HOW, WHEN AND WHERE TO PRAY
ROBERT WALKER
I TIMOTHY 2:1-8
St. Francis (of Assisi) prayed an entire night repeating: You are "my All." As he prayed I have considered You piece by piece, O My Lord, and I found that You are very lovable; now I behold You and see that You are "my All."
Our passage share with us a lesson on prayer and our teacher is to be the great Apostle Paul himself. Paul has proven himself to be qualified to be a teacher for Paul was a man of prayer and he constantly encouraged others to pray.
Here in this brief passage of scripture we are give some very valuable guidance on the subject of how, when and where to pray.
I. THE PRIORITY OF PRAYER
The priority of prayer or the elevation of prayer is set before us in verse 1- "I exhort (or, urge) therefore, that first of all, first in rank, and importance supplications, prayers... be made..."
Here is something that must be done first of all. Paul is telling Timothy that prayer is a priority matter that it should come first.
It is the most important spiritual exercise in which we can engage. We often fail in that we put prayer second or third.
Instead of making prayer fundamental we make it supplemental" we add it on if there is time left, and when we do this we are foolish and wrong.
It is easy to crowd prayer out of our daily life and when we do we are going to suffer. It is easy to crowd prayer out of our Church life and put programs and promotions and personalities first. The decline of the importance of prayer is seen as we seem to have time for every activity and pursuit except prayer.
One old Pastor said-If he announced a fellowship meal, people would come out of the woodwork to attend- if he announced Prayer meeting, he could count himself lucky if the deacons turned up.
Friend when the local Church ceases to depend on prayer, God ceases to bless its ministry.
ILLUSTRATION
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