Prayerless Praying

Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. JAMES 4:2–3

One of the most searching chapters Bounds ever wrote has one of the strangest titles: Prayerless Praying. It stands in Purpose in Prayer, and it asks a question every Christian should face: “Why do we not pray? What are the hindrances to prayer?” His answers, gathered with what he wrote about vigilance in The Necessity of Prayer and about devotion in The Essentials of Prayer, make a map of the things that choke the life of prayer.

Not asking and asking amiss

Bounds found the two great evils of prayer in a single verse of James: not asking, and asking wrongly. Of the two, he thought the second might be worse, because it has the appearance of prayer without the reality. It deceives the one who prays into thinking a duty has been done when nothing has happened at all.

He described prayerless praying with a string of phrases: a heartless performance, a senseless routine, a dead habit, a hasty and careless exercise. It may be beautiful in words and correct in form, like the long prayers of the Pharisees. But it has no desire behind it, no faith in it and no expectation of an answer. “Prayerless praying stakes nothing on the issue,” he wrote, “for it has nothing to stake.”

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. MATTHEW 6:7

He told of a preacher who, after the congregation rose from prayer, asked them sharply what they had just prayed for. Most could not say. The words had passed their lips without touching their hearts.

Crowded out

The first hindrance Bounds named is one every modern reader knows: busyness. Other duties press in and crowd out prayer, not by open rebellion but by slow suffocation. “He who is too busy to pray will be too busy to live a holy life.”

He traced the process with painful accuracy. First prayer is hurried. Then it is shortened. Then it is pushed into a corner and done only when there are scraps of time. Then it loses its value, falls out of the habits of life, and dies. “Satan had rather we let the grass grow on the path to our prayer-chamber than anything else.”

Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. LUKE 10:41–42

What makes this hindrance so dangerous is that the things that crowd out prayer are usually good. “One of Satan’s wiliest tricks,” Bounds wrote, “is to destroy the best by the good.” In The Essentials of Prayer he warned that activity is not strength, and that a church can be full of movement while empty of devotion. To be too busy with God’s work to talk to God about it, he said, is the highway to backsliding.

Living against our prayers

A second hindrance is the life we live outside the closet. We have met this already, but Bounds returned to it here with force. We cannot pray for humility while nurturing pride, or for self-denial while indulging ourselves. Scripture names particular things that hinder prayer: an unforgiving spirit, and in marriage, a husband’s failure to honour his wife.

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. MARK 11:25

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. 1 PETER 3:7

Asleep at the post

A third hindrance is carelessness. In The Necessity of Prayer Bounds pictured the Christian as a soldier on picket duty, facing an enemy who never sleeps. The armour of God in Ephesians 6, he noted, ends not with another weapon but with prayer, and with the command to watch. Without watchfulness, prayer grows dull and the soul grows drowsy.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; EPHESIANS 6:18

He added that a soldier who prays only for himself has misunderstood the war. Selfish praying, he said, dries up the springs of spiritual life. The soldier prays for the whole army.

The simplicity of a child

The last hindrance Bounds named is surprising: cleverness. The simplicity of prayer, he said, is itself an obstacle. We grow up, learn a great deal, and lose the directness of a child at his mother’s knee. Intellect gets in the way of the heart. To pray well, a grown man must become a child again, and that is no easy thing.

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. MATTHEW 18:3

Where this must be read with care

This is a chapter to take seriously, but two of Bounds’s statements need tempering.

First, he wrote that it is better not to pray at all than to pray prayerless prayers, and that the worst of sinning is to sin on our knees. His target was hypocrisy — prayer used as a cover for a life that contradicts it. But a discouraged believer may hear it as permission to stop praying because his prayers feel dead. That would be the opposite of what Bounds wanted. Dry, halting prayer offered honestly is not prayerless praying. It is the prayer of a weak child, and God hears it. The cure for cold prayer is not less prayer but more honest prayer.

Second, some of his lists of worldly hindrances belong to his time. In The Essentials of Prayer he named the theatre, the card table and the dance as places where no one could pray. His underlying point — that we should not go where we could not pray — remains wise. But the particular list reflects the Methodist customs of his day, and each generation must ask honestly what its own crowding distractions are. For many of us they are no longer the dance hall, but the screen in our pocket.

The hindrances are real, but none of them is stronger than the invitation of God. The way back from prayerless praying is simply to begin to pray again — truly, briefly if need be, and from the heart.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Next time you finish praying, ask yourself what you actually asked for. If you cannot say, try again more simply.

2. List the good things that most often crowd out your prayer. Choose one to limit this week for the sake of the best.

3. If you are holding something against anyone, forgive them before you next pray, as Jesus commands in Mark 11:25.

4. Identify the modern distraction that most often keeps you from prayer, and set a boundary around it for a week.

5. Pray once this week as simply as a child would, in a few plain sentences, telling your Father exactly what you need.

A PRAYER

Father, I confess that much of my praying has been prayerless — words without desire, forms without faith. Forgive me.

I confess too how easily the good crowds out the best. Keep the path to my place of prayer from becoming overgrown.

Show me what hinders my prayers — unforgiveness, carelessness, pride, or simple distraction — and give me grace to put it away.

Make me a child again before You, direct and trusting, and teach me, as You taught Your disciples, to pray. Amen.