Power in prayer is possible for all of us… not just those we perceive to be the “super spiritual”. I say this, because God promised us His power, whenever we pray as He taught us. We, as a united church family, have been praying as God would have us to pray for almost 100 days! During this time we followed Jesus’ pattern in Matthew 6:9-13, known as, The Lord’s Prayer. We have prayed to put on the “armor for spiritual battle” from Ephesians 6:10-20. We learned the 4 attitudes needed for powerful praying; P- R- A- Y. While all of these truths from His Word are a good start, they could never be all that we can and should learn about prayer! Each one of us must make certain that we keep seeking God, personally, and then we must be sure to find ways to seek Him with friends, family, or with the church as a whole church body! (When we can finally schedule it!) I encourage you to devote yourself to regular and daily prayer. John 4 is the story of Jesus being urged by His Father, in prayer, to go through Samaria. His decision to listen and obey what He heard, led to His reaching a whole city with God’s gospel! Wow! What a difference His prayer life made! What do you find stopping you from living with this devoted priority of prayer? Most often, it is not just one thing, but several things that stop our prayer times. A variety of hindrances stop the prayers that win the battles! Let me just start with the reality of “being busy”. It is very easy to get too busy! 24 hours in a day, 8-9 hours for sleep, and maybe 3-4 hours for meals. The average job can easily take 10-12 hours of your day if you include traffic, which leaves, at the most, 3 free hours…just estimating. The conclusion will be obvious, there will be very limited, if any, time for prayer. Along with busyness, comes a second challenge that will also hinder your devotion to prayer, and this will be…your ability to focus. It is extremely hard to “settle down and pray” when lists are still to be done, family has needs (or demands), or even a problem from work is still on your mind and is eating away at your concentration. We can easily find ourselves asking, “where is there even any time for my family, or for my marriage… much less for prayer?!? Now, here is where I am going to tell something that you may not believe. It is about a very busy man from church history, Martin Luther. He, as he observed his very full days of ministry and Bible study was heard to have said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer!” Whoa!!! This is exactly what I have personally discovered! The more I pray… the less time I spend on “important items”, that were just not necessarily my “priority items”. They were things that I found could be done at another time, or even later in the week. I have learned to distinguish between “important issues that were once my priority”, and to rather, allow my prayers to guide me to where I am to focus my energy. This actually results in my having a more effective use of my time! Choose prayer first and see what prayer will do with your priorities! God is a Master in changing a life from just “using time” (as I think is important), to having my time being governed by what He thinks is important. It may seem to be a small difference in adjustments but it will have a big difference that will result in living a life that is focused, deliberate, and effective! Busyness is never effectiveness. Prayer leads to effectiveness. Seek first, in prayer, to building the kingdom of God and a life of righteousness… and all the other things will fall into place and work themselves out! Amen.
