An  Hour ? !

Yes, an hour. For us it is, “Oh, an hour!” But for Him it is “at least an hour.” For us it is maximum; for Him it is minimum. Many of us do not pray for an hour because we presume we cannot, slavishly accepting the devil’s lies. We don’t even have the mind to try. Recently a friend wrote me, “I appreciate your Struggles in Prayer. That’s where I struggle!” Truly it is an endless obstacle race.

Prayer Problem

I  think our  problem  is  we  give  up  too  easily,  too  soon.  One  hour  is  just  the minimum. Jesus asked His disciples, “Could you not watch with Me one hour?” (Mt

26:40). If we are not doing the minimum  what disciples  are we? Because  of the problems I had in prayer. I started asking believers and ministers how much time they spent in prayer each day. I discovered to my dismay that many did not pray even half an hour. People are busier than ever. They have fought with me when I tried to argue out with them that they should cut down their activities (if necessary, even religious) and go down on their knees. Those who fail to pray, miss the will of God by a million miles. It is a heavy price to pay. Do you know you can miss the will of God while working  for  Him?  in  mission?  Those  whose  God  is  their  mission,  beware.  It  is possible to be out of God’s will while at the centre of God’s work.

My early days

As a child I wanted to pray morning and evening. I have heard the Lord calling me by name, and felt someone tapping my shoulder in sleep. Once while I was rolling in bed I had a dream or vision, I don’t know what. The angels were telling the Lord: “We tried to wake her up, but she would not.” Immediately I got up, washed my face and started to pray. I realised then how seriously the Lord was concerned about my talking to Him.

This spark was fanned by my salvation experience and I learnt to spend an hour in Bible reading, singing and praying. But I longed to just pray for an hour. Suddenly for no reason at all I would wake up in the middle of the night, bright and clear and would be surprised to see the arms of the clock exactly at one or two or three, never in between and I would know it was the Lord calling me. I would pray, or try to pray and not knowing how to proceed would sleep off after some time.

The fall and rise

When  I  involved  myself  more  and  more  in  ministry,  my  prayer  life  started slithering down and like Humpty Dumpty, had a great fall. But the urge was ticking within  me.  I don’t  speak  as a heroine, but  as one  who  was adamant  as anyone, negligent, assuming God’s gifts and grace, casual in my prayer time. But beaten by the winds of life, my prayer life was back on the rails. I had read numerous books on prayer including E.M. Bounds and Leonard Ravenhill but refused to bend my knees. Bt now I know prevention is better than cure. Now I know the value of prayer.

I had to uproot and plunder the weeds grown in my garden of prayer and mow the grass grown in the path where I and my Lord had walked hand in hand, chatting. I had to scrape the rust and oil the lock of the gate, where my Saviour awaited to open the gates of the beautiful garden of prayer.

Thumbs up

I  started  renewing  my  prayer  habits  in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning.  But confusion bogged my mind. Sometimes I dozed off in the day. I developed backache. Someone  said  I  was  spoiling  my  health.  Others  complained  I  yawned  while conversing, almost killing my fledgling efforts.

When I went to Hubli, they spoke of Michael as a man of prayer who got up at 3 a.m. and prayed for 3 hrs. While listening to Bro. Lionel’s message, he once said, “I get up at 3 a.m. and pray to have an undisturbed conversation with the Lord.” I read in a book of a demon-possessed girl who was healed and the one who prayed for her said, “Everyday I prayed for you at 3 a.m.” 3...3...3...oh 3! That was my hour! My hour of struggle! Why was this number ringing the bell in my mind? I knew it was the Lord speaking to me, encouraging me, confirming me. “Why do you sleep? Arise and pray” (Lk 22:46). I knew He signalled thumbs up. Let come yawn or backache, I decided to pray and pray through. (My backache disappeared after some exercising). I have a Friend who was caught dozing in the day time in the boat. I am sure He yawned too. He had no problem finding time for prayer. He had to find time to sleep. What a beautiful shift of priorities! After Bible reading and an hour of prayer I snooze off for an hour or so to feel fresh in the morning.

I  know  of  a  very  senior  Government  officer  who  leaves  instruction  with  his attendant to inform the caller that he was talking to his God, if the phone rang before 8 a.m. Often a minister would ring up for an urgent information and the attendant would answer. “He is talking to his God” and the non-Christian minister would drop the receiver in awe!

Choose the time

If you are not praying for at least an hour a day, you better take stock of your life. From the time you get up in the morning to the time you get to bed, write down what you do every hour. I mean, take a pen and paper and write down, not think. 6-7 cooking; 7-8 eating, sweeping, cleaning; 8-9 bath and washing; 10-1 office; 1-2 lunch, T.V. friends, reading, etc. See what chunk of time you can cut out and use to construct your prayer life. If you cannot cut down on anything, cut down on sleep. That will automatically cut down some other block.

Catch the rabbit

I am not mesmerising you to get up at 3 a.m. and slog. Each person must choose his convenient time according to his own biological clock, the time he is at his best. It could be morning five to six if you are a morning bird, or night eleven to twelve if you are a night owl, or for a housewife evening three or four. See that it is an undisturbed hour and you are fresh enough to pray. First of all decide to use that hour for prayer and nothing else. Finding that hour is the first step. An old recipe for a rabbit dish starts. “First catch the rabbit.” That puts first things first. No rabbit, no dish. Many of us are trying to make a rabbit dish without the rabbit.

Make it a habit

Prayer is a habit. Habit is what you develop by doing it again and again. It is a discipline. Eight year old Sunitha fasts every Sunday morning. She doesn’t pray. She only plays,  she  is more  childish  than  most of her classmates.  But  I appreciate  it because she is now learning to discipline herself to develop a habit. This is what most of us lack. We pray. But we have not disciplined ourselves to develop the habit.

Don’t be discouraged!

In  the beginning  you  may be unable  to pray for  an  hour.  Your  thoughts  may wander, you may sleep off or lose interest. Whatever it may be, decide not to do anything else during that hour, even if you feel you are wasting an hour. You are not. You are now catching the rabbit! You are now disciplining yourself.

The devil’s phone calls

See that you don’t give in to the temptation to do something else. Don’t keep the pressure cooker on the gas stove and start praying. Don’t try to burn up a few calories by doing exercises while praying. (Now all this happened to me and are written for our admonition!) Nowadays I walk in the terrace and pray. It helps me keep awake and alert. Suddenly I realise I have not taken the meat out of the freezer to thaw. I quieten myself saying. “No, I can take it out an hour later and put it in warm water. Using a little more fuel is worth the prayer time. “I see I have left the milk out and the neighbour’s cat can get it anytime. I feel an urge to put it in. “No. It is only five rupees. Let the cat drink it. My prayer is costlier.” The devil comes in catpaws to steal away the minutes and he knows how to cover his tracks. Now that he has learnt that my end of the telephone is dead, he has stopped making calls. He should go into the Guinness Book of World Records for sidetracking pray-ers.

I have divided my prayer hour into five blocks.

Tongues

For the first ten minutes I keep speaking in tongues. I find a tremendous release in my spirit after regularly speaking in tongues and am edified. Last month two friends knocked at our door and said they wanted to receive the Holy Spirit but had some doubts. So I opened my Bible. “Why tongues?” “To edify yourself.” I turned their attention to 1 Cor 14:4. “But it says if we prophesy we edify the church. Is it not better?” “First edify yourself and then the church.” With that they closed their Bibles,knelt down and received the Holy Spirit. God does not give us a gift to be put in the shelf. Use it.

Speaking to God should be high in the agenda of a Christian. And he who speaks in tongues does exactly that (1 Cor 14:2). You give thanks well (v17) and you speak the wonderful works   of God and magnify Him (Acts 2:11; 10:46).

Worship

Then I go on to worshipping my Lord with understanding (1 Cor 14:14,15) for about ten minutes. My Bible remains open during my prayer time to the page I read and mediated that day. Oh, how I have discovered worship is inexhaustible. There was a time when I could just say Hallelujah, praise the Lord and look around and wonder why everyone was bubbling and I felt like an ice-berg. Now my spirit leaps and jumps and sings as I discover new, new attributes of my Lord. How I praised Him one day as the Lover of little children. One day I   compared Mt 10:29 with Lk 12:6. Then I understood  two  sparrows  cost  one  farthing.  But  if  someone  would  buy  for  two farthings  one  was given  free.  Even  that sold-for-nothing  sparrow is not  forgotten before God. There was a surge of adrenaline into my veins for the grace of God on this worthless  me.  I  lift up  my hands  and voice  at  times  to praise,  to  break  the monotony.

Oh, learn to worship God everyday. Or else you don’t know what you are missing out in life.

Thanksgiving

I spend the next ten minutes recounting the events of the previous day taking time to thank Him for every detail. Now I realise how thankless I had been earlier. So many little details slip out of our mind unless we take the time to focus  our minds on the details  and  zoom  each  one  to  see  God’s  miraculous  provisions  and  grace.  I  am learning to give more and more of thank-offering because I understand the much and much He does. Sometimes I tell God, “I have no money to give You now as thank- offering because You are doing so much unsolicited. So I will just praise You and that’s all. That makes me feel like a mustard  seed before a banyan tree and God simply laughs at me and sings, “Nobody asked you my pretty maid” and says, “How can you ever think you can give Me equivalent to what I give you?” I thank Him for the page I mediated that day and His promises.

Don’t be one of the nine lepers. Come walking back to Jesus, to tell Him what He already knows, just to see the smile on His face.

Self-examination

I quickly scan the previous day to see if there is anything specific to confess. Quite often I find a flickering spot. And I confess it and set it right and take some decisions about it. Sometimes I sing the song “Search me, oh God.” Then again I go to my Bible to  see if the Lord has to tell me anything specific.  Though  already meditated,  it becomes more meaningful in prayer. How the Lord dealt severely with me one day that I loved Him with all my heart and all my soul, but not with all my mind (Mt 22:37). He whipped me hard till I felt prostrate before Him and cried committing my