Restraining prayer

This text helps us to put our finger on the cause of a great deal that is amiss in all of us. Here is what is wrong, "Thou restrainest prayer before God." If you are restraining prayer, that is, neglecting prayer, pushing it into a corner, and making it give way to everything else, — offering it formally and heartlessly, and with no real earnestness and purpose, praying as if you were sure your prayer would go all for nothing, — then it is no wonder if you are downhearted and anxious; and if grace is languishing and dying in you, and you growing, in spite of all your religious profession, just as worldly as the most worldly of the men and Women round you. There can be no doubt at all that the neglect of prayer is a sadly common sin. It is likewise a most extraordinary folly. There are people who restrain prayer, who do not pray at all, because they believe that prayer will do them no good, that prayer is of no use. But we believe in prayer. We believe in the duty of it; we believe in the efficacy of it. It is not for any expressed erroneous opinion that professing Christians restrain prayer. It is through carelessness; lack of interest in it; vague dislike to close communion with God; lack of vital faith, the faith of the heart as well as head. That is what is wrong; want of sense of the reality of prayer; dislike to go and be face to face alone with God. It is just when we feel least inclined to pray, that we need to pray the most earnestly. Be sure of this, that at the root of all our failures, our errors, our follies, our hasty words, our wrong deeds, our weak faith, our cold devotion, our decreasing grace, there is the neglect of prayer. If our prayers were real; if they were hearty, humble, and frequent, then how the evil that is in us would sink down abashed; then how everything holy and happy in us would grow and flourish!