PRAYER POWER UNLIMITED

J. Oswald Sanders

Prayer Takes Time

Redeeming the time (Eph 5:16, KJV)

We move on to a lesson that is difficult to master, but which greatly influences the potency of our prayers.

Alexander Whyte said,

I am as certain as I am standing here that the secret of much mischief to our souls, and to the souls of others, lies in the way that we stint, and starve, and scamp our prayers by hurrying over them. Prayer worthy calling prayer, prayer that God will call true prayer and will treat as true prayer takes far more time by the clock, than one man in a thousand thinks.¹

A contemporary of his, Samuel Chadwick, a man of equal spiritual stature, shared the same conviction.

To pray as God would have us pray is the greatest achievement of earth. Such a life of prayer costs. It takes time. Hurried prayers and muttered Litanies can never produce souls mighty in prayer. Learners give hours regularly every day that they may become proficient in art and mechanism … All praying saints have spent hours every day in prayer … In these days there is no time to pray; but without time, and a lot of it, we shall never learn to pray. It ought to be possible to give God one hour out of twenty-four all to Himself.²

Who of us has not experienced the perennial problem of insufficient time for prayer? At least, we tend to excuse ourselves on the grounds that life is so full we do not have sufficient time. But of course it is only an excuse, and not a valid one. Is it not true that each of us can find time for anything he really wants to do? Dr. J. H. Jowett termed the lack-of-time excuse one of the cant phrases of our day. It certainly seems to be on everyone’s lips. But let us face it. Is not the lack of urgent desire rather than the lack of adequate time at the root of our meager praying?

William Wilberforce complained, “This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body, More solitude and earlier hours! … I have been keeping too late hours, and hence have had but a hurried half hour in a morning to myself.”³

We should honestly face the fact that we each have as much time as the busiest person in the world. The problem is with the way in which we use it. Among other things, the parable of the pounds (Luke 19:11-27) teaches that we have been entrusted with an equal amount of time, but not all use it so as to produce a maximum return. True, we do not all possess the same capacity, but that fact is recognized in the parable. The reward for the servant with the smaller capacity but equal faithfulness is proportionately the same as that of his more gifted brother. We are not answerable for our capacity, but we are responsible for the strategic use of our time.

If we rate prayer as a high priority in our daily program, we will arrange our day so as to make adequate time for it. The amount of time we allow will be an index of the real importance we attach to it. When our suitcases contain comparatively little, they seem as full as when we carry much, because the less we have, the less meticulously we pack. The man who says he has no time is most likely guilty of careless packing.

What practical steps can be taken to ensure sufficient time for prayer in the daily schedule?

The pressure of motive strongly influences the way in which we use our time. To effect such a radical change in our lifestyle as will make more time for prayer will call for strength of purpose and a deep dependence on the Holy Spirit. Not all of us possess inflexible wills, but even these weak wills of ours can be reinforced, for we can be “strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man” (Eph 3:16).

Are there motives sufficiently compelling to cause us to alter the pattern of our lives, to challenge and break long-indulged habits of laxity in the use of time? Indeed there are.

First, and of greatest importance, is the example of our Master. In this as in everything else He is our perfect pattern. He always employed His time strategically, and in selecting His priorities. He always set aside abundant time for prayer. In His pregnant question, “Are there not twelve hours in a day?” (John 11:9), lie the implications of the shortness and yet the sufficiency of time. True, there are only twelve hours in the day, but there are fully twelve hours in the day — sufficient time to do all the will of God. There is always enough time to do that. Jesus moved in the restful confidence that there was a divine timing for all the events of His life, and He was constantly exercised to keep to His Father’s timetable. We may and should follow in His steps.

When Paul urged the Ephesian Christians to redeem the time (Eph 5:16), he was implying that there is a sense in which time is to be bought. It becomes ours by purchase and exchange. There is a price, and sometimes a high price, to be paid for its highest employment.

Henry Martyn of India was a man singularly successful in the art of redeeming the time, or, “buying up opportunities,” as Henry Alford has it. So urgent did he deem his translating work that he found it impossible to waste an hour. Before his eyes was always the vision of nations waiting for the truth that lay locked up in the Book he was translating. To him, the need of a lost world proved an impelling motive to redeem the hours, and in the brief six years of his meteoric missionary career, he translated the New Testament into three languages.

One practical step that can be taken in order to secure adequate time for prayer is to plug the leaks. We should not think of our day in terms only of hours, but in smaller portions of time, and aim to make constructive use of each of these. Dr. F. B. Meyer, noted preacher and author, packed more into his life than most of his contemporaries. And his secret? It was said of him that, like John Wesley, he divided his life into periods of five minutes and then endeavored to make each period count for God.

The secret of Charles Darwin’s prodigious achievements in the realm of science, it is said, lay in the fact that he knew the difference between ten minutes and a quarter of an hour. How many periods of five, ten, or fifteen minutes that could be devoted to prayer do we waste or leave unemployed in the course of a day? Let us determine to make more and better use of these uncommitted but potentially valuable minutes.

An anonymous author likened prayer to the time exposure of the soul to God, in which process the image of God is formed on the soul. “We try, in our piety, to practice instantaneous photography. One minute for prayer will give us a vision of the images of God, and we think that is enough. Our pictures are poor because our negative is weak. We do not give God long enough at a sitting to get a good likeness.”⁴

“God’s acquaintance is not made hurriedly,” wrote E. M. Bounds. “He does not bestow His gifts on the casual or hasty comer and goer. To be much alone with God is the secret of knowing Him and of influence with Him.”⁵

We should carefully study our priorities in the apportioning of our time each day. Many hours, while not actually wasted, may be spent on matters of only secondary importance. A fool has been defined as one who has lost the proportion of things. Some of us have developed the unfortunate habit of becoming so engrossed in the secondary that there is little time left for the primary. Especially is this the case where prayer is concerned, and our adversary does all in his power to aid and abet.

Check your daily and weekly schedules to see whether you are making adequate time for the essentially spiritual exercises of the soul. See whether the best may not be being relegated to a secondary place by that which is good. Weigh up carefully in the light of eternity the respective values to a secondary place by that which is good. Weigh up carefully in the light of eternity the respective values of the opportunities and responsibilities that are claiming your attention. Omit altogether, or give a very minor place to, the things of minor importance. Follow John Wesley’s counsel: “Never be unemployed, and never be triflingly employed.” And what higher employment can there be than intercourse with the eternal God?

No time to pray!
O, who so fraught with earthly care
As not to give a humble prayer
Some part of day?

No time to pray!
‘Mid each day’s dangers, what retreat
More needful than the mercy seat?
Who need not pray?

No time to pray!
Must care or business’ urgent call
So press us as to take it all,
Each passing day?

What thought more drear
Than that our God His face should hide,
And say through all life’s swelling tide,
No time to hear! ANONYMOUS

PRAYER

Eternal God, who by the life of Thy dear Son hast shown us that there is no minute of our own but we may be doing Thy will: Help us to use our time aright, that however we be engaged, in leisure or in play, we may stand before Thee with a pure conscience, acting, speaking, and thinking as in Thy presence, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

QUESTIONS

1. Can we measure the potency of our prayers by their length or brevity?
2. Does God expect everyone to spend the same amount of time in prayer?

Notes

¹Harvey and Harvey, Kneeling We Triumph, p 66
²Chadwick, The Path of Prayer, pp 20-21
³E. M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, n.d.), p 116
⁴Harvey and Harvey, p 60
⁵Bounds, Power Through Prayer, p 47
⁶A. J. Gordon, The Holy Spirit and Missions (New York: Revell, 1893), pp 139-140