I would like to say a few words today about the discipline of prayer. Often times, we make prayer what we want or we forget it altogether. However, if we do not draw close to the Lord Jesus, how are we to be called Christians? I say the discipline of prayer, because prayer is more than asking God for what we want when we feel like it. Prayer is drawing close to the throne of God even when we don’t want to. It is a transforming power that shapes our lives. It is the highest office of ministry in which we can join Christ in interceding for the world. It is a necessity not a luxury. The time has long since come when Christians need to get serious about spending time on their knees.

Prayer must be a major part of our lives every day. The devil knows the power that lies in prayer and he often does all he can to hinder us from getting on our knees. It is easy to forget for a day which soon becomes a week. If we want to see the hand of God move and see him transform us by his power, we must carefully guard our time with him. It is a matter of priorities; how much do you value your time spent in prayer? We must become a people who would rather seek God than do anything else. The distinguishing factor between the people of God and the people of the world is his presence.

The danger of course with disciplining yourself to pray everyday is that it is easy to make it a law. You simply add praying to the checklist of things you do everyday, but your heart isn’t in it. You wake up and spend 15 minutes rattling off a memorized prayer or a list of things you want. A local pastor once told me, “the day you stop being a 15 minute a day Christian is the day you stop being a liability to your church and you start becoming an asset.” If we want God to use us to bless the people around us we must get serious about spending time with God.

The reason that prayer is a necessary prerequisite to any other kind of ministry is because by being with the father he transforms us into something that is useful to him. By drawing close to the holiness of God he makes us holy. This is often the reason why it is so difficult to pray sometimes. We know that if there is something in our lives and we really get before God he is going to reveal it to us. However, the only way we will ever overcome these strongholds in our life is by allowing the father to open our hand and release our grip on them.

It is important to press through these areas in our life so that we can be of useful service to the king. So often I dawdle in my prayers, I drag my feet when God addresses issues in my life. The result is that I spend all my time praying about myself and agonizing over my problems rather than pouring out my heart for the world before my Father. Unless we come before God and address the things in our life we will never be able to truly bless others; we can’t skip this part. However, if we stop at praying for ourselves we are being quite selfish.

The highest ministry is intercession. We see tons of examples in the bible of men of God coming before the Lord and praying for others. The highest among these is Jesus Christ himself. He is called our advocate in 1 John. We are to follow his example and cry out to the father for mercy and grace. We are to seek his will for the world we live in. I have heard it said that you can’t do on your feet what you haven’t done on your knees. How do you expect to be able to share the gospel with people if you haven’t wept for them? How do expect to love your brother if you haven’t sought out God’s will for him?