A Simple Secret to Praying Consistently When You Don’t Feel Like It

The secret to praying when you don’t feel like it is to pray, anyway. That’s it. Not often easy, but simple.

I’m going to suggest some aids you can use to overcome prayerlessness, but this has to be said loud and clear: To build a consistent prayer life you must ignore your emotions and pray whether you feel like it or not.

You build a prayer life by praying without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17), becoming devoted to prayer (Romans 12:12), whether you feel like praying or not.

Prayer is Not Something We Naturally Like to Do

For many Christians, prayer is a difficult task because our flesh hates to pray and we’ve not learned to discipline that flesh to make prayer a habit. The flesh enjoys distractions. Social media, entertainment, godless chatter… anything but prayer.

So if you wait to feel like praying before you pray, you will have a yo-yo prayer experience. Hot today, cold tomorrow, then hot again, then cold again. Why? Because in seasons when you feel convicted for being prayerless, you’d revive the prayer exercise only for that conviction to wear off after a few days and you slip back into old prayerlessness. Swinging along with your emotions.

It Takes Self-discipline to Build a Praying Life

For prayer to become a habit, you must be intentional about praying every single day. You can’t afford to let your emotions dictate. Learn to discipline your body (1 Corinthians 9:27) and lead your emotions instead of letting them lead you.

But some caution.

You cannot discipline the flesh through the power of the flesh. It’s not a gritted teeth self-willed determination. If you try to discipline your flesh in your strength, you’ll find it burdensome.

You can only discipline the flesh through the grace of God (Hebrews 4:16). Ask God for strength and trust him daily to help you build a prayer life.

Prayer Does not Have to be an Exciting, Heavenly Experience to be Effective

If each time we prayed we had a fireworks encounter with God, I’m sure many Christians would be prayer experts. But prayer can be boring. There are seasons it feels like you’re talking into space or to yourself. It seems God is silent. He feels miles away, indifferent to your prayers.

If you are not careful, this will discourage you from continuing in constant prayer. Instead of abiding in faith that God is with you and hears you, you’d stop praying until a season when you can feel his presence or feel he’s listening.

Prayer Aids to Help You Build or Maintain a Praying Life When You Don’t Feel Like It

Try one or more of these suggestions to overcome prayerlessness and reluctance to prayer.

1.     Fix a Special Time for Daily Prayer

This should not exclude unplanned prayer when the need arises.

The benefit of having a dedicated time for daily prayer is consistency and habit. The disadvantage is that you can easily make it a legalistic exercise instead of a special time to spend with the Lord. But not having a time for a daily prayer makes you less likely to pray.

Choose a time you can maintain long-term. An ideal time will be when you have no distractions, and your body and mind are not tired from the day’s busyness. Stick to the time to build a habit. Even when you don’t feel like praying at that time, still pray.

2.     Fast from food and other distractions

Sometimes, reining in your emotions when you don’t feel like praying will need more than easy prayer ‘hacks’. Fasting is one effective way to overcome reluctance towards prayer, especially if your prayerlessness has been persistent.

When you can’t just bring yourself to pray, try to fast for a day or a few days. Your body will resist the discipline, but if you persevere, you’ll reap the fruits.

The benefits of fasting include:

• Fasting helps you to pray earnestly.
• Fasting makes you more in tune with God.
• Fasting afflicts and humbles the flesh, lessening its dominance over your decisions.

It’s unfortunate that some well-meaning believers today think fasting is legalism or something the apostles and early disciples never practiced. Throughout church history, believers who wanted more of God made fasting a part of their lives.

3.     Listen to Good Sermons

One reason you may not feel like praying is that your mind hasn’t been filled with thoughts about God. A good sermon, especially one on prayer, walking with God, loving God, etc., can help your mind to refocus and make praying not feel like a burden.

4.     Listen to (or Sing Along) Worship Music

Just like a good sermon, worship music that’s focused on who God is and what he’s doing can help calm your distracted mind and bring it to want to pray. Have a playlist you can soak in for a good length of time until your mind is filled with thoughts about God again.

5.     Recite Relevant Psalms

Maybe you lack words in a particular situation? Let the Psalms help you pray (you can tweak the words to fit your unique situation). Discouraged, anxious, lonely? You might find Psalm 42:5-11 or psalms of lament and psalms of trust helpful in pouring out your heart to the Lord.

Or maybe you just want to spend more time with the Lord but you have no [more] words and your mind is wandering? Why not try Psalm 8? And there are many such praise hymns in the book of Psalms.

6.     Make a Prayer Request List

Lack of motivation to pray goes with lack of what to pray. Having a prayer request list, situations and people you can pray for, will help you know what to pray.

When you don’t feel like praying, just go ahead and pray, anyway. Ask God for grace to be prayerful. If you don’t have words, recite a psalm or a prayer. If you need motivation, maybe listen to a sermon and some worship music. This can help rein in your emotions and enable you to pray. If you don’t know what to pray for, make a prayer request list. The bottom line is to do whatever you can to overcome your reluctance towards prayer so that you build a consistent prayer life.