The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 21 - Why Your Prayers Aren't Working

00:00:00.000 So I often hear Christians say that they pray and their prayers don't work. They're not getting

00:00:07.460 results. It's like a diet plan or something. I've been doing it. I'm just not shedding the

00:00:12.820 pounds. I don't know what's wrong. I have no doubt complained about this in the past myself. And

00:00:17.200 the problem is that people become discouraged from prayer because they perceive that it's not

00:00:23.300 having the desired effect, and then they stop doing it. And that's how you end up with a body

00:00:28.220 of believers in America who don't pray. We have an unpraying Christianity in America, 0.99

00:00:35.020 and it shows. The statistics that I've read, I don't know if they're true or not, but they sound

00:00:39.660 true. It's probably true. I've read that the average Christian spends significantly less than 0.99

00:00:44.940 10 minutes a day praying. I've also read that the number is actually about one minute a day

00:00:49.900 that the average Christian spends in prayer. And that's pretty bad, especially when you consider

00:00:54.940 that the average person spends five hours a day watching TV, which I don't know. I mean,

00:01:01.960 that's mind-boggling. I don't know. How do you find five hours in the day to sit on a couch and

00:01:07.900 just stare at a screen? How could you possibly carve out that much time? And how do you not get bored?

00:01:14.080 But anyway, five hours a day watching TV, several more hours a day staring at computer screens and

00:01:20.580 phones. So we're wasting a lot of time. And yet we say, I don't know. I just can't find the time

00:01:27.200 to pray. I can't find it in my schedule. I've got my schedule right here from about 7 p.m. till 1 a.m.

00:01:33.940 I'm going to be watching TV. Can't do anything about that. I mean, I've had that scheduled for weeks

00:01:39.140 now. So I thought it would be a good thing maybe to talk about prayer and to talk about why our

00:01:45.220 prayers may not be working, why they may not be answered from our perspective. And here are just

00:01:51.940 a few points about a few points about prayer. The first thing that I think we should understand is

00:01:56.980 that God does answer every prayer said to him. But the crucial thing there is that qualifier said to

00:02:06.220 him. If we pray to somebody else that's not him, then he's not necessarily going to answer that

00:02:13.020 prayer. And if we're praying for fame and fortune and materialistic, selfish, greedy, prideful things,

00:02:22.300 if we are praying to satisfy our gluttony and pride and ego and materialism, that's how we're praying.

00:02:31.280 Then we're not praying to God. We may be attaching his name to it, but we're praying to

00:02:36.140 some kind of genie that grants wishes. That's what we're praying to. We're basically praying

00:02:41.900 to the genie from Aladdin. That's who we're praying to. And that's not God. In other words,

00:02:47.540 we are praying to an idol. We are idol worshiping. The person who says a selfish, materialistic,

00:02:54.740 greedy prayer is an idol worshiper. And if God responds to that prayer at all, we're probably

00:03:03.080 not going to like the response. Let's put it that way. So just a quick story about that. And I'm

00:03:08.800 embarrassed to say that a long time ago when I was, I don't know, 20 or 21 years old, I actually

00:03:14.920 literally did pray for a winning lottery ticket. Maybe twice in my life, I've purchased one of those

00:03:21.480 jackpot lotteries tickets. And so this was one of those times, I think it was a, I don't know,

00:03:27.240 it was a $300 million, $400 million jackpot. And so before they drew the numbers that night,

00:03:36.740 I said a prayer to God, dear Lord, let me win this $300 million. Lord, please. I don't ask for much,

00:03:45.760 just please, $300 million. It's all I need. Okay. Then I'll be happy. I did pray for that. And

00:03:51.640 it's, it's a shameful, blasphemous prayer, especially when you consider that Christ in

00:03:58.540 the gospel is, is repeatedly warns us about wealth. And he says famously, it's very difficult

00:04:05.620 for a rich man to get to heaven, like passing through the eye of a needle. And why is that?

00:04:10.320 Because, because the more wealth we have, the more things we have, the more attached we become

00:04:19.080 to those things. And the less attached we are to God. And the more that our, our kind of vision,

00:04:26.580 our, our view of the divine, of holy, sacred things, the more that view is cluttered and blocked by all

00:04:35.100 of this stuff. And that's why he tells us, give up everything, give up all this stuff and just follow

00:04:42.920 me. So when I prayed for $300 million, what I was really praying for was God, please make it hard for

00:04:49.320 me to get to heaven. Fortunately, thank God. He did not grant that prayer. I did not win the money.

00:04:57.300 And in fact, not only did I not win it, but for the next five years of my life, I had pretty serious

00:05:04.460 financial difficulty and I was pretty poor. And I had a lot of trouble just keeping the lights on

00:05:09.820 and putting food in the fridge. And that's how I lived in my dumpy little apartment for about five

00:05:14.200 years. Now, I'm not saying that that was all a direct result of the prayer that I said for $300

00:05:21.500 million, but I don't think it's entirely unrelated. I think God and his wisdom may choose to withhold

00:05:28.360 blessings from greedy, selfish, childish people like I was at the time, people who treat him like

00:05:35.040 a genie. He may say, you know what, I'm going to withhold. Now you're going to go without for a

00:05:42.160 while. And that withholding of a blessing, that thing where we pray for something and then God gives us

00:05:49.680 the opposite of what we prayed for, which is kind of what happened to me more than once in my life.

00:05:56.420 But that itself is a huge blessing. And I realize now looking back how good it was that I was poor

00:06:02.660 during that time. Because if I had money and means, I would have probably used it in selfish ways because

00:06:08.480 I was a selfish person and I would have destroyed myself. And so praise God, he didn't go with my

00:06:15.720 plan. He went with his. Now, I know that most Christians hopefully aren't praying for hundreds 0.81

00:06:22.100 of millions of dollars. You know, most Christians hopefully aren't as stupid as I was at the time, but 1.00

00:06:26.500 there are many other forms of materialistic, selfish prayers, prayer that is essentially just 1.00

00:06:32.800 gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. And if such prayers are answered at all, they're more likely to

00:06:39.360 be answered with a rebuke. And what I will say is if we do pray selfishly and materialistically

00:06:46.600 and greedily, and suddenly we look around and we see that all of our selfish desires

00:06:53.120 are actually coming true, well, then we should shudder in fear because those blessings are not

00:07:02.160 coming from God. He is, God is not going to indulge our sinful desires. God's not going to do that.

00:07:11.800 If we want something sinful, God is not going to say, okay, here you go. So if those blessings

00:07:18.840 aren't coming from God above, then they're coming from below. And that's not to say that everyone

00:07:25.260 who's ever got wealthy, you know, that those were gifts from Satan. I'm not saying that.

00:07:31.840 I'm saying someone who is intensely focused selfishly on materialistic things and someone who is greedy,

00:07:39.280 when they look around and see that things are starting to go their way. Well, I think it's much

00:07:44.080 more likely that that's Satan kind of walking in front of them and paving the path and making

00:07:50.500 things very comfortable for them so that they'll just walk very nicely and very easily right into

00:07:56.360 hell. Second thing, kind of related to the first point, Scripture tells us to pray unceasingly,

00:08:03.020 persistently. And if we're only praying briefly in this kind of scattershot way, and only when we

00:08:09.820 want something, even if what we want is not selfish or materialistic, even if it's a good thing,

00:08:16.200 well, then that prayer isn't going to necessarily work. And that's because God desires an intimate

00:08:21.360 bond with us. He doesn't want to stand off at a distance and just toss crumbs to us.

00:08:27.760 He wants to be our eternal bread. He wants us to be sustained by him through his grace. And he wants

00:08:37.200 us to establish a real connection with him, a real relationship. So if we pray just every once in a

00:08:43.760 while, and only when we want something, it again could be a great blessing, I think, that he doesn't

00:08:50.200 give us what we want. He'll answer the prayer, but he may answer it by saying no. Or he may say,

00:08:57.660 you want that, but I'm going to give you this instead. And we may get that answer kind of

00:09:03.040 frequently if we're not praying habitually and unceasingly. You know, if we just pray every once

00:09:09.640 in a while when we want something and nothing more, then we may get turned down quite a bit because he's

00:09:15.580 withholding the fullness of his blessings in order to spur us to greater hunger and a greater

00:09:21.320 desperation for his presence. And that is what God wants. He wants desperation. I think God really

00:09:28.200 wants us to be desperate people. He wants us to be desperate, like a man in the desert who hasn't

00:09:35.620 had a drink of water in two days. That's what he wants. And that's why in Scripture, you'll notice

00:09:41.480 he never made it particularly easy for those who came to him, people that came to him asking for

00:09:49.780 healing and asking for miracles. He didn't often make it easy for them. They had to fight through a

00:09:56.180 crowd, right? Like the woman who grabbed on Christ's robe and she was, she had a, they said there's

00:10:02.120 throngs of people. She had a fight and just, and just, you know, she's probably on, probably crawling

00:10:07.340 and she just grabs at his robes. And that's what was necessary to demonstrate her faith. And that's

00:10:13.840 how she was healed. Or they had to tear the roof off of a house. Remember the paralytic in the gospels 0.53

00:10:18.860 and they had to, they couldn't get in. Christ was inside a house. They couldn't get in through the

00:10:23.680 doors, too many people. So they had to climb up on the, on the roof and tear a hole on the roof

00:10:28.380 to get to Jesus. Or they had to travel great distances. Or you have in Matthew chapter nine,

00:10:34.400 we read about the two blind men who are following Jesus and shouting, have mercy on me, have mercy on

00:10:40.600 me. And, um, eventually when Jesus makes it to the place where he was going and they followed him all

00:10:47.420 the way there, then he turns around and heals them. But they had to follow that whole time. He could

00:10:54.500 have healed them at any moment. He could have taken two steps and then turned around and said, yeah,

00:10:58.040 you're healed. But instead he had these men who are blind. He had these literally blind men

00:11:04.720 follow him over. We don't know how long it was, but we can assume it was a bit of a distance

00:11:09.760 and to keep following, keep shouting, have mercy on me, have mercy on me. And then he healed them.

00:11:17.060 So Jesus didn't go door to door, handing out blessings. Instead, he walked his path.

00:11:22.800 He journeyed where he needed to go, where his mission meant that he had to go. And it was up

00:11:31.380 to the people to seek him and humble themselves before him and ask for his blessings in faith.

00:11:37.600 You know, Jesus says, knock and the door will be opened. And I know Christians will cite that 1.00

00:11:41.480 verse a lot and they'll say, ah, just whatever you pray for, you'll get. Yeah. Knock and the door's

00:11:45.260 open. He never said knock once. He didn't say how many times you might have to knock. You might have

00:11:49.420 to knock 10 times. You might have to knock a hundred times. You might have to, you might have

00:11:52.280 to knock 10,000 times before he finally answers it. He says, he says, seek and you will find.

00:12:00.360 He never said that you're going to find it the first place you look. He never said this process

00:12:05.760 of seeking will take five seconds. Could take five days, could take five years, could take 50 years,

00:12:12.380 whatever it is. So we have to be persistent and unceasing and keep coming back to God,

00:12:19.300 keep coming back, keep coming back, keep crying out to him. And that's really what demonstrates

00:12:25.680 our faith because anyone can cry out to God in a moment of desperation and, you know, in a fleeting

00:12:31.040 moment of desperation or fleeting moment of need, anyone can cry out, oh God, help me, save me.

00:12:38.140 But to continue to continue following God, grasping at his robes, crying out, have mercy on me to

00:12:43.380 continue along that path. Well, that's persistence. That's unceasing prayer, I think.

00:12:49.540 The third thing, I think a lot of us need to expand our prayer arsenal a little bit because

00:12:57.320 there are different kinds of prayer, not just one kind. And I think this is a big problem in

00:13:02.220 Christianity today in the West is that people aren't really taught about prayer. We kind of

00:13:10.460 assume that it's, oh yeah, you'll figure it out. You'll pick it up on your own. But no, it's something

00:13:15.080 people need to be taught and trained in. And we need to learn that there are different kinds of

00:13:20.860 prayers. There are prayers of petitions where we ask for something, and we've discussed that.

00:13:26.220 And I think for a lot of us, that's the only kind of prayer we ever say. It's just petition. God,

00:13:33.860 give me this, give me this, give me this. And we may, we may, we may ask for petitions. We may petition

00:13:38.320 on behalf of other people, which is great. We may petition on behalf of our children, our family,

00:13:44.100 our spouse, the poor, the disadvantaged, our friends. And those are great prayers to say,

00:13:51.320 but those are also petition prayers. And then you also have prayers of thanksgiving.

00:13:56.220 Where we give thanks and praise to God. And I think if we're getting shot down on our petition

00:14:01.900 prayers a lot, we may have to ask ourselves, how often do we do the thanksgiving prayers?

00:14:09.040 Because if it's all petition and it's no thanksgiving, except for maybe on thanksgiving,

00:14:14.420 if that's the only time when we thank God, that might be part of the problem. It seems to me it

00:14:19.880 should be at least even. For all the time we spend asking God for things, we should spend time

00:14:24.640 thanking Him. Thanking Him even when He says no. If He says yes to a prayer. And I know I've done

00:14:31.880 this so many times where I'm praying for something, I'm praying for it. And then I get it. And then I

00:14:39.280 forget to go back to God and say, thank you for this. And I know I don't tolerate that for my own

00:14:44.700 kids. If I go out and get them some ice cream and I hand them the ice cream, they better say,

00:14:50.560 thank you. But how often have I done that to our Heavenly Father? Or He gives me something and I'm

00:14:58.940 just like a brat. I don't even say thank you for it. But I think even more common, even if we remember

00:15:04.920 to say thank you for the yeses, how often do we forget to say thank you for the no's? Because even

00:15:11.160 if God says no, we should still go back and thank Him. Because we know that the no was what was best for

00:15:18.520 us. And so it was a blessing, even still. So prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of petition.

00:15:26.100 Then we have prayers of contrition, where we ask forgiveness for our sins. That's another one that

00:15:31.160 I think Christians tend to neglect in their one minute of daily prayer. And then there are prayers 0.98

00:15:36.940 of adoration. And a prayer of adoration is a prayer where we simply worship and praise God.

00:15:43.260 Now you look at the Lord's prayer, which Christ gave to us, we see that it has all of these

00:15:50.440 elements in it. So think about it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That's

00:15:55.380 adoration. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's more adoration.

00:16:02.000 Give us this day our daily bread. That's petition. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who

00:16:06.440 trespass against us. That's contrition. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

00:16:11.300 That's also petition. So this is the model prayer. Jesus says, pray like this. And he's not saying

00:16:16.500 that every prayer you say should be this specific prayer, these words exactly, although we should

00:16:22.460 pray that specific prayer a lot. But what he's saying is every prayer you say should reflect this

00:16:30.400 prayer. It should reflect some element of this prayer. So it leads with adoration, praise, worship,

00:16:38.760 dwelling in God's holiness. Then it petitions God, but the petition is humble. The petition is

00:16:43.840 submissive. It's saying, just give me my daily bread, Lord. Then there's asking for forgiveness.

00:16:49.900 forgiveness. And it's kind of a dangerous request for forgiveness because we're saying, forgive us as we

00:17:01.060 forgive others. And a lot of us, we don't forgive others that well. And then there's the final petition,

00:17:08.260 which is a petition for holiness and for sanctification. And I think when we're asking God for things,

00:17:14.040 that should really be the main thing we ask for is for our sanctification, for our holiness. We should

00:17:20.820 be saying, you know, make me holy, Lord. Fourth thing, I wanted to focus on adoration prayers for

00:17:26.540 a moment because I think this is the kind of prayer that is most lacking for a lot of Christians. And it was

00:17:34.280 lacking for me until recently. Not every prayer that we say should involve us saying anything. Not every

00:17:44.920 prayer should be said. If we really desire a connection, a relationship with Him, then the

00:17:52.780 conversation with God has to be a two-way conversation. And I think a mistake that we often make

00:17:58.960 is this is a conversation. We are really bad conversationalists. Okay. We're like the

00:18:06.460 conversationalist in the conversation who just dominates the conversation and makes everything

00:18:10.220 about themselves and never listens to anybody else. And it's just horrible talking to them.

00:18:15.840 I think with God, it's got to be a two-way conversation. All the time we spend talking to

00:18:20.800 Him, explaining ourselves and everything, there also have to be times of silence, times of listening,

00:18:26.920 prayers. You know, we should be saying prayers where we say nothing, actually, where we ask for

00:18:35.800 nothing, but we simply put ourselves in His presence. We meditate upon His majesty and lordship and beauty,

00:18:44.540 and we open ourselves up to Him. And then we just sit there in His presence, thinking about Him.

00:18:51.780 So that's kind of, that's a contemplative, meditative prayer. People have different sorts of strategies for

00:18:58.580 contemplative prayer. I'm certainly no expert myself. What I try to do now, try being the operative word,

00:19:05.980 working on it, but what I try to do is, I try to do this every morning, a contemplative prayer.

00:19:12.200 And I begin by reading a little bit of scripture, just a short passage, so as to put myself in the

00:19:20.240 right frame of mind. And then the next step for me is, is I get on my knees. And I do think that the

00:19:27.820 physical posture is important because we are physical beings. And to be on our knees is to

00:19:33.800 physically communicate our submission to God. And the whole point of contemplative prayer is to,

00:19:40.160 is to meditate upon the presence of God. So we have to think, if Christ were to appear in the flesh,

00:19:46.300 right in front of us, if, if, if Christ walked into our living room in the flesh, what would we do?

00:19:53.120 Unless we are arrogant beyond all comprehension, we would fall to our knees. We'd probably fall all the

00:19:59.860 way prostrate on our faces, is what we would do. Remember in Revelation, John talks about his vision

00:20:06.320 of the Lord. And he says, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. And that is what a person

00:20:13.700 ought to do when confronted with the blinding, heavenly light of perfection. So if we're praying

00:20:21.940 whenever possible, I think it's important to put our minds where our minds need to be by putting our

00:20:26.980 bodies, how our bodies need to be. And I'm not saying that every time we pray, we have to be on our

00:20:31.960 knees because I know some, I'll pray sometimes when I'm driving, when I'm walking, when I'm doing

00:20:37.360 chores, you know, so, so we could pray in any physical position whatsoever, but we should also

00:20:44.580 be carving out specific time in the day for prayer, not just when we can fit it in, when we're doing

00:20:51.060 something else, which is fine. As long as we also have that time that is just for prayer, nothing else,

00:20:58.180 put aside all the distractions. And in those moments, I think it's so important for us to

00:21:03.740 get on our knees in this act of submission and reverence. And this is something that I think is

00:21:12.860 really lacking, not just prayer, but something really lacking among Christians in America is

00:21:20.280 reverence, is this sense of total reverence, this sense of the sacred, you know, that we are in front

00:21:29.660 of something truly sacred. So anyway, then on my knees, I asked the Holy Spirit to come into my heart

00:21:36.920 and then I spend some time saying nothing, trying not to say anything even in my head, trying to

00:21:44.600 cancel out any thoughts of things that I need or things I need to do. And I just imagine myself

00:21:51.800 before Christ. And that's the prayer. I know some people in contemplative prayer, they'll meditate on

00:21:59.380 a passage of scripture or they'll meditate on the cross. I think over time, you figure out what works

00:22:04.740 best for you. What's the best way that God speaks to you personally. But I think this should really be

00:22:10.980 the bedrock of our prayer life, that private, quiet contemplation, that passive kind of receiving

00:22:17.440 of God and receiving of him, you know, a him speaking to us. But if we really want to hear what

00:22:26.040 he's saying to us, we need to just shut up and listen, which I know we all struggle with. I certainly

00:22:32.680 do. But I think when we incorporate all of these forms of prayer and we pray unceasingly and we

00:22:41.260 really start to take our prayer life seriously, I think that's when we see that our prayers really

00:22:48.100 start to work. They really work. And they work in many ways. But here's the primary way that I think

00:22:57.860 a really, a really well-grounded prayer life works. Or here's the place, if you're really praying a lot

00:23:05.500 and you're praying well, here's the place where you're really going to see a change. You may not see a

00:23:11.720 change in anything else. Your financial situation may stay the same. Your health may stay the same.

00:23:17.060 Everything in your life may stay exactly the same. Or they may not. But it may all stay exactly the

00:23:25.000 same. But the one place where you will absolutely 100% guaranteed see a change is in your appetites.

00:23:35.000 I don't mean physical appetites. I mean that when we really have a prayer life, that's when we start

00:23:42.760 to feel a deeper desire for holy things. The more we pursue God, the more of a desire we have for him.

00:23:51.600 And we start to crave these, we start to crave holiness. And so we feel less desire for the hollow

00:23:59.080 things. We want holy things, not hollow things, not superficial things, not unholy things. Our

00:24:05.800 spiritual and intellectual appetites grow deeper. They grow more mature. We may find that a lot of

00:24:11.720 the music we like to listen to, a lot of the shows we watch, a lot of the movies we watch,

00:24:15.700 just a lot of the stuff we used to do, no longer has any appeal to us whatsoever.

00:24:21.760 And we'll even find that certain sins and certain temptations that we've struggled with,

00:24:26.320 that have just had a hold on us for so long, suddenly they don't have a hold on us anymore.

00:24:31.780 Suddenly, and you might not even notice it when it happens, it's not that you'll become a perfect

00:24:35.760 person who never sins. But if there are certain sins that have just had you in their grasp for so

00:24:41.140 long, and then you really start praying unceasingly, every day, constantly, that's when

00:24:47.420 you find that, and you almost don't even notice the transition, but one day you look, and that sin

00:24:52.500 is just kind of over there. And you can look at it, and you can say, you've got no power on me.

00:24:58.500 You've got no power. And you'll just want more of the sacred in your life.

00:25:02.880 And you'll find that certain things that you found appealing before aren't appealing anymore.

00:25:09.380 Certain things you didn't find appealing are appealing. You'll love people more. You'll hate

00:25:14.360 sin more. You'll want to read the Bible more. You'll want to think about God more and talk about him

00:25:19.820 more. I think when you look at Christians who, it would seem that their appetites are exactly like 1.00

00:25:27.140 everyone else's. In other words, they're listening to trashy music, and they're just watching all this 0.98

00:25:32.780 trash on TV, and they're just living and consuming in exactly the same way as people without faith. 1.00

00:25:40.900 And they seem to have no appetite whatsoever for God, prayer, church, scripture. Well, 0.98

00:25:50.100 the reason why they're like that is that they don't pray. That's the problem, is they don't pray.

00:25:56.900 And I think then the more we change from prayer, the less we look at prayer as a thing that brings

00:26:05.220 results or a thing that works or doesn't work. We just see prayer as an opportunity to spend time

00:26:12.320 with God and to think about him and worship him, and not always to be asking for things,

00:26:18.160 but just to have our bond with him grow stronger and stronger and to be in his presence and to listen

00:26:23.920 to him. I don't say this as someone who's mastered the art of praying, not by a long shot, but I know

00:26:30.380 that this is what prayer is. And we could all certainly benefit from praying significantly more

00:26:36.280 than we are now. So maybe we should all make that resolve, make that resolution right now.

00:26:41.560 All right, I'll leave it there. Thanks for watching, everybody. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 02, 2018

Ep. 21 - Why Your Prayers Aren't Working

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