3. Fifteen Minute Frustration

Dear Jim,

I am thrilled to hear that since we last spoke you have found fifteen minutes of regular prayer time has reinvigorated your spiritual life. I’m sorry to hear that you have found the effectiveness of those fifteen minutes waning recently, but I cannot say that I am entirely surprised.

First, let me say that it has not been increasingly difficult for you to enjoy those fifteen minutes simply because you lack the self-discipline to stay focused on God. Self-discipline is helpful, but it cannot take the place of the grace we are given by God to pray. In the past, you were given grace to pray for fifteen minutes and enjoy it, but now it seems that grace has dried up. This is natural, because the depth of the conversations we are able to have in such a short time is very limited.

At fifteen minutes, there is a common barrier that I call the 15-minute frustration. For many of us as we start praying, we may set aside 5 minutes. That is not frustrating because we begin to see the fruit of it and quickly expand the time to 10 minutes and then to 15 minutes. At 15 minutes, we begin to experience more depth than the 5 to 10 minutes and so we tend to feel we’ve arrived. And for a time that is true, it is exactly where we should be. The problem is that in the long run, 15 minutes is a frustrating time.  It is better than the 5 to 10 minutes, and we experience that, but after a few stretches of fruitfulness, it becomes harder and harder and it leads many people to quit.

Think of it this way: if you were to meet a friend at a coffee shop each morning for fifteen minutes, how deep could that relationship ever be? As soon as you got past the pleasantries and started having a meaningful conversation, the time would be up and you’d have to leave. Or, as we often do in prayer, you’d have so much to tell the other person that you’d rush through everything you wanted to say without being able to slow down and talk about how you were feeling, let alone listen to what the other person was saying, or pay attention to their responses.

It’s possible that your fifteen minutes with God has started to feel dry because God is inviting you to spend more time with Him so that your conversation can go deeper, venturing closer to your heart and his. There may be other reasons as well, but this seems most likely. God calls us to pray to him during every season of our lives. That call might look different in different seasons, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes one way, sometimes another.

I wish that I could give you an exact number of minutes that you need to pray each day in order to experience new depths in your conversation with God, but we are all called differently. Still, God knows how he made you, and he knows what you need, so I believe the best thing you can do is to ask him what amount of time he is calling you to pray each day during this season of your life. Even if you feel like you never get a response from God when you ask him a question, I suspect you will get some sense of what he is inviting you into. Once you do, drop me a note and we can discuss next steps.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

What sense do you have from God about the duration and frequency of time he would like you to spend in personal prayer? If you do not know, start asking God daily to show you more clearly what he is inviting you into for this season of your life.