Excuses for Not Praying

National Day of Prayer_wide_t

In A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers D.A. Carson spends an entire chapter answering common excuses for not praying.

I find his answers to be simultaneously strong and comforting, so I am replicating his summaries to each excuse in hopes they will challenge you as well.

5 COMMON EXCUSES FOR NOT PRAYING9780851109763-carson-call-spiritual-reformation

Excuse #1: “I am Too Busy to Pray”

It matters little whether you are the mother of active children who drain away your energy, an important executive in a major multinational corporation, a graduate student cramming fro impending comprehensives, a plumber working overtime to put your children through college, or a pastor of a large church putting in ninety-hour weeks: at the end of the day, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Cut something out.

Excuse #2: “I Feel Too Dry Spiritually to Pray”

God insists that we learn not to hide behind our feelings of dryness, behind our chronic unbelief, behind our lapses into discouragement. He wants us to learn to trust him, to learn to persevere in prayer. In short, in prayer as in other areas of life, God wants us to trust and obey.

Excuse #3: “I Am Too Bitter to Pray”

We can look at this matter of bitterness not only from the vantage of those who need forgiveness, but from the vantage of those who have received it. The Bible tells us, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:31-32). In light of the matchless forgiveness we have received because Christ bore our guilt, what conceivable right do we have to withhold forgiveness?

Excuse #4: “I Am Too Ashamed to Pray”

Our sense of shame can scarcely be an adequate ground to excuse our prayerlessness. Rather, it ought to be a goad that drives us back to the only one who can forgive us and grant us utter absolution, back to the freedom of conscience and the boldness of prayer that follow in the wake of the joyful knowledge that we have been accepted by a holy God because of his grace.

Excuse #5: “I Am Content with Mediocrity”

Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him, but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to back Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher’s sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life. Such Christians are content with mediocrity . . . God’s response is utterly uncompromising: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:7-10).