David Diga Hernandez - 5 Destructive Habits That Keep You From Prayer

Number one, living a distracted life. In Matthew 6:6 Jesus says, «But you, when you pray, go into your room and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly». One of the reasons that Jesus told us to go to the secret place is to help remove distraction from our lives. All too often, we exchange the heavenly for the earthly, the spiritual for the secular. God wants to give us encounters in His presence. God wants to speak to us. What do we do instead? We trade what He wants to give us for what the world wants to give us. We trade His voice for more time scrolling down the social media feed, we’d rather hear what’s on YouTube than what’s coming from Heaven. And because of the pace of life in this generation, we think that everything comes on demand at our convenience, right when we want it. And because we think that way, we imagine that the same applies to God. But we have to remember He is the Lord, we are the servants. We must learn to honor the Lord’s presence with our time. We must learn to honor the Lord’s presence with our attention. And attention is a form of worship. We must learn to carve out times in the day where we become attentive to His voice. We cannot live so fast paced that we never give a moment’s pause in which the Holy Spirit can speak to us. If that’s your prayer, if you want the Lord to help you to focus in prayer, if you want distraction to be removed from you, that you might give Him the proper amount of attention then write this in the comment section right now. Let it be your public prayer. Help me focus. Write those three simple words.

Number two, letting guilt convince you to not pray. All too often believers approach God wondering if He even wants to hear from them. Because of the sins of the past, because of the mistakes they made beforehand, some believers believe that God is angry with them or they imagine that God loves them, but He doesn’t like them. They imagine that His patience is like a thin thread that’s just about to snap, and that they’re right on the verge of having God removed from their lives and that He’s gonna take the Holy Spirit with him. But here’s what the Bible says in Hebrews 9:13–14, «Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God for by the power of the eternal spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins». Now, look here in verse 14. Let’s look at this again. «Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds». He purifies the conscience. Why? So that we can worship the living God. You cannot approach God properly with a dirty conscience. This is why it’s so important that we embrace repentance, and then the forgiveness of God because the enemy acts as the accuser. The moment you go to pray, the moment you begin to seek the face of the Lord, the enemy comes and begins to accuse you of things you’ve done in your past. He begins to accuse you of the mistakes that you’ve made. And using your mistakes against you, he tries to convince you that God doesn’t want to hear from you. He tries to convince you that you’re the one exception that cannot be forgiven and that heaven is shut to you. He tries to convince you that you’re not worthy to ask for forgiveness, that you’re not worthy to approach your heavenly Father. Now, there may be some truth in that, but we have to remember that the blood of Jesus applies to even those who knew better. Let me say that again. The blood of Jesus applies to even those who knew better. So 1 John 1:9 tells us, «If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness». He’s faithful in that, He does it consistently. He’s just in that He does it based upon the sacrifice that Christ made to you. Stop allowing the assault of the enemy, which is accusation to prevent you from prayer. How much time could you save yourself? How much heartache could you save yourself in prayer if instead of wondering if God has forgiven you, if instead of begging God to forgive you, you simply embrace the fact that He already has and therefore you’re free to move into the depths of prayer unhindered by your past.

Number three, overthinking your prayer time. In Psalm 51:17, the Bible says, «The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject the broken and repentant heart, O God». So the Lord is looking at the heart. We see another example of this in 1 Samuel 16:7, «But the Lord said to Samuel, don’t judge by his appearance or height for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart». You may approach prayer and have a list in your mind. You may wonder, when do I do spiritual warfare? When do I intercede from my lost loved ones? When do I pray in tongues? When do I present my request to God? When do I worship? And you’re trying to apply everything that you’ve learned about prayer. Maybe you’re trying to apply what you’ve read in the scripture, or what you’ve read in books. Maybe you’re trying to outline your prayer life, so that you can be most effective. But this isn’t the way to approach God at all. God doesn’t respond to systems. He responds to sincerity. Imagine if I were to take my wife out on a date and tell her, okay, we’re gonna go to dinner and we’re gonna be there for an hour and a half, and for the first half hour, let’s talk about when we first began to date, and then the second half hour, let’s talk about how we love parenting our daughter. And then the final half hour, let’s talk about our future, and specifically let’s talk about any future place we might want to live. If I outlined our dates like that, Jess wouldn’t really enjoy herself. Why? Because that would be a systematic approach to a relationship. When you go to pray, if you’re so distracted by how you ought to pray, then you’re missing the whole point of prayer. Especially for overthinkers, this might be difficult to overcome because many times we have sincere and good intentions. We want to please God. We don’t want to make Him angry. We don’t want Him to be upset with us. We wanna be effective in prayer. But remember this, the Lord looks at the heart. So instead of obsessing about how much time you should pray or in what order you should pray certain things, how about you just enjoy the presence of the Lord? How about you just allow the Holy Spirit to gently guide you as you set aside whatever time you can to pray.

Number four, waiting on your feelings to make you believe God hears you. So often believers approach the Lord and because they don’t sense His presence physically, because they don’t sense His presence emotionally, they begin to panic and wonder if God has distanced Himself from them. I didn’t feel God, is He angry with me? The last time I had an encounter with God, where I felt Him physically was years ago, what’s wrong with me? Did I say something that displeased Him? Did I do something that displeased Him? Did I open some door that I’m not aware of? Am I making some mistake that I don’t realize? And because of this, we begin to obsess over this idea of feeling God. And here’s the problem. Sometimes an intense desire to have an encounter with God can itself become a distraction, or a barrier between you and an encounter with God. And so people obsess about this idea and they freak out. They become paranoid. It consumes their thoughts. They can’t help but wonder why can’t I feel God? Or why am I not experiencing what they talked about in their story? Or why am I not experiencing what I read about in old books about revival and church history? Or why am I not experiencing what I heard about in some YouTube video or a podcast, or reading about online? And we begin to try to compare our relationship with God, with the stories that we’ve heard and therefore, we’re waiting for our feelings to confirm something that we should already know by faith. We’re waiting for our feelings to tell us what the word already tells us. You know what that tells me? When you wait for your feelings to tell you what the word already tells you, that’s proof that you have more faith in your feelings than you do in the word of God. Hebrews 11:6 says this, «But without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For He that comes to God must believe that he is, and that He’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him». Stop waiting for your feelings to confirm the nearness of God and just take Him at His word. His word is truth.

Number five, keeping track of your prayer stats. Now, I know that sounds almost comical. I can just picture someone with a piece of paper logging their prayer times, and keeping track of how their prayer life went. And really, sometimes this is the religious approach that many believers take to prayer. But here’s what the Bible says in Matthew 6:7, «When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again». They thought that God would hear them simply because they prayed again and again. They thought that God would hear them because of how good they prayed. Some people don’t have faith in God, they have faith in their prayer life. They have faith in their ability to seek God. Some people don’t have faith in God’s speaking, they have faith in their own ability to hear God speak. And this is a prime example of what happens when we become self-reliant, instead of reliant upon the Holy Spirit’s power. We begin to track our prayer lives and count it for us if it’s good and count it against ourselves if it’s bad. Now, this can only produce one of two things. Either this will produce despair or this will produce pride. This will produce despair if you feel like you’re not keeping the stats like you want to keep them, and it will produce pride if you feel like you are an expert, you’re keeping all the prayer points like you thought you should. Look, Lord, I prayed three hours a day for a whole month straight. Look, Lord, I prayed consistently without distraction, and therefore You should answer my prayers. Well, that is faith in Your prayer life, and not faith in God. So let’s be rid of this notion that we have to log certain amounts of prayer in before God will be pleased with us, because then we become reliant again upon our ability to pray. You know, I don’t even really track how long I pray. People ask me all the time, how often do you pray and how long do you pray when you pray? And I don’t like to answer that question because first of all, that’s between me and the Lord. And second of all, I don’t really even keep track myself. There are moments I’m sure where I pray for hours, and then there are other moments where I probably pray half hour to an hour. And on days where possibly I’m traveling, I might only have 15 to 20 minutes to actually devote to just prayer alone. But I don’t track my prayer because my relationship with God is not based on metrics, it’s based on faith. It’s based on His grace. Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t commit to prayer, and this especially doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t commit to extended periods of time in prayer, this just means that if we’re keeping track of our stats, that we’ll either despair or become prideful depending upon the results. Some believers don’t wanna pray because they messed up their stats. In other words, they pray Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then they miss Thursday. And because they have this religious approach to prayer, they won’t pray Friday because they think that God is angry with them or that they don’t deserve to approach God. They’re bothered at the fact that they feel like they have to start all over again. So they become so discouraged by having missed a day of prayer that they miss more days of prayer. And this just shows us why it’s so unhealthy to take a statistical approach to prayer. Again, God doesn’t respond to systems, but to sincerity. Now, we’re gonna pray here, and I’m gonna pray that the Holy Spirit would help to guide you and help to remind you of these mistakes, so that you don’t keep making them.