expressed that her children knew to be quiet whenever they saw their mother throw her apron over her head – they understood this was Susanna’s private time of prayer with the Lord. If such a busy mother with so many kids to take care of can find a creative way to find a private time with the Lord, why not us? May God help us to have our private time without fail consistently. We can never be too busy to find time for God, lest He find no time for us.
4) NEVER LOSE HEART: Jesus beautifully said to the end of end time generation saying, "men always ought to pray and not lose heart," and spoke of a parable and explained about a persistent widow who got justice from a ungodly judge, how much more God the righteous judge will bring justice to us against our adversary the devil when he tries to oppress us with his prayerlessness and distractions to keep us from fulfilling the purpose God has for our lives. In other words, the key Jesus spoke for a persistent prayer life is to never lose heart, one day if we miss our private prayer, the next day we should try and succeed. If the next day we try and fail, ask the help of the Holy Spirit and try the next day further. Only by our persistence of faith we can develop a prayer life that is consistent and powerful against all the evil enemies of our soul and spirit (Luke 18:1-8).
5) FAST AND PRAY: Fasting makes our flesh to line up to our spirit (Mark 14:38), and then there are certain type of devils that only gets fearful to run away from us only when we begin to fast and pray which builds great faith in us of the possibilities of God (Matt 17:20-21). When we fast, automatically our flesh starts to cry out and we add our voice to it and start to cry out further to God (Matt 6:16-18), that is when, we get aligned to the ways of God by suppressing the flesh (Isa 58:5, 6). At least once a week may be on Saturday night or any one day, set your mind to fast and seek the Lord every week for victory to be experienced consistently through out the rest of the week.
Praise the Lord!
The above reasons that we have seen are the main hindrance to prayerlessness. If we could with the Help of the Holy Spirit overcome the above hindrances, soon prayer will become a habit that we will continue to enjoy in our lives. I personally think right from the Scripture that God promises to a believer, that there can be no witchcraft that can work against a genuine believer, when you fear it, it will work against you. Satan works through our fear, so do not either learn or hear the ways of pagans who are involved in such activities, and it will never be able to touch your prayer life (Num 23:23, 21).
Much Blessings....
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