Am I giving more time to Facebook than to God’s Book?
Why are we so shocked when our lives get filled with stress? Why are so many Christians still so often without joy? Why are anxiety and worry more prevalent than peace in many modern believers? I’ll throw out one possible answer: We don’t pray enough.
Prayer is the hinge pin that holds everything else together and keeps us moving forward. Without prayer, everything falls apart. Without prayer, we’re not living, we’re breathing. Prayer is the most primal, most basic, and most important thing we can do as Christians. Prayer is also the very first thing we should do when we get busy.
When we don’t take time to pray, we may as well be saying that it’s not as high a priority as other the things in our lives that we do take time for. We often need to admit that we don’t make enough time to pray.
I don’t make enough time to pray, but I do make excuses. Maybe other things are pulling at me (sometimes children, literally). Maybe my prayer is interrupted, cut short, or unfocused because of reality—the demands of the world around me.
Jesus had people pulling at him. Jesus had people wanting things from him 24/7. Jesus had plenty to do. He made the time. Throughout the Scriptures we see instances when Jesus removed himself from the busyness and took time to pray. We need to be more like Jesus.
If you drew a pie chart of your week that broke down where all of your time goes, what would it look like? When I broke down my 168-hour week, it hit me pretty hard that not enough of my time is dedicated to prayer on a daily or weekly basis. How about yours? There’s probably a lot of time in there for work or school. There’s definitely time in there for travel, meals, and sleep (but probably not as much as you’d like). I’ll even bet that there’s time for exercise or hanging out, reading, or spending time with family and friends (again, probably not as much as you’d like). None of those things is bad; each of them is good. We need relationships, activities, and rest. But God is moving right now. If we don’t perceive it, we need to slow down.
Reprinted with permission of The Word Among Us, 7115 Guilford Dr #100, Frederick, MD 21704, wau.org, 1-800-775-9673.