C.S. Lewis on Prayer Struggles – Guess What: You Are Normal

Just like most people, I often struggle with my prayer life. It takes self-discipline to carve out time for Him each morning, and while I pull it off most days (not all), it’s still not easy. (I’ve learned various tricks that help me stay focused, switching my devotionals fairly often, for one example.) I’m always glad when I’m done because He sometimes will give me hints during this time of what He wants me to do about this or that, but it just seems like this should come more natural. After all, He’s GOD. Shouldn’t I want to just sit with Him more and more instead of worrying so much about my long to-do lists?

This quote in our newest bible study book, Praying Scripture for a Change, was refreshing. It made me feel “normal” to know that even C.S. Lewis felt this way…

“Well, let’s now at any rate come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us. And we know that we are not alone in this.”

Are you surprised to read this? Did you think you were the only one?

Continue to ask the Holy Spirit to draw you closer and to help your prayer go deeper, and then be patient. God wants this even more than you do, and He’ll show you some bible devotionals that might help, a time of day or place to pray that might be better, or how to keep distractions in check. But in the meantime, stop beating yourself up over it and thinking that you must be a rotten Christian for feeling this way. Remember, “God isn’t shocked by our humanity.” As the bible study book says, “The God who has put in your heart the desire to know Him intimately will fulfill that desire.”

This document I found on my computer also might help (you can download this PDF):

Ten Tips for Praying Attentively

What about you?

Does prayer come easy for you or no? If not, what has helped?

On a side note…

If you haven’t read C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series to your kids (or yourself!), you really should. Each summer I try to read one to them and then we’ll start over since the youngest didn’t catch the earlier ones. The correlation between Aslan, the Lion, and God, are profound, and they teach about God’s love in a powerful way. His non-fiction books are amazing, too. I love Mere Christianityespecially. It’s deep but yet not too deep that you can’t grasp it, and it draws you further into your walk with God.