The sin of not praying

For the LORD will not forsake His people, for His great name's sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you His people. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and the right way. – 1 Samuel 12.22-23

I recently saw a meme on Facebook. I did not check the veracity of it, but it was a video that said that Spurgeon had a list of 100 friends hat he prayed for every night. This story went on that over the course of his life 96 of the friends were saved and that at his funeral the last four came to faith in Christ.

There is no doubt that Spurgeon was pray-er. Those who knew him attest to the fact that he was obsessed with praying for others, especially for the lost. Thousands heard him pray publicly, and much smaller number heard him pray privately. Those who did were moved by his passion for others.

I think this is the kind or praying heart that Samuel had. Samuel told the people that it would be sin for him to stop praying for them.

We all know that we should pray. Jesus put it pretty simply – ‘people should always pray and not lose heart.’ Paul wrote ‘pray without ceasing.’ We could go on and on, but we all know that we ought to pray more and surely to pray for each other. And yes, I don’t think it is too much to say that when we don’t pray for each other we too are sinning. Sins are not only things we commit but things we omit, and omitting prayer is indeed sin.

What gets is the way? I wish I knew. Well, I do know, but it sounds awful to put in down in words. We are too lazy to pray. We are too selfish to pray. We are too self-centred to pray like we should. We get caught up in things that we think are more important, like watching our television programme or checking our Facebook feed or fighting over politics or making sure our opinions are known or playing our video games or checking the scores or whatever. It seems like there is always something 'more important' than prayer.

Are any of those things bad? Of course not – but it becomes sin when we sacrifice prayer in order to do them. Our flesh battles against prayer. Satan battles against prayer. The pressures of the world battle against prayer. And too often we let them win.

There are hundred of books about prayer. I probably have a couple of dozen books on prayer on my shelves.

But it is not that hard. How do we pray?

We stop, lay other things aside, and talk to our God.

God forbid, may it never be, that we sin in not praying for each other.