PRIORITIZING PRAYER TIME (1)

Are there not twelve hours in the day – John 11:9

“Who of us has not experienced the difficulty of insufficient time for prayer? At least we tend to excuse ourselves by saying we do not have sufficient time. The late Dr. J. H. Jowett was not sympathetic to such an excuse. “I think one of the cant phrases of our day,” he wrote, “is the familiar one by which we express our permanent want of time. We repeat it so often that by the very repetition we have deceived ourselves into believing it. It is never the supremely busy men who have got no time. So compact and systematic is the regulation of their day that, whenever you make a demand on them, they seem able to find additional corners to offer for unselfish service. I confess, as a minster, that the men to whom I most hopefully look for additional service are the busiest men.”

Let us face the fact squarely and without equivocation – Each of us has as much time as anyone else in the world. As in the parable of the pounds, we have each been entrusted with the same amount of time, but not all so use it as to produce a tenfold return. True, we do not all have the same capacity, but that fact is recognized in the parable, and the reward for the servant with the smaller capacity but equal faithfulness is the same. We are not responsible for our capacity, but we are responsible for the strategic investment of our time. If we consider prayer as a high priority, we will so arrange our day as to make time for it. When we have comparatively little to carry in our case it seems as full as when we have much, because the less we have the more carelessly we pack it. The man who claims to have no time is most likely guilty of “careless packing.”

What practical steps can be taken to safeguard the securing of sufficient time for prayer?

Stop Leaks. Do not consider your day only in terms of hours, but in smaller areas of time. If we look after the minutes, the hours will look after themselves. Few men packed more into a lifetime than Dr. F. B. Meyer. Of him it was said that like John Wesley he divided his life into spaces of five minutes, and endeavoured to make each one count for God. One would expect such a programme to create intolerable strain, but not so with Dr. Meyer... Just a little while before his departure he said to a friend, “I think I am an example of what the Lord can do with a man who concentrates on doing one thing at one time.” The secret of Charles Darwin's achievements, it is said, was that he knew the difference between ten minutes and a quarter of an hour…