Why I No Longer Pray

Why I No Longer Pray: This reflection isn’t a rejection of awe, gratitude, or the Sacred. It’s an honest exploration of why I’ve stepped away from petitionary prayer and toward reflection, responsibility, and embodied care. I offer it in a spirit of curiosity rather than certainty, and with respect for those whose prayers still sustain them.

At least not in the way I was taught to, and not in the way most people mean when they ask others to “pray for them.”

For much of my life, prayer meant asking God to intervene. To fix something. To stop something. To heal. To change outcomes, or to change people. Sometimes the request was for me. Often it was for others. The prayers were sincere, detailed, and carefully worded, because I had been taught that precision mattered. Say the right words. Use the right formula. Address the right persons of the Trinity. Pray long enough, hard enough, faithfully enough, and something would change.

But over time, that understanding of prayer began to unravel.

I prayed prayers that were earnest, theologically correct, and deeply heartfelt. They did not change the thing I was praying for. In some cases, the struggle intensified. Anyone who has lived long enough carries a quiet inventory of prayers that went unanswered, at least in the way they were asked.

At first, I assumed the problem was me. Maybe I lacked faith. Maybe I didn’t pray correctly. Maybe I was missing some essential posture, phrase, or belief. Like many people shaped by evangelical Christianity, I was told that prayer “worked” only if addressed properly, often with the right Trinitarian equation attached. Otherwise, I was warned, I was just talking to the wind.

So I tried harder.

Nothing changed.

The deeper problem revealed itself when I widened the lens beyond my own life.

We live in a world fractured by moral, political, and cultural conflict. On nearly every fault line, trans lives, same sex marriage, gun violence, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, the rise of authoritarianism, you will find sincere, devout people on opposing sides asking God to intervene on their behalf. God is asked to help one side win, to expose the error of the other, to bring about outcomes that align neatly with each group’s sense of righteousness.

At that point, prayer begins to sound less like humility and more like recruitment and domination, we want our side to win.

If prayer is about divine intervention, then an unavoidable question arises. Who does God listen to? Why this prayer and not that one? Why does God appear silent when the stakes feel so high?

Or perhaps the more honest question is this. Why does God seem to listen to no one?

When opposing people, parties, or nations are each asking God to help them prevail, the framework collapses. Either God is partisan, arbitrary, or indifferent, or we have misunderstood the nature of prayer itself. At its worst, prayer becomes a way of sanctifying our own certainty, baptizing our fear, and outsourcing responsibility for consequences we are unwilling to face.

What has helped clarify things for me was not a new idea, but a familiar biblical text I had read many times without really hearing.

In Second Peter, we are told that God’s divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, so that we may become participants of the divine nature. The tense matters. Has given. Not will give. Not might give. Not God is waiting to give once we ask correctly.

Nothing is missing.

What follows is striking. The author does not pivot to instructions about prayer. Instead, we are invited into practice. Faith supported by goodness. Goodness by knowledge. Knowledge by self-control. Self-control by endurance. Endurance by godliness. Godliness by mutual affection. Mutual affection by love.

There is no magic here. No divine override. No intervention that bypasses human agency.

Participation is not passivity.

Then comes the line that changed everything for me: I intend to keep reminding you of these things, though you already know them.

That sentence reframed prayer.

If we already possess what we need, prayer is not about acquiring new resources. It is about remembering. It is about reorientation. It is about refusing to forget who we are meant to be when circumstances strip away certainty, comfort, and control.

In that light, prayer does not precede responsibility. It names it.

This realization explains why I now feel deeply uneasy with traditional petitionary prayer.

I want to be clear about what troubles me, and what does not. Awe and gratitude do not trouble me. They arise naturally, at a heart level, often without words. They feel less like actions and more like recognition. They do not demand outcomes or attempt to control reality.

What no longer rings true for me is prayer as petition and supplication. That kind of prayer is primarily cognitive. It lives in the realm of language, intention, awareness, and outcome. It asks for change out there, and often carries the belief that the right words, or enough people praying, might finally tip the scales.

My spiritual practice has shifted from petition to reflection.

My prayers now sound more like conversation or inquiry. They arise as I sit with my own thoughts, asking questions like, "What am I missing here?" What have I not yet seen? Where am I avoiding responsibility, courage, or compassion?

That kind of prayer does not ask the Sacred to intervene against others or on my behalf. It assumes the Sacred is already present, woven into conscience, insight, restraint, and love. It seeks alignment rather than rescue.

This matters deeply when we think about parenting, loss, and love.

I don’t fault parents for begging God to protect their children. I have done that myself. When we were awaiting the arrival of our three sons, I begged God to spare them from my struggles, that they would be happy in their bodies, that they would never know gender dysphoria. It is entirely natural for parents to beg for miracles on behalf of their children.

And yet, when I look back honestly, I have not witnessed many miracles in the way we usually mean that word. What I have witnessed is parents rising to meet realities they never wanted, becoming the parents their children needed them to be, heartache and all.

This does not end with childhood.

When my brother died of a brain tumour in 1985 at thirty-eight, I know we all prayed for miracles. Those prayers did not change the outcome. What carried us was not intervention, but one another. Presence. Love that stayed.

So when I question petitionary prayer, I am not questioning love, longing, or devotion. I am questioning the story we tell ourselves about what actually saves us.

What sustains us in the end is not divine intervention, but imperfect love that learns to stay grounded in when it seems like the rug is pulled out from under it.

This is why I no longer pray as I once did.

I do not believe God needs to be convinced to act. We have already been entrusted with what is needed, and that prayer, at its most honest, is a practice of remembering and returning.

In a world desperate for certainty, control, and winners, this way of thinking will trouble some people. I can live with that.

My hope is not agreement, but conversation.

What if the answer we are waiting for has already been given, and the work now is learning how to embody it?

That feels less like certainty, and more like an invitation.

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Final Word: My hope is not agreement, but conversation. I’m less interested in dismantling prayer than in asking whether the way we frame it still serves us, especially in a world where opposing sides continually ask God to intervene so that they might win. If this reflection resonates, challenges, or unsettles you, I welcome thoughtful dialogue offered in the same spirit of care in which it was written.