7 Reasons Why Things Got Worse When You Started Praying Seriously

Understanding Why the Enemy Fights Harder When You Get Closer to God

If you have ever gone on a fast, started a serious prayer program, or committed to seeking God with everything in you, and then suddenly your life fell apart, your marriage got worse, your finances crashed, your health deteriorated, or something terrible happened to someone you love, this post is for you.

One of the most common questions I receive from people in our ministry is some version of this:

“Pastor Daniel, why is it that every time I start praying seriously, everything around me starts falling apart?”

I hear it every week. Sometimes every day.

A woman in our ministry started a 3-day dry fast for breakthroughs in her life, and on the second day, someone dear to her died and there was no single sign of something bad happening to this person the previos months.

A man joined our 5-day fasting and prayer program and suddenly his workplace became hostile, his wife starts picking fights, and his car breaks down.

A mother began praying over her children with new intensity and within 48 hours, one of them ended up in the emergency room.

I am going to tell you something that most pastors will not say out loud.

Prayer can make your life harder. Not because prayer is failing. But because it is working. And the enemy knows it.

If you have experienced anything like this, your first instinct might be to wonder whether prayer even works. Your second instinct might be to stop praying altogether. And that is exactly what the enemy wants.

Today I want to explain to you why this happens with scriptures, spiritual understanding, and with real-life patterns I have witnessed in years of ministry. By the time you finish reading this, you will never look at spiritual opposition the same way again.

Here are seven reasons why things get worse when you pray harder.

1. You Have Moved from Being a Civilian to Being a Threat

When you are living a casual Christian life, attending church on Sundays, saying a quick prayer before meals, and reading a devotional once in a while, the enemy is not particularly bothered by you. You are a civilian in the spirit realm. You are not doing any damage to his kingdom. You are not pulling anyone out of darkness. You are not advancing the purposes of God in any meaningful way. You are just safe, comfortable, and spiritually harmless.

But the moment you decide to pray with intensity, to fast with purpose, to seek God with your whole heart, everything changes.

You have just picked up a weapon, stepped onto the battlefield, moved from civilian status to combatant status, and the enemy now has to deal with you.

The enemy does not waste ammunition on people who are not dangerous to his kingdom. If he is attacking you during prayer, it is because your prayers are hurting him.

Think about it from the enemy’s perspective. Why would he attack someone who is not a threat?

He has limited resources. He deploys his forces strategically. He targets the people who are causing the most damage to his operations.

The fact that your life got harder when you started praying harder is not evidence that prayer does not work. It is evidence that prayer does work, and the enemy knows it.

When Jesus began His public ministry, the first thing that happened after His baptism was a 40-day fast in the wilderness.

And what came immediately after that fast?

Temptation.

Satan himself showed up. Not a minor demon. Not a low-level spirit.

The devil personally came to deal with Jesus because He had become the most dangerous man on the planet.

Matthew 4:1-2
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.”

Notice the sequence. The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. The fast was God’s idea. And the temptation came after the fast, not before. God did not prevent the attack. He prepared Jesus for it through the fast, and then the attack came. If the Son of God was attacked immediately after praying and fasting, why would you expect to be exempt?

2. Your Prayers Are Disrupting the Enemy’s Operations

When you start praying with intensity, something begins to happen in the spiritual realm that you cannot see with your physical eyes. Your prayers are like missiles being launched into the enemy’s territory. They are hitting targets. They are destroying strongholds. They are breaking chains. They are dismantling structures the enemy spent years building.

The enemy does not sit quietly while his kingdom is being dismantled. He fights back.

The chaos you are experiencing in the natural is a reaction to what is happening in the spiritual. The enemy is retaliating because your prayers are working.

This is one of the most important things I need you to understand.

The opposition you face during prayer is not proof that God is not listening. It is proof that the enemy is listening and he does not like what he hears.

When the enemy retaliates, it is a receipt. It is confirmation that your prayer hit the target.

One of the clearest examples of this is Daniel.

Daniel prayed and fasted for 21 days. On the very first day of his prayer, the answer was released from heaven. But the answer was delayed for 21 days because a demonic prince, the prince of Persia, was blocking the delivery.

Daniel 10:12-13
“Then he said to me, ‘Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.'”

Look at this carefully.

Daniel’s prayer was heard on Day 1.

God sent the answer on Day 1.

But for 21 days, it looked like nothing was happening.

For 21 days, Daniel could have assumed God was not listening.

For 21 days, the enemy was fighting to prevent the answer from arriving.

If Daniel had stopped praying on Day 10 or Day 15 because things seemed hopeless, the answer would not have come.

But he kept praying. He kept fasting. He kept pressing. And on Day 21, the breakthrough arrived with a message from heaven: “Your words were heard from the first day.”

Your answer may already be in transit. The delay you are experiencing is not God’s silence. It is the enemy’s resistance. And resistance is broken by persistence.

 

3. The Enemy Fights Hardest When He Is About to Lose

This is a principle that most believers do not understand, and it costs them dearly.

The intensity of the attack is often proportional to the proximity of the breakthrough.

In other words, the closer you are to your answer, the harder the enemy fights.

Think about what Pharaoh did in the book of Exodus. God had sent plague after plague upon Egypt. Pharaoh was losing. His economy was destroyed. His people were suffering. His own advisors were begging him to let Israel go. But when did Pharaoh fight the hardest? At the Red Sea. After Israel had already left Egypt. When they were already free.

Pharaoh gathered his entire army, his chariots, his horsemen, and his soldiers, and chased Israel to the edge of the sea. That was his most aggressive move. And it came after he had already lost.

The enemy’s most violent attack is often his last. He is not getting stronger. He is getting desperate.

If you are in the middle of intense spiritual warfare right now and things seem to be getting worse by the day, consider the possibility that you are not far from your breakthrough. Consider the possibility that the enemy is throwing everything he has at you because he knows that if you keep praying for one more day, one more week, one more round of fasting, his hold on your life is finished.

The worst thing you can do right now is stop.

The enemy is counting on your exhaustion. He is counting on your discouragement. He is counting on you interpreting the increased pressure as evidence that prayer is not working.

Do not give him that victory. Press through. The wall is about to fall.

4. God Is Using the Pressure to Purify You for What Is Coming

Sometimes God Himself allows pressure during seasons of prayer because He is preparing you for what He is about to release.

Gold is purified by fire.

The goldsmith does not put gold into the fire to destroy it. He puts it into the fire to remove the impurities. The fire does not feel good to the gold. But the fire is necessary for the gold to become what it was meant to be.

1 Peter 1:6-7
“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Some of the things you are going through right now may be God’s furnace. He might be burning away things in your character, in your thinking, in your habits, and in your relationships that cannot go with you into the next season.

Have you noticed that when you start praying intensely, certain relationships become strained? Certain friendships become uncomfortable? Certain habits become harder to maintain? That is not always the devil. Sometimes that is God rearranging your life. He is removing people who cannot go where He is taking you. He is breaking habits that would compromise you in the next level. He is stripping away everything that is not essential so that you can travel light into your next season.

Sometimes the things falling apart in your life are not signs that God is absent. They are signs that God is renovating. You cannot renovate a house without tearing some things down first.

The question is not “Why is this happening?”

“What is God building?”

If you can trust Him in the demolition phase, you will love what He builds in the construction phase.

I think about Joseph in the book of Genesis. Before God made him the second most powerful man in Egypt, He put him through a pit, a false accusation, and a prison.

Every one of those experiences felt like destruction. But every one of them was preparation.

The pit taught him survival. The accusation taught him integrity under pressure. The prison taught him patience and divine timing.

Without those experiences, Joseph would not have been ready for the palace.

God does not waste pain. Everything you are going through right now is being converted into preparation for something you cannot yet see.

I recently ministered to a woman who had been praying for a financial breakthrough for years. During one of our fasting programs, instead of getting the breakthrough, she lost her job. She was devastated. She felt betrayed by God.

But within three months, a door opened for a position that paid nearly triple what she was earning before. God had to close the small door so she would be available when the big door opened. If she had kept the old job, she would never have applied for the new one. The loss was the setup for the gain.

Another man in our ministry began a 7-day fast and on the third day, his business partner withdrew from a deal they had been working on for months. He was angry. He felt abandoned. But two weeks later, a completely different partner approached him with a deal that was five times larger than the original one. If the first partner had stayed, he would have been locked into a smaller agreement and unavailable for the bigger one.

If something fell apart during your prayer season, ask God what He is building. The demolition is not the end of the story. It is the clearing of the site for a bigger structure.

5. Prayer Exposes What Was Already There

Here is something that will change how you look at your situation. The problems that seem to appear when you start praying were not created by prayer. They were already there. Prayer simply exposed them.

Think of it like turning on a light in a dark room. When you flip the switch, you suddenly see the dust, the dirt, the cobwebs, and the insects that were there the whole time. The light did not create the mess. The light revealed the mess. And you cannot clean what you cannot see.

Prayer is spiritual light. When you begin to pray with intensity, the light of God enters areas of your life that have been in darkness. Suddenly you see things you did not see before. The toxicity in a relationship you thought was fine. The financial habits that were slowly destroying you. The spiritual doors that were open and letting the enemy walk in and out freely. The generational patterns that have been operating for decades without anyone noticing.

John 3:20-21
“For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen.”

When things start surfacing during a season of prayer, do not panic. Thank God. He is showing you what needs to be dealt with. He is exposing the root so you can address it. If He left it hidden, it would continue to destroy you in secret. Exposure is a mercy.

I have seen this in ministry countless times. A woman starts praying seriously and suddenly discovers her husband has been unfaithful. A man begins fasting and suddenly a health issue is detected that would have been fatal if caught any later. A family starts praying together and long-buried secrets come to the surface.

These things feel like catastrophes, but they are actually interventions. God is exposing what was hidden so it can be healed, addressed, and removed.

What prayer exposes, prayer can heal. God never shows you a problem without providing the solution.

6. The Enemy Wants to Make You Associate Prayer with Pain

This is one of the most strategic tactics in the enemy’s playbook, and very few believers recognize it. The enemy cannot stop you from praying. He does not have the authority to seal your mouth or chain your hands. But what he can do is create a psychological association between prayer and pain.

Here is how it works. You start a fast. Something terrible happens. You start praying intensely. A crisis erupts. You commit to a prayer program. A loved one gets sick.

After this happens two or three times, your subconscious mind begins to build a connection: “Every time I pray seriously, something bad happens.”

And the next time you think about starting a fast or joining a prayer program, a feeling of fear and dread comes over you. Not because prayer is dangerous. But because the enemy has successfully linked prayer with pain in your mind.

The enemy cannot stop your prayers. So instead, he tries to make you stop yourself. He creates fear around the very weapon that is destroying him.

I have spoken to people who are literally afraid to pray. Not because they do not believe in God. Not because they do not want to pray. But because they are terrified of what might happen if they do. They have been conditioned by painful experiences to associate prayer with loss.

Let me say this as clearly as I can.

Prayer did not cause the tragedy. The enemy caused the tragedy and timed it to coincide with your prayer so that you would blame prayer instead of blaming him.

The timing is deliberate. The enemy waits. He watches for the moment you step into serious prayer and then he releases something devastating. Not because your prayer triggered it. But because he needs you to believe that your prayer triggered it. If he can make you afraid of your own weapon, he wins without a fight.

2 Timothy 1:7 says God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.

If fear comes when you think about praying, that fear is not from God. It is from the enemy. And it must be broken.

I ministered to a woman recently who told me she had not prayed seriously in over a year. When I asked why, she broke down in tears and said, “The last time I fasted, my mother had a stroke. The time before that, I lost my job. I am terrified that if I pray again, something worse will happen.”

My heart broke for her. She was not backslidden. She was not rebellious. She was traumatized. The enemy had successfully weaponized her pain and turned it into a prison that kept her away from the very God who could heal her.

I told her what I am telling you now. The stroke was not caused by fasting. The job loss was not caused by prayer. The enemy orchestrated the timing to create the illusion of cause and effect. And the illusion worked, because for over a year, she stopped praying. For over a year, the enemy had free rein in her life because she had laid down her weapon voluntarily.

The next time you feel afraid to pray, pray anyway.

The next time you feel dread about starting a fast, fast anyway.

The next time the enemy tells you that something terrible will happen if you seek God, seek God anyway.

Break the association. Take back your weapon. Refuse to be afraid of the very thing that sets you free.

7. The Battle Confirms the Blessing

There is a principle in scripture that most people overlook: the size of the opposition is often an indicator of the size of what God has prepared for you. The bigger the battle, the bigger the blessing on the other side.

When the children of Israel were about to enter the Promised Land, they sent 12 spies to survey it. The spies came back and confirmed that the land was everything God said it would be. It was flowing with milk and honey. The fruit was so large that it took two men to carry a single cluster of grapes. But the spies also reported that the land was full of giants. Fortified cities. Powerful enemies.

Ten of the spies said, “We cannot take it. The giants are too big.”

But two of them, Joshua and Caleb, saw it differently. They said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it” (Numbers 13:30).

Here is what most people miss. The giants were not a sign that they were in the wrong place. The giants were a sign that they were in the right place. The enemy does not guard empty land. He guards territory that is valuable. The bigger the opposition, the more valuable the territory.

If there are giants guarding the door, it means there is something behind that door worth fighting for. The enemy does not post security around empty rooms.

The same principle applies to your prayer life. When you begin to pray and the opposition increases dramatically, it is because there is something significant on the other side of your prayer. A promotion. A healing. A financial breakthrough. A restored marriage. A new ministry. A divine connection. A destiny-altering moment. And the enemy is doing everything in his power to make you turn around before you get there.

Caleb and Joshua saw the same giants that the other 10 spies saw. But they came to a different conclusion. The 10 spies said, “The giants are too big for us.” Caleb and Joshua said, “The giants are too big to miss.” Same giants. Different perspective.

The battle you are in right now is not a sign that you should stop. It is a sign that you are close. Keep going. What God has on the other side is worth every moment of the fight.

So What Should You Do?

Now that you understand why things get worse when you pray harder, let me give you practical instructions for navigating these seasons.

Do Not Stop Praying

This is the most important instruction I can give you. When things get bad during a season of prayer, the temptation is to stop. Do not stop. That is exactly what the enemy wants. Every time you feel like quitting, remind yourself that the opposition is evidence that your prayers are working. Push through. Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

Increase Your Prayer Instead of Decreasing It

When the enemy increases the pressure, increase the prayer. If you were praying once a day, pray twice. If you were fasting for one day, fast for three. Match the enemy’s intensity with greater intensity. He is expecting you to retreat. Surprise him by advancing. James 4:7 says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Not might flee. Will flee. But you must resist, not retreat.

Pray with Precision

When you come under attack during prayer, pay attention to where the attack is coming from. Is it your health? Your marriage? Your finances? Your children? The area of attack often reveals what the enemy is most afraid of losing control over. If he attacks your finances during a season of prayer, it means a financial breakthrough is near. If he attacks your marriage, it means restoration is on the way. Pray specifically into the area of attack. That is where the breakthrough is hiding.

Do Not Fight Alone

Ecclesiastes 4:12 says a threefold cord is not easily broken. When the battle gets intense, you need people praying with you. Join a prayer community. Connect with a prayer group. Link up with believers who will stand with you and not let you quit. Some battles are too big for one person. Even Jesus took Peter, James, and John with Him to Gethsemane. If Jesus needed prayer partners, so do you.

Combine Faith with Wisdom

While you are praying, do not neglect the practical. If your health comes under attack, see a doctor and pray. If your finances crash, seek wise counsel and pray. If your marriage is strained, communicate with your spouse and pray. Faith and wisdom are not opponents. They are partners. Nehemiah prayed to God and posted guards at the wall. He did not choose between the two. He did both. So should you.

Keep a Record of Your Battles and Your Victories

One of the most powerful things you can do during seasons of spiritual warfare is write things down. Write down the attacks. Write down the prayers. Write down the breakthroughs. Over time, you will begin to see a pattern: every time the enemy attacked during prayer, a breakthrough followed. Every time things got worse, something better was on the other side. That written record will become your testimony, and your testimony will become your weapon. Revelation 12:11 says they overcame the enemy by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

Protect Your Mind During the Battle

The enemy’s primary battlefield is your mind. He will bombard you with thoughts of failure, doubt, fear, and hopelessness during seasons of intense prayer.

Philippians 4:8 says, “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.”

Guard your thought life. Do not entertain every thought that enters your mind during warfare. Some of those thoughts are not yours. They are darts from the enemy designed to destabilize your faith. Reject them. Replace them with the Word of God.

Practically, this means controlling what you consume during seasons of prayer. Be intentional about what you listen to, what you watch, what you read, and who you spend time with. Fill your mind with worship music, with sermons, with scriptures, and with testimonies of others who have overcome similar battles. Starve the fear and feed the faith.

Remember Past Victories

When David faced Goliath, he did not focus on the size of the giant. He focused on the faithfulness of God in his past. He said, “The LORD, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:37). David used his history with God as fuel for his faith in the present battle.

What has God done for you before? What prayers has He answered in the past? What impossible situations did He bring you through? Remember those moments. Write them down. Speak them out loud. If God did it before, He will do it again. Your past victory is the proof that your current battle has an expiration date.

The God who delivered you from the lion and the bear will deliver you from this giant too. He has not changed. He has not weakened. And He has not forgotten you.

A Word of Encouragement

If you are reading this right now and you are in the middle of one of these seasons, I want to speak directly to you.

You are not cursed.

God has not abandoned you.

The chaos around you is not proof that prayer has failed. It is proof that something in the spirit realm has shifted and the enemy is scrambling to regain the control he is losing.

Maybe you started a fasting program and your health took a hit. Maybe you joined a prayer group and your spouse suddenly became hostile. Maybe you made a commitment to seek God daily and within a week you lost something precious. Maybe the attacks have been so relentless that you are questioning whether God is even real, let alone whether He hears your prayers.

I want to tell you something from the bottom of my heart as a pastor who has walked this road for years. He is real. He does hear you. And the attack you are enduring is not the final chapter of your story. It is the painful middle chapter that makes the ending glorious.

Every great testimony I have ever heard started with a terrible battle. Nobody testifies about the season when everything was easy. They testify about the season when everything fell apart and God put it back together. Your testimony is being written right now, in the fire, in the pressure, in the tears, in the midnight prayers. And when you stand up to tell it, people will weep. Not because of the pain you went through. But because of the God who brought you through it.

The darkest part of the night is just before dawn. If your situation feels impossibly dark right now, it may be because your dawn is closer than you think.

I have watched people in this ministry go through the most intense battles of their lives during fasting and prayer. And I have watched those same people come out the other side with testimonies that made them weep with gratitude. Marriages restored. Debts cleared. Diseases healed. Jobs secured. Children delivered. Witchcraft broken. Doors flung open that had been locked for years.

Every single one of them went through a season where they wanted to quit. Every single one of them had a moment where they questioned whether God was listening. Every single one of them faced a point where the enemy’s pressure seemed unbearable. But they kept going. And they won.

You will win too. But you have to stay in the fight.

Isaiah 41:10
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

He is with you. He will strengthen you. He will help you. He will uphold you. That is not a suggestion. That is a promise from the mouth of God.

Do not stop praying. Do not stop fasting. Do not stop believing. The breakthrough is not behind you. It is right in front of you. One more push. One more prayer. One more day of standing in faith. And you will see the hand of God move in a way that will make you forget every moment of the battle.

Share this post with someone who is going through a difficult season of prayer. They need to know they are not alone and they are not losing. They are winning, even if it does not feel like it yet.

Until next post, stay in prayer. Stay in the Word. Stay in the fight.

Your breakthrough is closer than you think.