David Diga Hernandez - If You Are Struggling in Prayer WATCH THIS

The first key to establishing a consistent and effective prayer life is, number one, faith. When we go to pray, we must have the faith to believe that God indeed hears us. Believing that it is a struggle to get God’s attention creates a barrier to prayer; when we think about prayer, we may not focus on the splendor of His glory or the wonder of communion with the Lord. Instead, we may think, «Okay, I have to work on my prayer life. I need to sing this or that, maybe jump up and down, and wave my hands. I have to work myself up emotionally; I have to exhaust myself mentally, and then maybe God will respond to me.» If you view prayer this way, who is going to want to pray? If that’s your perception of prayer, who is going to want to pray as if God doesn’t actually want to hear from you? Some believers approach the Lord this way, whether consciously or subconsciously. You may say, «No, I know God hears me,» but then you think thoughts that actually demonstrate that somewhere in the back of your mind, you believe God doesn’t hear you. Thoughts like, «Is God really forgiving me for my past?» or «Did I pray enough today?» or «Is God upset with me because I forgot to pray yesterday?» Those are the barriers we create for ourselves. «I haven’t prayed in two days; now I really have to work for my place back with God.» Wait a minute! You never worked for your place in His throne room in the first place. You never earned your way in. Why do you think you have to earn your way back? Jesus paid the price for that entry; you don’t have to go back and say, «Well, I missed two days of prayer.» Oh my goodness, «I missed a week of prayer,» and then you think that you’re going to go to the Lord, and He’s going to be standing over you, arms folded, looking down from His throne room, saying, «Well, well, well, look who decided to pray today.» No, that’s not what God is doing. That’s not how our Heavenly Father is. He is not going to hold that over your head, and you hold it over your own head because of some religious, superstitious, traditional thought that you developed from things you’ve heard. But that’s not what the Heavenly Father is like at all. So when you go to pray, recognize that you have His ear; you have His attention. His eyes are on you; you have His focus.

Luke 10 is a powerful portion of Scripture. I’m going to read Luke 10:38–42. As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. Her sister Mary sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what He taught, but Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, «Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.» But the Lord said to her, «My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details. There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.»

We see that Mary and Martha both wanted the same thing; both of them wanted to please the Lord. They just went about it in two very different ways. Mary knew that she was already connected; she pursued fellowship, communion, and friendship with God. Martha, on the other hand, tried to earn what was already hers. If Martha had just sat down with Jesus, He would have sat down with her. But no, what did she do? «I have to please the Lord. I have to work for Him.» Some of us are so busy working for Him that we forget to fellowship with Him, which is more important, by the way. Martha thought, «I have to prepare this big dinner. I have to get everything ready. I must make sure everything is in order.» She was trying to perfect her presentation before coming before the Lord when the key to that perfect presentation is fellowship with Him.

Both of them wanted the same thing; both of them recognized that He is the Lord and sought to please Him, but they approached it in two very different ways. Martha chose work; Mary chose friendship. Please hear me now, people of God: You do not enter the glory through noisy desperation; you enter through faith-filled confidence. Now, I am about to address a mindset, and my addressing of this mindset may offend some of you, but please hear me. I say this in all humility; my goal is not to offend you. It may offend you, but that’s not my goal. I truly want to help you enter the depths of prayer. I genuinely want to help you remove all barriers to prayer so that you don’t face another barrier again. But in order to do this, we must rethink how we approach God because there is a culture of desperation that has somehow become accepted in the church. You know you’re in a culture of desperation if everything is really tense all the time: the preaching is tense, the application of preaching is tense, the worship is tense, the prayer is tense. You find yourself in this posture of anguish at…