Mark 1:35
I've been writing a lot about prayer lately, and for good reason. I mean, if that's what I've been learning about, shouldn't it be what I write about too? Well, anyway, I've been reading R.A. Torrey's short book, How to Pray, and it's incredible! I just finished it today, and I can't begin to tell you how powerful and convicting it was. The whole book is great, but what really got me was what Torrey said in Chapter 11: "Prayerlessness abounds among church members on every hand. Some one has said that Christians on the average do not spend more than five minutes a day in prayer."
That hit me hard. It's sad. When I read that a couple days ago, Satan tried to get to my pride by telling me that my prayer life has been good enough this year that I'm not one of those people, that my scattered prayers throughout the day (which aren't unimportant) added up to at least five minutes a day. But something still didn't feel right. Of course there's no minimum time requirement for prayer in order to be a "good" Christian, but if your best friend lived right next door to you, would you be content to only talk to them five minutes a day (or less) at school? Maybe it's just me (I doubt it), but five minutes doesn't come even close to being enough. And it should be the same with prayer. To pray is to be in conversation with God, and if God is our best Friend, then five minutes of prayer should be a mere fraction of the time we want to spend with Him—and not just the time we want to spend with Him, but the time we actually do spend with Him.
In Matthew 26, Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples Peter, James, and John to pray, and in verses 40 and 41, Jesus rebukes the disciples for sleeping when they should have been praying: "'Could you men not keep watch with Me for one hour?' He asked Peter. 'Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.'" "'Could you men not keep watch... for one hour?'" Jesus went off by Himself into the garden to pray for an hour! And He spoke as if this were a regular occurrence for Him. In fact, Luke 6:12 says, "One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God." The entire night! He gave up sleep so that He could spend time praying to God! And in Mark 1:35 we see that, when He did get His sleep, He would get up early in the morning to pray. And Luke 5:16 says, "But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." It doesn't just say, "Jesus prayed often." It says that He "withdrew to lonely places and prayed." When you withdraw away from the crowd to get peace and quiet, most people usually intend to be gone for more than just a few seconds. Jesus spent long hours in prayer. Frequently.
Personally, my prayers have always been scattered and short. If you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that earlier this year I started praying while walking from place to place on campus. While this increased the frequency and length of my time in prayer, my prayers were interrupted by distractions several times throughout my half-hour walks from my dorm to the School of Music. Of course, now that I think about it, I'm thankful to God that He used that time to help my prayer life grow. But that was only the beginning.
Yesterday and today were the first times I set aside periods of time specifically for prayer, and prayer alone. And it was amazing! Simply taking time to draw away from the world and to just pray felt incredible! In fact, I was so absorbed in spending time with God that I was shocked to find that I spent an hour praying while laying in bed this morning! Now, this isn't to brag, but today has been the best day I've had so far this summer (I've been at peace and had a sense of being filled with the Holy Spirit all day), and I'm convinced that it's because of that hour of prayer. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like if I prayed like that every day!
And what if we all did? As Malachi 3:10 says, "'Test Me in this, ' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.'" So let's test God and see what He'll do when we give Him everything and come to Him in frequent, earnest prayer.
"I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth." ~ Isaiah 62:6-7
No comments:
Post a Comment