Dead End Prayers 

👤 Geoff

Mazes can be fun. All those wrong turnings and dead ends! However, it’s not so much fun when you’re stuck in a dead end with no way out.

Prayer can be a bit of a maze too. It’s remarkably easy to take a wrong turn, get stuck and be tempted to give up. Here are some of the ‘dead ends’ we can find ourselves in:

The Supermarket Sweep Prayer: Sometimes we hurtle through prayer trying to fill our trolley, but if we neglect praise, worship, adoration and thanksgiving then our prayer life will stagnate. If we don’t see prayer as the pathway to intimacy with our heavenly Father, we will be side-tracked into sounding off our self-centred shopping lists. Ephesians 5:19-20 might help us get it right!

The Lazy Way Out Prayer: We shouldn’t expect God to step in and do what we are perfectly capable of doing ourselves. It is not a matter of praying or doing. We may be the answer to our own prayer! See Luke 10:1-3.

The I Wish Prayer: Prayer becomes a dead end when we ask for something we cannot have. God has revealed his will in the Bible, so our praying is a waste of time if it is contrary to God’s purposes for us. However, when we do pray for God’s will to be done, we can be confident he hears us. (1 John 5:14-15)

The Pot Noodle Prayer: Prayer is not a spiritual Pot Noodle – just add boiling faith and stir! Jesus commanded us to pray and not give up (Luke 18:1), because he knew that prayer can be difficult and take time. George Muller prayed doggedly for a friend to be converted. After sixty years of persistent praying he said, ‘He is not saved but he will be. How can it be otherwise? I am praying.’ Then Muller died and the man was converted!

The Prayer Blockade: Sometimes when we are parked in a dead end with our prayer life going nowhere, the issue may be unconfessed sin (John 9:31). Like King David, we need to be right with God for prayer to be effective (Psalm 66:18). We also need to be right with one another – jealousy, grudges, bitterness and unforgiveness are all a recipe for a barren prayer life (Mark 11:25).

The Half-Hearted Prayer: Effective prayer is built on confidence in God (Hebrews 11:6, Matthew 21:22). If we are not sure he is listening and uncertain that he will answer, it’s no surprise we are in a prayer cul-de-sac. We should pray with expectancy (Ephesians 3:20), faith fuelled by the Word of God (Romans 10:17) and boldness (Hebrews 4:16).

The Selfish Prayer: Wrong motives can destroy effective prayer (James 4:2-3). R A Torrey said ‘The chief purpose of prayer is that God may be glorified in the answer.’ It is easy to pray for the things that matter to us, when the goal of our praying should be to glorify God (John 14:13).

Rather than find ourselves in these dead ends, we should renew our determination to turn to God in heartfelt prayer. Here are two voices from the past to inspire us to pray, pray more, pray more fervently, and pray more fervently together:

"As a painted fire is no fire, a dead man no man, so a cold prayer is no prayer. In a painted fire there is no heat, in a dead man there is no life; so in a cold prayer there is no omnipotency, no devotion, no blessing. Cold prayers are as arrows without heads, as swords without edges, as birds without wings; they pierce not, they cut not, they fly not up to Heaven. Cold prayers do always freeze before they get to Heaven. Oh, that Christians would chide themselves out of their cold prayers, and chide themselves into a better and warmer frame of spirit, when they make their supplications to the Lord!" (Thomas Brooks, 1608–1680)

"It is not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are; nor the rhetoric of our prayers, how eloquent they be; nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they be; nor the music of our prayers, how sweet our voice may be; nor the method of our prayers, how orderly they may be; nor even the theology of our prayers, how good the doctrine may be—which God cares for . . . Fervency of spirit is that which avails much." (Bishop Hall, quoted in D L Moody, Prevailing Prayer)

Let's turn away from the dead ends. May our prayers be warm and fervent!