What angry and anxious prayers say about you

It looks like prayer has hit the skids in America.

According to a report published by Pew Research this year, “Fewer than half of Americans (44%) say they pray each day. This is a substantial decline from the first Religious Landscape Study (RLS) conducted in 2007, when 58% said they prayed at least once a day.” The researchers went on to say, “Most of the decline occurred between 2015 and 2021, a period in which the shares of U.S. adults who reported praying daily tumbled from 57% to 45%. Since 2021, the percentages who say they pray at least once a day have been relatively stable.”

Such numbers likely don’t surprise you. Maybe you’re even one of those who have thrown in the towel where prayer is concerned.

If you are, you’ll get no wagging finger of judgment from me. Although nearly every message I’ve heard from a pastor about the practices and signs of a Christian includes a “vibrant prayer life,” fellow believers that I know confess to me that they struggle in that area.

I have too.

Why? The reasons can be as varied and distinct as each individual, but for me, I have a bad habit of forgetting the kind of relationship I have with God. This often leads to a downhill slide where I find myself, because of circumstances, engulfed with either bitterness or guilt that manifests in a constant stream of angry or anxious prayers.  

And that flashes a “danger Will Robinson” wake-up call to me of a problem that I need to acknowledge and get busy correcting.

Performance vs. family relationship with God   

Tim Keller does a great job explaining how I and others fall into the angry-and-anxious-prayer trap in his message, “Basis of Prayer: Our Father.” At the core, Keller says, is a failure to remember that our interactions with God are not based on our performance but rather our being adopted as God’s child.

Maybe you already know the drill. Perhaps a series of unfortunate events has come down on you in trip-hammer fashion, or your prayers for meaningful things seem to have gone unanswered. What’s our reaction?

If we’re of the performance-based mindset with God, we often get either angry or anxious, and our prayers reflect that.  

The angry prayers descend into a haven’t-I-been-good series of statements that Keller likens to a relationship that a tenant has with a landlord. “Haven’t I been paying the rent? You owe me!”

The anxious prayers are fearful, full of guilt, worry, and self-deprecation. “I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” you pray. You become wracked with guilt over feeling that you’ve let Him down, and then you seek forgiveness in hopes of getting your performance, quid pro quo relationship with God back on track.

With me, even though I know both are false, I can still easily step right into them. I know that Paul warns us about seeking a works-based connection to God when he says, “You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4). And I know that terrible events which fall on us aren’t necessarily the result of sin because Jesus said so: “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2–5).

This isn’t to say discipline for unrighteous acts never happens because Scripture says it can (e.g., Heb. 12:7–11, Is. 59:2, Jer. 5:25), but most of the time, the angry and anxious aspects of our prayers can be traced back to one thing Keller says: Approaching God in a “what I have for you manner” vs. “what I am to you” perspective.  

With the former, when bad things happen or prayers go unanswered, our response can be “What good is it to be a Christian?” and we stop altogether. But with the latter, although hard to do at times, our response is to remember that “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (Eph. 1:5) and because of that family relationship we have with Him, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

Paul tells us this another way when he writes: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:15–17).

So, if you find yourself in that 56% of Americans that Pew Research says don’t pray, ask yourself whether you previously slid into the angry/anxious prayer habit, which leads back to a performance-based relationship with God. There’s almost nothing that will cause a person to throw up their hands and walk away from prayer than that.