You pray to pray more

Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), but you can’t pray if you’re not praying. 

You don’t read prayer books to pray more. You don’t preach and listen to sermons to pray more. I began to preach in teenage years and preached my way into the seminary.¹ Now, after more than a decade of preaching the gospel and now being a fulltime church pastor, I admit that prayer is more laborious than preaching. When I preach, it moves people through the conviction of the Holy Spirit. When I pray, it moves God.

To preach and prepare sermons on prayer or to read prayer books is easy, but it’s not easy to pray. To spend ample time praying “is a problem for many today”.² Prayer has become a neglected practice in the Christian Church, irrespective of a Christian’s affiliation with a particular denomination. But the only way to overcome our own prayerlessness is to pray more. 

I’ve prayed despite my struggle to pray and this experience has taught me that the only way to learn how to pray more is to just pray more. I don’t pray to master all the intricacies of prayer, but I do pray to know God more. Prayer is the pathway to intimacy with God (Daniel 6:10; Psalms 55:17; Colossians 4:2). Theologian Dr Haddon Robinson aptly wrote, “Out of my experience I have learned that you cannot simply ‘say your prayers’. Prayer—real prayer—is tough, hard business.”³

When I say that I find it more difficult to pray than to preach, it doesn’t mean that I don’t pray or that I don’t like praying, but to offer prayer with fervor is something that I struggle with. I thank God that He has still answered the prayers that I’ve offered despite my struggle. Struggle itself is part of the process of learning how to pray. Theologian Dr DA Carson wrote, “I doubt if there is any Christian who has not sometimes found it difficult to pray. In itself this is neither surprising nor depressing: it is not surprising because we are still pilgrims with many lessons to learn; it is not depressing because struggling with such matters is part of the way we learn.”⁴

No-one has ever learned how to pray or gotten in the habit of praying without struggling. No Christian can graduate in the school of prayer; everyone is a lifelong learner.

Prayer is work

To Jesus, prayer was an arduous task. Luke 22:44 says, “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” Jesus sweat blood when He prayed. When was the last time you sweat blood in your prayer? Prayer is serious business. Christ prayed with intense earnestness, with teary eyes (Hebrews 5:7) and with humility. To Christ, prayer was not an option, but His lifeline.

The chronicled account of Jesus’ prevailing prayer life rebukes my superficial approach to prayer. Christ “viewed prayer as the secret source of spiritual strength and the reservoir of real refreshment. Even when He was very busy, He was never too busy to pray. If nothing else would get done that day, prayer would get done.”⁵ Christ’s prayer life challenges me to pray more.

We may read books on prayer or preach about prayer, or we may memorise Scripture or quotes about prayer, but none of these things are a substitute for prayer. 

Many Christians excel at all these without actually praying. In the school of prayer, all are learners; only Jesus is a master. That’s why Jesus’ disciples enquired of Him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). This request demonstrates that all of us can learn when it comes to prayer.

The subject of prayer is big

The subject of prayer is deeper than the deepest oceans, wider than the vast universe, higher than the uppermost heavens. Even the most prolific writers and preachers can’t proclaim everything about prayer. No wonder “when a Princeton Doctoral student asked, ‘What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?’ Albert Einstein replied, ‘Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer.’”⁶

Prayer is the ongoing dissertation that involves every Christian and there will never come a time when anyone will know everything about prayer. Evangelist and author Leonard Ravenhill wrote, “The greatest undiscovered area in the resources of God is the place of prayer.”⁷ The greatest untapped power in the resources of God is prayer. 

We don’t know much about prayer and we don’t even know how to pray because the truth is, to pray “is an unnatural activity”.⁸ Yet the Holy Spirit helps us to pray (Romans 8:27). Yet we pray little because of “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16) weakens us to pray. Christians who have a deeper walk with God have a deeper prayer life. 

Pray to know God

The more we pray, the more we will want to pray. The only way to pray more is to pray more, because prayer has no substitute. Christians learn how to pray by praying. A Christ-saturated Christian will pray to know God more rather than expecting God to give us quickly what we temporarily need. Preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote, “A prayerless soul is a Christless soul.”⁹

It’s tragic that many people focus on God’s providence more in their prayer time than God Himself. As a result, they don’t know God intimately as God would want them to know Him. The desire to know God intimately grows more as we pray more. Ellen White rightly wrote, “Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him.”¹⁰

Remember: The more we pray, the more we will be in touch with God. The only way to pray more is to simply pray more. 

1. I attended both Sonoma Adventist College (2019) and Pacific Adventist University (2020). ↩︎
2. James Packer, Praying the Lord’s Prayer (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2007), p. 13. ↩︎
3. Haddon Robinson, Jesus’ Blueprint for Prayer (Discovery Series: n.d.), p. 7. ↩︎
4. DA Carson, Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Formation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 1992), second edition, preface, p. ix. ↩︎
5. Dave Earley, Pastoral Leadership Is . . . How to Shepherd God’s people with Passion and Confidence (Nashville, Tennessee: Academic, 2012), p. 79. ↩︎
6. Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2006), p. 11. ↩︎
7. Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries (Raven Hill Books: n.d.), p. 156. ↩︎
8. Bill Hybels, Too Busy Not to Pray: Slowing Down to be with God (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), p. 7. ↩︎
9. Charles H. Spurgeon, Spurgeon on Prayer: How to Converse with God (Alachua, Florida: Bridge-Logos, 2009), p. 47. ↩︎
10.  Ellen White, Steps to Christ, (Chicago, Illinois: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1896) p. 93. ↩︎

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Justin Kundalin pastors the Teremanda Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Western Highlands Mission in PNG.