When Prayer Is Priority Series

Would you write this down… the single most important activity in my life is the time I spend alone with God. Did you all get that? The time I spend alone with the Lord. The time that I take to spend time with Him, seeking God. There is absolutely nothing you and I will do in the course of our lives that what God has us talking about. That's it. Flat out. And remember, when you seek God, you don't seek Him hand out. You first seek Him hands up. If you were with us last week we talked about the different postures of prayer. In the Bible the most common way to pray is standing. Many would say kneeling, maybe sitting. But the most common is standing. Whether you are on the go or you have time to get away and settle in with God. When they would often pray they would have hands up in worship to God. And when you go to God to seek Him, the kind of prayer we are talking about is prayer that seeks Him not something from Him initially. Oh, you get to that, but the priority of prayer is to seek God just for Who He is. Nothing we could talk about, nothing I could do would be as important as getting into a consistent life and practicing the privilege of prayer.

Would you put down - because of that - here's Satan's chief strategy. His chief strategy for your life and mine is to keep you off your knees. I hope you heard that tonight; he wants to keep you off your knees. For some of you here tonight this is a brand new concept. You've thought - is prayer that important? You bet it is. And the enemy knows how important it is. So Ephesians says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. You know what I picture? I picture you and me on our knees and the devil is doing anything he can to flip us and get us off those knees. He'll do anything he can to wrestle us down. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, spiritual wickedness in high places. I tell you, my prayer life has just zoomed up since the early fall. God was doing things in my life, my intimacy, my love for Him, the things He was saying to me, the victory, the power, the peace, the presence - all those things that God promises was being realized in giving Him more time. Simply just giving God more time. And then what happened as the months went by, the last 4 weeks was when this sickness thing hit me. And what it did was it was a challenge that God got at least that time. Well you need to get your sleep; you need to be eating a certain diet; you shouldn't be up at 4,5 or 6 in the morning. And all of a sudden, now, wait a minute - the one essential is prayer. Now understand this, you don't have to get up and meet with God early in the morning. Now some of you folks, you don't believe in God until about 11 am. How many folks, at night you're great?! But in the morning it is don't say anything to me until the fourth cup of coffee, and a fight breaks out if you get talked to early in the morning. But for folks like that don't think you are being spiritual crawling out of bed at 4:30 in the cold. You don't like getting up anyway. You put on your robe, you struggle, drag yourself over to the side of the bed or some place to pray to God. Let me tell you, you're just going to change the place where you go to sleep. That is not spiritual. And then you get up and you start to pray and seek God, and you go "Remember what I said last night? Ditto." That's as good as you get! That is not the kind of praying we're talking about here. You need to be seeking God when you are at your best. For some of you, at night, anything but sleep. You are wired at night. That's when you need to meet with God. God has given all of us time clocks and there are certain times when you work best. That needs to be the best time you spend with Him. And you need to set that time aside. And if the enemy can keep you off your knees, he's got you. That's exactly where you need to be.

And so I had to make a purposeful decision that I was meeting with God no matter what. And God helped me get through. But there are things the world will bring into your life and the enemy will throw at you to try to get you off kilter. How many folks have sought God in new ways since we started "Take Time to Pray"? That is wonderful… probably most of the folks here. There is a certain place where God wants you to be at, to meet with Him, to begin to do those things in your life that will not happen until you make prayer a priority.