David Diga Hernandez - How to Overcome Distraction in Prayer

If prayer is to be effective, it must be focused. The wandering mind keeps the believer bound to the natural realm; the excess of distracting thoughts is too heavy to allow for heavenly ascension. Now you’ll notice that when you go to pray, one of the assaults that the enemy uses is distraction. Have you ever noticed that you can go throughout your day without a distracting thought, and then all of a sudden, when you go to pray—when you finally say, «I’m going to commit this moment now to the Lord, that I might focus on Him, that I might seek His face in prayer"—suddenly all of these thoughts begin to bombard your mind? Distractions, the cares of this world, responsibilities, relationship issues, questions, doubts, and concerns; thoughts just begin to wander through your mind, and it can be very difficult to grab hold of those thoughts and pull them into subjection to the Spirit.

What begins to happen is that as you’re trying to pray, you become so distracted—not just by the thoughts themselves, but you become distracted by the battle against those thoughts. There are almost two layers to it: the thoughts themselves are distracting, bombarding your mind; and then we get distracted by another layer of distraction. We become frustrated that we have to fight those thoughts in the first place, and we begin to feel guilty or ashamed, or we feel condemned, or we feel like we’re not doing a good job because these thoughts are being thrown into our minds. We deal with worries, we deal with doubts; all of these thoughts I call inner chaos, and they clutter the mind.

Now, it’s interesting because we say things like, «Well, all day I was perfectly fine,» but it wasn’t until I went to pray that suddenly all of these thoughts showed up. Well, that inner chaos, my friend, didn’t show up when you started to pray; that inner chaos was revealed when you started to pray. You just were never quiet enough to hear what was going on inside of you. Well, no wonder we’re walking around feeling lowly; no wonder we’re walking around filled with fear; no wonder we feel so distracted spiritually. We have inner chaos with us, and we don’t even recognize it because we’re never still or quiet enough to hear what’s going on inside of us.

So again, it’s not that that distraction—it’s not that that inner chaos suddenly appears when we start to pray; rather, it’s that that inner chaos is suddenly revealed when we begin to pray. Now, how do you focus the mind? Because it’s one thing to point out a problem—distraction, worry, doubt—but it’s another thing to present a solution. If you’ve ever dealt with that bombardment of a series of thoughts that just distracts you and keeps you from focusing on the things of God while you pray, I’m going to give you keys to overcoming that problem with focus.

Number one, the first key to overcoming distraction is silence. Matthew 6:6 says, «But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.» Jesus here in Matthew 6:6 is speaking of private prayer—prayer that’s secluded, prayer that’s secret. Only those who actually believe in prayer pray privately. Why? Because if I don’t believe in the power of prayer, then why am I going to pray in private when there’s no one around to impress? So you see, it’s when you go to those secluded places that you’re proving you believe in prayer. Those who believe in prayer actually pray, and so it is doubt that keeps us from going to the secret place. We may not even realize that it’s doubt.

And so that silence we find in the secret place actually cultivates an atmosphere in which we can more clearly hear the Lord. You see, prayer and focus on prayer doesn’t cause God to speak; it causes us to recognize and hear more clearly. So if we are to focus in prayer, if we are to overcome these distracting thoughts, then we, number one, need silence. Now, silence is a very practical thing. I set the atmosphere, I shut the door, I seclude myself, I turn off my cell phone, I turn off the television, I communicate with my loved ones that I’m not to be disturbed for that moment of prayer, and I carve out a section of my day in which I say, «This belongs to God; this is God’s portion.»

Now, of course, you can pray 24/7 all throughout the day, and that’s one form of prayer, but what I’m talking about here is that very intentional form of prayer where you carve out a section of your day. You carve out a place where you can bring forth silence, and in that moment, in that atmosphere, you’re praying without distraction. Now, silence is good because it gets rid of all the distractions around you, but silence doesn’t get rid of the distractions within you. You see, silence will help you eliminate outer distractions, but only stillness can quiet the inner distractions. Yet without silence in the first place, you would never know what was going on inside of you.

Think about the fact that we live such fast-paced, distracted lives that we hardly have a moment to pause and consider all that we’re thinking. Have you ever really gone to a quiet place, put aside distractions, and just listened to your own thoughts? Think about how we constantly put distractions before us; we’re constantly before screens, we’re constantly communicating, we’re constantly consuming media, data, information, music, and interactions. We are constantly stimulating the mind with all…