All tagged time
My devotional reading this morning was on the subject of the universality of prayer. I have been reading Pastor E. M. Bounds this year, and today he was writing on the impact that our prayers have on not only us personally, but the world as a whole. This is a subject that is near to my heart, and so when he wrote on this subject it grabbed my attention instantly. Listen as he makes this statement, and then let’s delve into it.
Do we pray in little bits and fragments, or do we carve out the best hours of our day for prayer, and then immerse ourselves in it and the presence of God? When we don’t give our entire selves, and undivided attention, to the Lord in prayer, then what does that say about the value we place on our relationship with Him? Jesus sets a high bar for us when it comes to dedicating ourselves to prayer. To him it is not an afterthought, nor something to be done in passing, no, it is something holy that is to be sweated over, bled over, and that will often take all night to accomplish. Shouldn’t we at least give our Father the best of what we have by dedicating quality time to our prayers?
There are so many things in our everyday world that can distract us from prayer, and this is nothing that is new to us today. In the earliest days of the church they struggled with distractions as well. We like to think that we live in a busy modern world, and that finding time for prayer today is something new, or at least occurs more often than it did in the time of Jesus, but that simply isn’t true. There are two ways that we can be distracted, the first is in finding time for prayer, and the second is having our thoughts interrupted so that we can’t concentrate on them. Do either of these things sound familiar, and what can we do about them.
Do we feel like men and women born in the wrong spiritual time? Do we feel more akin to the first Christians who followed behind Jesus than with modern man? Sometimes we look around ourselves and see what is happening in the world, and Church, and our hearts ache exceedingly for His return; we long for His coming, and a renewal of faith around the world. Well we are not alone in feeling this way because Paul felt just as many of us do… born out of due time!
We read the account of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and how His disciples kept falling asleep when they should have been keeping watch. As we read this we just can’t understand how they could have possibly been so negligent, but aren’t all of us falling asleep in similar fashion today? How well do we manage our time? Do we allot an hour to pray, keep our eyes open and fixed on the Lord as we offer our prayers, or watch vigilantly for His return?