"You pray too much..."?!?

“You spend too much time praying.”

I read this the other day. It was a criticism labeled against a preacher (I don’t even know where he was from) by one of the leaders in his church! Can you imagine? As one of my friends responded to him, “I wish someone would accuse ME of praying too much!”

When it comes to our spiritual lives, most of us are probably not praying anywhere near enough to be accused of praying too much. In fact, most of us could probably be accused of just the opposite, “You spend too little time praying.” But, it did make me wonder, “Is it really possible to pray too much?”

Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to, “pray without ceasing.” That’s a fairly direct statement - don’t stop praying. There is something inspiring about being around someone who lives this out. Being around someone who is in a constant mode of communication with God is an awesome experience and it motivates you to do the same. So, on the one hand, I don’t believe it is possible to pray too much. But, there is another hand: When we use prayer as an excuse to not take action on what God has called us to do.

You know, there are some things we just don’t have to pray about. We don’t have to pray about whether or not we should love someone, whether or not we should give, whether or not we should share our faith. We know the answers to these things - it’s YES - Get to it! But sometimes, we find ourselves praying for these things because we want to drag our feet in doing what we know God wants us to do.

Other times, we find ourselves praying for people’s needs instead of meeting their needs. If a friend comes to you and asks you to pray for them to find a computer for school and you have an extra computer - don’t pray that they would find a computer, give them the computer and pray for them to use it well. Don’t allow prayer to become an excuse for not acting.

“You spend too much time praying.”

I want people to say that about me because they know that I’m praying for others, for my enemies, for my family, for the work of God to be evident in me, for those divine appointments that only God can provide, or simply because I just love listening to Jesus. But what I don’t want to be said about me is that I spend too much time praying about the things that I should already be moving on or using prayer as an excuse for paralysis. Be a praying person, but be a praying person who moves.

~ Adam