I find that setting aside purposeful times for prayer helps me to pray. If I just go about my day without planning for a specific time to humble myself before my heavenly Father then at the end of the day I feel defeated and deflated. Jesus consistently did this very thing…

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35; cf. Matthew 14:23; Luke 6:12; 22:41-44; Hebrews 5:7).

Even a casual reading of the Gospels will leave you with the sense that Jesus was busy. He had places to go and people to see. Add to that the constant interruptions from people clamoring to get His attention to ask Him a question or have Him heal them. And don’t forget the consistent badgering of the religious hierarchy seeking to trip Him up and bring Him down. Jesus was busy, but Jesus planned times of purposeful prayer.

Jesus simply takes it for granted that we would pray. When instructing His disciples about how to pray He began by saying, “When you pray…” (Matthew 6:5, 6, 7). Notice He said when not if. He assumed that His disciples, then and now, would pray.

I am writing this because our society has cultivated a culture of end zone to end zone living with no elbowroom. We are a fast-paced, narcissistic society that has no time for anything that doesn’t feed our egos. We live without margins and once our days get started…well, look out, because there’s no stopping until we collapse on our pillows. This is why we need to plan purposeful times of focused prayer. This is not to say that we should ignore spontaneous, unplanned times of prayer; those happen all the time, at all times of day and night. And when the Spirit moves us to pray we shouldn’t hesitate to pray. But if we don’t plan to pray then I fear that we simply won’t pray.

When do you plan to pray today?

Grace & Peace,