"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."
-Matthew 6:33
I talked about my fears going to Grace Retreat in my last post, but today I am going to talk about my hopes after attending Grace Retreat. At the Grace Retreat there were many good messages and seminars, but one seminar really stood out to me. The seminar was titled "Teach us how to Pray", based on the passage where Jesus teaches His disciples the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). The speaker went over all the different parts of the Lord's Prayer and how to pray based on those parts. While I learned from that, what really convicted me was when he talked about actually spending time to pray.
When Jesus was in Gethsemane, He took three disciples with Him to go pray. Jesus leaves a bit on His own, and prays for an hour. When He comes back, He sees His disciples sleeping. He rebukes Peter by saying "could you not keep watch for one hour?". Normally when I read this passage I focus on Jesus' prayer and the disciples failure to stay awake. The speaker said something interesting regarding this passage- take Jesus' words as a challenge. We should take Jesus' rebuke to keep watch and pray for at least an hour as a challenge. We should ask ourselves "how much time do I spend in prayer?"
No one can develop a skill without spending time refining that skill. Similarly, no one can develop a relationship with another person without spending time with that person. While I know these as true, I often do not carry these principles into my spiritual life. I expect to grow in my relationship with God without spending time with Him. Unfortunately, that is impossible. I realize that spending so little time in prayer is hindering me from developing my relationship with Christ. Often times I blame my lack of "spirituality" because of my sins, weaknesses or shortcomings. No matter how I try, I won't be able to stop committing sins, and I will never overcome my weaknesses and shortcomings. This is especially true if I don't spend time in prayer.
The reason my relationship with God is stagnant is not because I am sinful; it's because I am not spending time in prayer and in the Word. So why am I not spending time in prayer? There are many reasons I have, and I'm sure that we all share some of the same excuses. One reason is because I can find prayer to be boring. I wonder how people can spend so long in prayer, since it can be repetitive to me. Also, I wonder how people can find so many things to pray for. Often times, I just run out of things to pray for. Another reason I do not spend a lot of time praying is because I value other things over prayer. What you spend your time in reveals what you care about. The fact that I spend so little time in prayer reveals that I don't value prayer as much as I should.
How can I spend more time in prayer? That is my question to myself and perhaps your question to yourself as well. The easiest way to spend more time in prayer is to learn to enjoy it. I know that this can be a weird concept to grasp, but prayer should be enjoyable. I haven't discovered how to "make" prayer enjoyable, but if God is as good as we say He is, how hard can it be? A practical way to spend more time in prayer is to set aside a certain time everyday to pray. I'm going to try and set a time where I can pray and read the Bible everyday. This certainly can be difficult, but it's a good way to teach us how to value our time with God. There are many things that we let take priority over prayer, but let's give God first priority of our time.
-Smart
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