Beloved take note that the more you pray the more you grow in spiritual things. Prayer tones up the whole life (Ephesians 6: 10-18). You can never be better in life than you are faithful in prayer. If prayer lags, life sags. If you know how to pray, you know how to live; if not, then you merely exist. When you pray according to God’s will, you are like an electric bulb in the socket full of life and power. When you don’t pray, you are like a bulb out of the socket – lifeless. A prayer-less Christian is a powerless Christian.
Some Christians complain that their busy lives leave them no time to pray, but it has been said that, “If you are too busy to pray, then you are busier than God intended you to be”. So build a fence around a certain part of the day – in the morning when your mind is fresh and the day is still before you, and reserve it for contact with God through prayer. Growth and development in the Christian life demand firmness with ourselves in relation to fixed and definite times for prayer. One great intercessor said, “Those who do not provide for a quiet time in the morning with God, do provide for an un-quiet time during the day.” This is not to say, of course, that if for genuine reason you miss your quiet time in the morning, God is going to ‘punish’ you by siphoning off your spiritual peace. No, what it means is that when we deprive ourselves of a regular contact with God through prayer, we remove ourselves from the power that makes for effective Christian living. Those who practise daily contact with God through prayer are often amazed how easily they transcend worries and fears and resentments, and live on a higher, more positive level.
A number of things happen to us when we pray despite our lack of feeling and inclination. Firstly, the meek submission of our will deepens our spiritual lives. A great spiritual leader once said that: “The one business of human living is to keep our wills coinciding with the will of God in self-surrender and constant obedience.” The human will is so self-centred, so stubborn, and so recalcitrant, that it wants its own way in everything. When, by an act of will, we decide to spend time with God even though we don’t feel like it, we take the steps to break our will of its inherent self-centredness and thus train it to respond more to God than to our carnal desires – The more we make our will respond to God, the easier it becomes to take God’s way in everything. The will, it seems, gets the message that God is first in our life and it is learning to respond more to God’s way than our own way. Once we learn how to make our human wills submit to the divine will, we have discovered one of the greatest secrets of the Christian life: one that opens our whole being to God’s endless resources of life and power.
Secondly, our resolution to engage in prayer greatly strengthens our thought control. When we confront every negative thought pattern, the thoughts that lead us away from the place of prayer, and stubbornly refuse to let them have their way, we take an important step toward mastery of our thoughts.
Thirdly, committing ourselves to prayer when we don’t feel like it, develops powerful muscles in our faith. Just as physical exercise builds up muscles in the human body, so does praying against inclination greatly strengthens the tenacity of faith.
If you find yourself in doubt about your ability to develop, and sustain a systematic and methodical prayer life, undertake a planned programme of prayer for a season. Keep a daily appointment with God, even though you may not feel like it. Pursue the task with firmness and resolution and you would be greatly surprised if at the end of the trial period you did not discover such a joy and rapture that nothing, positively nothing, would in future keep you from the place of prayer. The experiment, I strongly believe, would end in an experience.
Have a fulfilling prayer life as you open your whole being to the flow of God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5: 18).
Your brother, Vicar & Archdeacon
S. Igein Isemede.