Craig T. Owens

I shared this quote from C.S. Lewis this morning—

“Well, let’s now at any rate come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us…. Now the disquieting thing is not simply that we skimp and begrudge the duty of prayer. The really disquieting thing is it should be numbered among duties at all. For we believe that we were created ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ And if the few, the very few, minutes we now spend on intercourse with God are a burden to us rather than a delight, what then?… The painful effort which prayer involves is not proof that we are doing something we were not created to do. If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Someday, please God, it will be.”

Why don’t we pray more? Why does it seem like prayer is not a regular part of our lives?

Perhaps… We don’t know what to pray. The Bible is an amazing prayer book! Just use the words of Scripture to form your prayers. You can use the psalms, or go to the New Testament where Jesus or the other New Testament writers say something like, “This is my prayer….” Borrow their words, personalize them, and it will be an incredible prayer.

Maybe… We don’t have time to pray. We always have the Holy Spirit with us, and He reminds us of the Word and helps us pray. So we can pray anytime, anywhere, no matter what we are doing.

It could be… We run out of things to say. The Bible gives us so many things on which to meditate. This word means to mull over, or to even talk to ourselves. Combining Bible reading and prayer helps us continue to talk to God all throughout the day.

Try these simple steps and you will begin to realize, as C.S. Lewis said: “If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Someday, please God, it will be.”