No Compromise On Prayer Series

Regular

The first is that Daniel was regular in prayer. We are told he prayed 3 times a day. But the key idea is that Daniel was regular in his prayer. He made time for prayer. He cleared his schedule and made time to pray. How often do we do this? How often do we actually make time in our day, just to pray to be with God. Or should that be how often in a week, month, year? We need to follow Daniel’s example in making time to pray. Do you have set times that you can pray? It is a good idea. Now we can take this to extremes and get legalistic about it, but that is not the idea. The idea is not to regiment exactly how many times we pray a day and if we miss one that’s it. Or if we’re late for the scheduled time, we’re doomed. Or even that we can’t reschedule them if something else comes up. But unfortunately, if we don’t plan something, often it never happens. Most busy people have a schedule to run their lives by. They have a diary or an organiser or a planner. Something to remind them of important things and to make sure they have time to do them. Pray is important. For some people if they don’t schedule it, it won’t happen. Besides does the attitude that says I’ll fit it in when I have some free time tell us about our attitude to prayer. It is not important, it is not vital.

The other advantage with scheduling time for prayer is that humans are creatures of habit. No matter how much we like to think otherwise we get into habits. Johnny often comments on her regulars at work. People who arrive each morning into Starbucks at the same time and order the same drink. Every day. OK, so not everyone can afford Starbucks every day but we all have our routines. If don’t make prayer part of that routine then it will be forgotten and not happen. But if we do make it part of our regular routine, then it becomes a habit and its harder not to. Not that we slavishly follow a rigid schedule that says we can never have cornflakes because we always have shredded wheat. But that it is always there in our schedule and we make time for it and we remember. We get into the habit of prayer.

On a side note start small. If you are not in the habit of praying, then blocking our 3 half hour slots each day is going to not only kill us but probably all the desire we ever had for prayer as well. Start small, by allocating 5 or 10 minutes and then build it up a bit as you are able. Some people like to pray in the morning, some at night. It doesn’t really matter when as long as you take time to pray.

Private

The second thing we notice about Daniel’s prayer was that it was private. He went home and prayed. Now I would never say anything against public prayer, because that is important too. It is important to pray together both in our services in our prayer meetings. But it is not enough. There is a place for private prayer as well. Firstly, how would your husband or wife, or girl friend or boy friend, react if the only time you talked with them was when you were with other people. You’re not going to develop a very deep relationship that way. There are certain things you can say in private that you would never say in a group or even when there are other people around. In a group you cannot give your complete attention to that person, but you are divided trying to interact with others as well. The same is true of prayer. There are things that we feel that we would never share with others and never pray with others, but we need to share those things we God. In a prayer group we are not only praying to God and trying to listen to him but we are listening to all the other people praying as well. Sometimes we just need to give God our undivided attention.