Psalm 119:147-148 I rise before dawn
and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word. My eyes stay open through
the watches of the night that I may meditate on your promises.
The promises of God
are innumerable, and we know that He will never leave us or forsake us;
however, that does not exclude our participation with God in prayer. The
"cry for help" that the Psalmist speaks of here is the communication
with God that he has provided for us to come to His very throne room, prayer.
The prayer times spoke of by the Psalmist begin before the dawn continue day
and night.
As followers and
believers in Christ Jesus, we should set a schedule for our prayer times
through our waking hours. We should make sure that the times we have set are
the times reserved for our daily meeting with the one that created us and
sustains us. Many distractions can keep us from our prayer times with God, and
in some cases, the distractions are not necessarily bad. Our jobs can keep us
from a needed set of prayer times, and our physical requirement for rest will
sometimes morph into waisted hours in some form of recreation or entertainment.
If we find out the best times to keep our appointments with God in prayer and keep
them tenaciously, it will make a significant difference in our lives.
Charles Spurgeon once
said: "He who is diligent in prayer will never be destitute of hope.
Observe that as the early bird gets the worm, so the early prayer is soon
refreshed with hope." Jesus gave us an example of the importance
of early morning prayers (Mark 1:35) as well as praying through the
nights (Luke 6:12). The Bible is full of information that shows Jesus
praying and the power of those prayers (Luke 3:21; 5:16; 6:12; 9:28).
His disciples never did ask Jesus to teach them how to preach, but they did ask
Him to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1).
A young Christian
asked an older Christian when the best time was to pray, and the wise, mature
Christian said that the most critical time for us to pray is the day before our
deaths. The young Christian was shocked by their mentor's response and said we
never know exactly when we are going to die. To older Christian noted that is
the reason we should pray every day (this illustration source is
unknown).
Just as Jesus taught
His disciple how to pray, we can learn not only the importance of prayer but
how we should pray, in and through the Holy Word of God. Not to say that there
will be certain words that we should use in repetition when we go to God in
prayer, but the Bible is the language of God. The more familiar we are with
God's word, the easier time we will have in communicating with God.
There is no
magical formula or secret code that will unlock the treasure God has in store
for us in the pages of the Bible. The only way we will learn what God has in
store for us and what He wants us to know is an in-depth, consistent, and
regular diet of the spiritual food that can only come from the Word of God.
There is no substitute for Pray and Bible Study, and the two go hand in hand.
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