It Finally Happened
So, it finally happened. I missed a day.
I committed to praying everyday for thirty minutes a day for one year. Going in, I did not expect to be perfect. I figured real life would happen and I would miss a few days over the course of the year.
Just over two months in, I had not missed a day and I was feeling pretty good about this whole thing. The flu befell me – twice – and I managed to pray as I drifted in and out of consciousness on the couch. We traveled for Thanksgiving and stayed with family, and I prayed. Our family even did a few days at Disneyland, and I managed to get in my conversations with God. Confidence in my ability to go the whole year grew.
I imagined that it was going to take something big to keep me from my time in prayer. I would fall seriously ill. A family member would go to the hospital. The zombie apocalypse. I was confident that I was going to get this done.
And what happened? It was dumb. My day got going and I just forgot!
We had a busy Saturday planned. I slept-in a little thinking the rest would do me good. That just made me late getting breakfast out for the kids as my wife had an event to go to. That made for grumpy boys and a rough morning. After breakfast it was off to pick up friends and go have some fun. Then drop off the friends. Lunch, then off to work across town for the afternoon. Rush home in time for a date night with the wife. Finally, knock out in bed. And don’t even think about praying until the next day. Doh!
My Failure Illustrates the Greatest Dangers to Our Prayer Lives
It is embarrassing to admit that I missed a day. It is even more embarrassing to admit that I missed a day because I simply forgot to pray. The story of how I missed my conversation with God is not, however, all bad news. I learned a lot from it.
Through this experience, I came to recognize what are, in our time and place, some of the greatest dangers to our prayer lives.
Busyness Is Not the Culprit
A lot of folks at this point would expect a diatribe against busyness. They would expect me to talk about how Americans are too busy and rail against how we have allowed ourselves to be consumed by busyness – or the things our busyness buy us.
But I live in reality too. We all have responsibilities. Families must be provided for. Homes must be kept. Communities must be served. Relationships must be tended to. There are many duties that we take on that we must fulfill. Our real problem is not that we are busy, it is that we do not manage our busyness well.
The Threat of Poor Priorities
We all have a lot to do. Everyone wakes up to a long to-do list for the day.
Often on these busy days there is a moment when we recognize that we are not going to get everything done. The last TPS Report is going to have to wait until tomorrow. That pile of laundry waiting to be folded is just going sit in that chair one more night. At that moment when we realize we have more work than hours, something important happens.
Our mind starts to rank our list of to-do’s. For many of us, this happens unconsciously. After a look at the list, our brain starts to pick out certain tasks to do, and certain tasks to leave out. If we are not intentional we will simply start picking out the easiest ones, or the quickest ones. Or the ones we think will bring us the most pleasure. Or the most praise.
And I am willing to bet if a person is overwhelmed by tasks and does not already have an established prayer life – they are not going to pick “pray for 30 minutes” first off of the list.
This moment is when we can begin to better manage our busyness. We better manage our busyness by intentionally sorting our list of tasks according to our priorities. If we are Christians striving to build meaningful prayer lives, then we intentionally decide to choose to pray first.
This was my mistake that day. I failed to prioritize prayer. I want to be a man of prayer. But that morning I prioritized sleep over it. Then I prioritized breakfast for the boys over it. Then the boy’s event with their friends became more important than prayer. Then going in to work. And so on and so on. I failed to pray that day mostly because I failed to manage my priorities.
If prayer is a priority I will make time for it. I failed to do so – and I failed to pray. Pure and simple. We will never find time for something unimportant to us. We will always make time for something important to us. Prayer is no different.
The Threat of Momentum
The other great, and every day, threat to our prayer lives we face is our failure to manage our momentum. Or in other words, we fail to recognize when we go ‘in-mode’ and can’t stop until the list is done or we collapse at the end of the day. We have all experienced those times when we start knocking things of the list, we get focused, we start actually getting things accomplished and so we just keep moving from one thing to the next with out ever slowing down.
Momentum got a hold of me that day. I got breakfast out and cleaned up. On to the boys’ event. Knocked that out. On to lunch. On to work. Onward until the end of the day. Looking back, I had some natural breaks between events, but I choose to keep moving on my to-do’s. I was well intentioned. I was trying to be helpful to people around me, people I love. But I failed to manage my momentum. I failed to push pause when I needed to.
I have found it is very difficult to control momentum. It is hard to stop in the middle of the day, calm my mind, still my spirit and converse with God. I do not think I am alone in this. That is one reason I prefer, and recommend, prayer early in our day. But sometimes, if we are going to be people of prayer, we need to be able to push pause, get out of ‘mode’, and pray. And then even harder, hit play and try to rebuild our momentum.
Our Response to Missing a Day Reveals a Lot About Our Heart
If you choose to take up a One Year Prayer Experiment of your own. You will likely miss a day over the course of an entire year. Many different reactions to such a failure can be expected. What ever the reaction is, I think they can reveal a lot about our heart, and our view of God.
If You Experience Feelings of Anger
Author Neil Andersen says anger is due to a blocked goal. There is something you want, and when events occur that keep you from getting what you want – anger erupts. So, when we miss a day of prayer, and we feel angry, we must ask ourselves the question: What is it I am not going to get because I missed a day?
If we are feeling anger in this circumstance, my guess is that we are probably trying to get something from God by performing well. If I pray every day, God will like me more and give me what I want. Or, If I pray every day, God will owe me what I want.
Stop right there. Here is some truth. We cannot control God. He is sovereign. We cannot coerce God. He is omnipotent, or all-powerful. It is impossible for any human to put God in a position where he owes us anything.
While we cannot control God, we can appeal to God. While the Lord is sovereign and all powerful, he is also full of grace, mercy, love, goodness, kindness and generosity. We can ask God for things with a humble appeal, and then submit to his decision. Being all-knowing and wise, he knows what is best anyway.
If we find ourselves in a place of anger, we must confess our attempts to control God or earn his favor. Then trust God to take care of you.
If You Experience Feelings of Guilt
After one takes on a commitment such as this, and then fails to come through, it is very easy for us to fall into feelings of guilt. It is easy to allow thoughts of, “I did something I should not have.” arise. This is normal. This is conviction. Conviction is what causes us to stop, turn around, and head back to God when we stray.
At times however, these feelings are allowed to go too far. When these thoughts change from, “I did something bad.” to “I am a bad person.” we have moved from conviction to condemnation. Conviction inspires us to change and to return to God. Condemnation tears us down. It brings us to a spiritual halt.
When in the Grip of Guilt
When facing overwhelming feelings of guilt, we have two things to do. The first thing to do is to keep things in perspective. God does not love us or accept us because we are perfect. Our pride and our enemy want us to believe this – in order to drive us away from God. But this is simply not true. God does want us to strive to be perfect, but we are neither saved nor kept by what we do.
As we process our guilt in perspective, zoom out a little. For us to give in to the destructiveness of guilt and condemnation, we have to believe that God’s anger over one missed day far outweighs his pleasure at the three, five, ten, fifteen, thirty, or however many days we did pray. Perspective.
The second thing we need to do when facing feelings of guilt is to remember grace. Grace is defined by theologians as unmerited favor. It means God gives to humanity gifts they do not deserve and could never earn. We were made part of God’s family by his grace (Ephesians 1:5). God grants us the gift of salvation by his grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace is what allows our relationship with God to begin, and it is grace that allows it to continue.
So, when we struggle with guilt, and the voices in our head tell us, “I am a bad person,” stand on grace. Remind ourselves of the truth, the fact that “I am a bad person – who was chosen by, loved by, adopted by, and saved by God because of his grace.”
One Other Response
At the moment I realized I missed a day, I was tempted to feel both anger and guilt. In that same moment I chose to go a third way.
I remembered grace. I reassured myself of the truth. Even though I missed a day, God does not love me any less. And even though I failed to do something I said I would, my salvation was not at risk – because no part of it depended on my activity anyway.
I also chose to learn from my mistake. I looked closely at what happened. Understanding how that day unfolded, I recognized my failure to prioritize and to control momentum got the best of me. It got the best of me that day, and looking back, I can see 
that these have been a struggle on many Saturdays and Sundays. Going forward I have decided to always pray first thing on the weekends. It is tough to wake up early on those days. I desperately want to sleep in, but I want to pray even more. So, I wake up early and get my time with God.
Choose to redeem your mistake by learning from it. Like a coach I had in college told us once, “Make an error once and it is called learning. Make an error twice, it’s a mistake.”
After reminding myself of God’s grace and choosing to learn from my error, I simply had to make one more choice: Just keep praying.
When the next day came, I prayed again. I picked up where I left off and kept going. Or as one little blue fish from the big silver screen might say, “Just keep praying, just keep praying . . .”
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