Taking Time For Prayer

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.
Ephesians 1:15-16

“I can’t believe it. I absolutely promised myself (more important, I promised God!) that I would pray for at least 30 minutes this morning. Instead, I pushed the snooze button on the alarm so many times that I didn’t have time to pray at all. The worst of it is that I haven’t had a decent quiet time now for four days in a row! What in the world is wrong with me?”

Sound familiar? Many of us have feeble prayer lives. In contrast, Paul prayed constantly and instructed us to do the same. Our world is a busy world, and God understands that. But it remains true that a prayerless Christian is unheard of in Scripture—but not unheard of in our day.

Alexander Whyte encourages us to work at prayer (rather than just pray at work).

WALK WITH ALEXANDER WHYTE
“I am certain that the secret of much mischief to our own souls and to the souls of others lies in the way that we starve our prayers by hurrying over them. Prayer that God will call true prayer takes far more time than one-in-a-thousand thinks. After all that the Holy Spirit has done to make true prayer independent of times, and of places, and of all kinds of instruments and assistances—as long as we remain in this unspiritual and undevotional world—we shall not succeed in prayer without such times, and places, and other assistances.

“Take good care lest you take your salvation far too cheaply. If you find your life of prayer to be always so short, and so easy, and so spiritual, as to be without strain and sweat to you, you may depend upon it, you have not yet begun to pray. As sure as you sit there, it is just in this matter of time in prayer that so many of us are making shipwrecks of our souls and of the souls of others.”

WALK CLOSER TO GOD
“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26). Keep that in mind and you will struggle in prayer rather than with prayer.