Struggling to pray? Here’s your guide to dry seasons

My prayer life has collapsed more than once. 

I’ve walked through desert seasons when prayer was like pulling teeth. My relationship with God became dry and all felt joy in speaking with him was lost, with words halting and sometimes failing altogether. 

Desert language comes naturally for such experiences. It was significant, too, for previous generations of believers. When they spoke of prayer struggles and of a God who’d seemingly become distant, they drew on desert imagery because they found it in scripture.   

Think of the Exodus, Israel’s experience of being hemmed in by wilderness. Remember their wanderings, doubtless blasted by sandstorms and walking endlessly in circles. Israel knew the desert as a place of struggle in their relationship with a God who refused to fit their boxes. Yet, though a place of difficulty for them, it was also a place of encounter with this God who fed them on manna and ensured their shoes never wore out (Deuteronomy 8:3-4).   

Even before that, Jacob wrestled God in the desert (Genesis 32). And long after them all, Elijah would eventually wait for God there, depending on divine provision of raven-food and angel-cakes (1 Kings 17,19). Later still, Jesus himself would willingly follow the Spirit into the desert, there to prove his Father’s faithfulness (Luke 4:1-13). 

Not for nothing, then, do we use desert language with one another, hoping to convey a sense of weary emptiness in our prayer. Desert describes how a God who is everywhere present and always speaking can seem somehow to disappear from view, lapsing into silence. 

Two causes

Desert language is helpful, for sure. But it doesn’t always show us how to respond to such experiences. Wider Christian tradition, however, does. It recognises that difficulties in prayer may stem from two different possibilities, one of which is sin and the other a movement of Spirit-initiated growth.   

In the first of these, difficulty in prayer results from acedia, one of the seven deadly sins and better known as sloth. Acedia, mentioned by Evagrius of Pontus and John Cassian, is most fully explained by Thomas Aquinas. He defines acedia as a failure to continue in friendship with God. Someone in acedia’s grip may desire God but ultimately cannot sustain that longing. In the internal wrestle between flesh and spirit (Galatians 5:17), flesh repeatedly wins. Seeking to please God and spending time with him, just as one would with a human friend, becomes too much effort.   

When acedia takes hold, prayer and Bible reading tends to wither. The work of being church with others seems burdensome. And, because these practices become more sporadic, our experience of them when we do engage becomes less and less a source of joy.  Instead, when we pray, tedium sets in and, finally, we find ourselves locked into a cycle of avoiding God. 

So much for difficulty in prayer stemming from sin. What about the second kind of struggles, which point, however unexpectedly, to spiritual growth? John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic, is the theologian par excellence here. He presents dark night as a passivity and weariness in prayer by which God transforms believers in Christlikeness. Here, John says, God removes much of the experience of his presence to wean us off dependence on God’s gifts in favour of satisfaction with God alone. Today, we talk about the importance of loving the Giver more than the gifts. This is the 16th century version of that: God is teaching us to desire him more than his good gifts. 

So, in dark night, spiritual things like prayer and Bible reading, once joyful and exciting, now become dull. Prayer’s rhythms and patterns change too. Whereas words came easily in prayer, now we stumble or even give up on words completely. The sense of God-with-us dwindles until calling him Emmanuel is only a faith statement, not declaration of current experience. And, though John tells us everything seems like darkness only because we’ve finally begun to be led into the blinding brightness of God’s light, we struggle to believe him.   

Passivity and frustration, boredom and distraction: these symptoms in prayer can indicate different diagnoses indeed. How do these diagnoses help us understand our own struggles? What wisdom does Christian tradition offer in each case? 

The cure

In the end, it doesn’t matter hugely to discern accurately whether our struggles are acedia or dark night. There’s a place for that discernment, admittedly. I often make diagnoses as a spiritual director, recognising also the nuanced contribution to prayer struggles made by depression, physical issues, and traumas (and pointing people to their GP as necessary). But diagnosis is not as fundamental as it seems. You see, no matter the root cause of prayer problems, the theologians and monastics give the same advice. 

In both cases, they tell us to keep praying. As scripture says, wait on the Lord (Psalm 62:5). Always keep praying and don’t give up (Luke 18:1). Thomas instructs those caught in acedia that setting their gaze on Jesus – contemplating him no matter how hard this is – brings eventual relief. For those in dark night, John encourages perseverance in prayer, however dry it may be, promising that one day God’s light will break forth fully such that experience and enjoyment of him will be more than ever before. 

It’s simple advice, perhaps, yet also hard to implement. For persevering prayer is exactly what both the acedic person and one undergoing dark night find so hard.   

But here’s where you and I might come in. If you are, at present, experiencing prayer as joy, this next bit is for you. In order for our friends to persevere in prayer, they will need to depend on the Church’s encouragement. That means us bearing their burdens (Galatians 6:2), listening to their pain and frustration and reassuring them. We can hold the space with them, sitting together in prayer – maybe with the Psalms – and vocalising on their behalf what our friends cannot. We might challenge them gently and pray for their strengthening, waiting together in silence for hope from God.   

For it’s only in praying together that we’ll fulfil Jesus’ instruction not to give up.