Read
Are You Too Busy to Pray?
Your typical day may look something like this: You wake up and get a shower to get ready for work. You then eat breakfast and leave the house to commute to your workplace. You spend 8-10 hours working and finally leave to commute home where you join in on taking care of the kids. Dinner is ready so you eat, then you put the kids to bed. After they are down you talk with your spouse for a while about work and the kids. Lastly, you get ready for bed and head to the bedroom to sleep so you can repeat it all again the next day.
While all of us might not have days exactly like the one above, most of us feel that our days are similarly hectic. So, our days go by fast. Before you know it, it’s been a week. A month. A year. Where does the time go? The things we thought we would eventually have time to get around to are never done. The personal goals we had are lost in the fray of life.
If you are a Christian, you’re not exempt from this quicker-than-you-know-it experience of life. So what happens to the time we know we need to spend with God in prayer? If you’re like me, it typically gets pushed to the end of my day when I can’t (and don’t want to) be spending time on it. For instance, when you’re going to bed. Sometimes we think that this is our best bet to get in prayer time because the kids are down, our jobs are left at work, it’s quiet, etc. But here’s the problem - now we are tired. We are ready to shut off from our busy day and before you know it, you say the quickest prayer you can before you fall asleep. And sometimes we aren’t even that successful and fall asleep in the middle of our communication. What would Jesus do in this scenario?
“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” (Mark 1:35 NIV)
There are many verses showing us what Jesus’ prayer life was like, but this is one of my favorites. In this short sentence we see how much Jesus values prayer and His resolve to make it an essential part of His life. Jesus is showing us how to overcome our too-busy-for-prayer lives. The key is making time for prayer, not hoping for it.
If you want to have the life of prayer that a believer should have, make time for prayer. Oftentimes we treat prayer as a fill-in activity rather than an essential part of living like eating or sleeping. We just do it if our schedules give us a free minute or two. Make and set aside time to pray!
Jesus also shows us that a great time to set aside for prayer is time that was unclaimed to begin with. What do I mean by this? It looks like Jesus woke up earlier than what might have been His norm so that He could have time that day to pray. We can do the same thing. If you absolutely have no time to pray throughout your normal day, get up earlier. That’s it. It’s so simple. Not only will you then have time to pray, you will begin your day in a spiritual way. It’s a win-win!
Christians need to be people who are known for their devotion to prayer. Jesus gives us a very practical example of how to do this. Let’s follow Him into a closer and more pleasing relationship with God!
