Sounds strange, doesn’t it? After all, prayer is supposed to be about spending time with our Lord and King. It’s something that every Christian who has developed a personal relationship with God should want to do. Why on earth should it be called an art of discipline?
The sad reality, my dear friends, is that many of us struggle to make time for God within our day. After all, we live in a world where our work surrounds our daily living, and on top of that, we have to juggle extra-curricular activities, family commitments, and a whole lot of other things.
Although with the gift of technology, there are a multitude of resources we can access for assistance in our prayer life, the reality is that it’s hard to find time to be with God, when we are so preoccupied with the hustle and bustle of daily living.
However, as much as it is true that most of us live extremely fast-paced lives in this day and age, I’d like to propose that it also boils down to a deeper problem than simply not having the time to pray. We do not love the Lord enough. And make no mistake about it, I too am extremely guilty of this.
Let’s put this into perspective. When it comes to our loved ones, be it our parents, our spouses, our children, or even our friends, we find it much easier to make time for them as compared to making time for prayer. For many of us, amidst the hustle and bustle of our work, we still find the time to cook for our families (despite delivery services being easily accessible in this day and age); we still find the time to hang out with our friends, and even to visit our aged parents and grandparents.
Most of us in Singapore even make the time to follow the drama that has been unfolding with the General Elections being four days away, and even to debate with our friends about it. But when it comes to prayer, many of us struggle to make time for it. Our personal relationships with God seem to take a back seat in our lives.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that our human relationships should take a back seat. After all, when God created the human race, He never intended for us to be alone. In fact, God said that it is not good for a man to be alone (for further reference, please refer to Genesis).
However, we need to remember that God is the One who loves us so much more than any of our loved ones possibly could. He is always there, waiting for us to come to Him, and He never stops loving us. God is the source of love, the love that we should be loving others with. And in order to draw from this source, we need to spend time with Him daily.
And in order for us to spend time with the Lord in our everyday lives, we need to make this an art of discipline. Fix a time each day to stop what we are doing and simply be with the Lord, even if we have no words for Him. Even if our attention span makes it difficult for us to spend hours in prayer, just ten minutes a day will do just fine. Give to God your five loaves and two fishes, and He will multiply them. Allow Him to speak to the inmost depths of your heart. And if you aren’t sure how to pray, there are many resources on the internet that can guide us along. But you need to be intentional about it, and you need to be disciplined about it.
Our prayer life is what keeps our relationship with God alive. Let us take up the challenge to be intentional about it, and to be disciplined about it.
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Originally published at The Barefoot Journey Home.
