Prayertime

My small group got into an interesting discussion last week, around Eugene Peterson’s commentary on Psalm 1. Peterson calls this psalm “not so much a prayer, as a preparation for prayer” and suggested that we discuss the distractions which get in the way of our prayer life. The discussion moved to the issue of whether we set aside a special “quiet time” to pray each day or whether we are in the “I pray as I go through the day” camp.

Personally, I’m in the first group. I confess, I’m not very good at setting time aside to pray but that’s my intention. However, I’ve always been impressed by the people who say that they are constantly praying throughout the day. If they can keep their mind on God while everything else is pressing in around them, that’s amazing. It also seemed more in line with the instruction to “pray without ceasing”, at least as much as we can manage. But, in our small group discussion, we also wondered if this was a sneaky way of multi-tasking; not really putting God first, but making Him fit in to whatever else we were engaged in. As I’ve said in at least one previous post, I have trouble being still, so I could easily imagine getting caught in that trap. I find that constant activity isn’t conducive to prayer.

Is this an issue of personal preference or is one approach to prayer vastly better than the other? 

Philomena

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Comments

[John]

Philomena,

I say whichever approach works better for you is the better approach. Like you, I think I do better when I can set aside a definite time each day to pray, but I'm not often able to succeed. Some would say they don't have time not to pray, which I understand, and when I make time to pray every day, I start to feel that way. But sometimes the timing of all of life's demands doesn't allow for a consistent prayer time.

[Thomas More]

I like where John is going on this. I think dedicated is best--because pray-all-the-time often becomes no-serious-prayer-at-all in my experience. At the same time, like water and air--take what you can get!

I do remember a CS Lewis passage where he felt sorry for folks that leave their dedicated time to the end of the day, rather than the beginning. He made an interesting point on how it was less useful after we had run the day's race, and were exhausted, as opposed to starting off the day right.

[Tim]

Perhaps this goes in with the general idea of God calling us to the uncomfortable. Those of us that like to multitask and never sit still, God calls to set aside some time to focus on Him and sit still. Those of us that want to push God out of the rest of our day, God calls to pray without ceasing and invite Him into our entire day.

[Dee]

Great topic. We all go through seasons of life - When I was single it was easy to have devotions in the morning; after I got married and we were raising three young children, I was in the category of devotions and prayer time after their bedtime. Since the frenetic pace of having little ones is long gone, my prayer and Bible study have been consistently early in the morning. Having a running conversation with the Lord all throughout the day also helps keep perspective and balance when life hits between the eyes.