How to Pray Badly

Tim Challies has an excellent post on prayer:

It is the Lord's delight to grant us what we ask of him in prayer. Like David, we all ought to pray, "O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth" (Psalm 54:2). If Christians did not believe in the effectiveness of prayer, there would be no reason for us to ask anything of God. He is the one who tells us that we can have confidence that our prayers ascend to him. "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him" (1 John 5:14,15). While as Christians we pay lip-service to the superlatives in that sentence ("whatever" and "anything"), how often do we really believe it?

The fact is that our prayers are often hindered. There are times when it feels like our prayers are reaching the ceiling and going no further; times when we are lying face-down on the floor and feel that our prayers are rising no higher than the fibers of the carpet. While we can be sure that God does hear our prayers, there are times when he chooses not to heed or answer them.

Read the full post here.