Have you ever lost the drive to pray? If you have, then you'd know how hard it is to push yourself to sit down, be quiet, and pray.

Don't you just wish it would be easier to pray when you're not in the mood for it? Don't you just wish you can just sit down and pray like you're used to?

If you feel like you've lost your drive to pray, then my friend, I have something to share with you. Read on.

When praying seems like a chore

Many of us feel like prayer has turned from being a joyful habit to a boring chore.

From the moment we meet Christ we feel excited to spend time with Him in prayer and Bible reading. We wake up early in order to pray while everybody else is sleeping. We take short breaks during the day to pause and pray. And we often pray before sleeping, sometimes late into the night.

After some time, however, that excitement slowly fades and turns to a weight we don't like to carry. We quickly rush through the morning without praying, work so hard all day and forget to pause and pray, and fall asleep as we open our Bibles.

Yes, many of us feel that way towards prayer.

Friend, prayer is not a boring chore that we do just to mark a check on the checklist. It's not a daily requirement we need to meet in order to have a clear conscience as we sleep.

No, it's not.

I know it sounds so cliche, but prayer is the lifeblood of a Christian. Prayer is our means of communicating with God. Without prayer we are unable to commune with God, and if we don't commune with God we're like toys without batteries:

We have the look but we don't have the power to function the way we're intended to.

If you want to regain your drive to pray, here are a few things you've got to do.

1) Realize that you need to pray in order to live the life God wants for you

When soldiers are deployed to any mission, the first thing they work on establishing is their communications with the headquarters. Soldiers know that communicating with their commanders is very important to ensuring the mission goes completely as planned.

As Christians, we are soldiers for Christ, fighting the good fight of faith. To ensure that our mission goes completely as God planned it, we need to keep communicating with Him. In order for us to live according to God's designs, we need to have constant communication with Him.

2) Push yourself to pray even when you don't feel like it

Some Christians make the fatal mistake of praying only when they "feel" like praying. They wait for a "sign" from God, or an "unction" before they start bowing on their knees and praying. This is wrong.

We've got to keep praying even when we don't feel like praying. Prayer is not a result of a good feeling. In fact, many of us pray when we're in trouble; the thing is, we only pray when we're in trouble.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to "pray without ceasing." This means praying at all times, whether we feel like praying or not.

3) Learn to pray and expect God's answers to your prayers

Truth is, many of us stopped praying because God didn't give us what we prayed for. Well, we will all do well to realize that God is above us, and He has the right to refuse anything we pray for.

Think about it: should God give us what is not good for us? James 4:3 tells us that God doesn't give us what we pray for when what we're praying for is only for our own selfish desires.

We should learn to pray according to the will of God. When we pray according to His will, we can expect His answers to arrive (see 1 John 5:14-15). When the answers arrive, we will be encouraged to keep praying always.