Prayer must be my first priority

Greeting to you, my dear readers, on this wonderful day! Every day God makes everything new, and His mercies are renewed for us every morning!

We have been talking about the importance of prayer in the life of believers. We have established three important points that describe effective prayer.

1) Prayer is spiritual work.

2) Prayer is drawing near to God.

3) Prayer means to spend meaningful time with God.

Today I would like to talk more about the third point. I finished saying that prayer is more about what God wants to tell you and what He wants to do in your life and not what you want to tell Him. So you do not need to tell God what is on your heart; allow God to work through His Word giving Him opportunity to work in your heart and reveal to you His plans. If you want to hear God, you cannot be in a hurry. Effective prayer has nothing to do with haste.

Let’s try to compare prayer to surgery. You are willing to lie down on the operating table because you are aware of some problem you are not able to solve without medical intervention. But the problem is that you want it to go away quickly, according to your little schedule, because you have so many other things to do. But you must understand that for the recovery to be successful, you must allow your doctor to do everything he deems necessary, because he is the doctor, not you. You must let the doctor to do everything to make this surgery successful. You must allow him to finish the operation when the doctor considers it fitting, not you. Maybe, he just opened the wound and has not done what needs to be done, but you decided that it is enough, because you don’t have the time. Is it right?

We don’t usually act like it with doctors, but we do act like this with God. We come to Him shoot our prayers out like out of the machine-gun and we leave. That is not praying. God wants to talk to us, to fellowship. After you have said what you wanted to say, allow God to say something to you. God wants to talk to you; God also wants to work in your heart and in your life. So, do not rush when you pray. When you have told God what you wanted to tell Him, wait in His presence for Him to speak to you. Allow His Spirit to do what He desires to do in your heart.

Let’s start doing these things. Do not hurry during prayer. Find the time when you do not have to hurry to do something else and spend it with God. If you are praying and at the same time you are anxious to get somewhere, you won’t be able to focus. Imagine that you have placed a pot on the stove to make soup or some other dish and try to pray at the same time. No doubt, things won’t go well; you might burn your food and so on. It is a wrong time for praying. Or if you have a train to catch at 9, do not start praying at 8.45.

Choose the time when you do need to do other things, because prayer and haste do not go together. I have said before that the best time for praying is morning. Prayer must be your number 1 priority. I will say it again: prayer must be my first priority.

It means that all the other things must be put on hold. It means that even if I can’t find the time for some things, I must find the time to pray, to draw near to God and have meaningful fellowship with Him. God alone has life; He alone has power, love, joy, wisdom and peace. Only when I fellowship with Him, I can exchange my weakness for His life, my fear – for His courage and boldness, my sickness – for His health, my sadness – for His joy and peace, which is higher than any understanding and does not depend on outer circumstances.

We will continue tomorrow!

God bless you!

Pastor Rufus Ajiboye