Extending our Prayer Time

Back in the days when I served the Perry Church, we had a prayer ministry program which invited people to get up at five o'clock every Sunday morning and spend the hour in prayer.  Over a several year period there were always around twenty folks who rose early at their home knowing that partners in prayer were doing the same in the parish area.  One of the things learned was that it was not a prayer experiment for the faint hearted!   

At first it was a daunting task for all of us.  We were not accustomed to having a devotional time that lasted that long.  Fifteen or twenty minutes a day would have earned folks a certificate of sainthood had there been such a thing.  The point is that most of us were not spending a lot of time in our quiet time with the Lord.  One of the things we learned about extending  our quiet time in the morning was to divide the hour up into fifteen minute segments.  One segment might be filled with a couple of devotional readings and prayer for those on a prayer list.  A second segment might be devoted to reading some Psalms and praying for the leadership in the church.  Using the smaller increments of time approach enabled us to cast a larger net in our praying as well as growing in our own spiritual lives.    

One thing is certain.  We are not going to get from where we are to where we feel God is calling us to be by a commitment to what has gotten us where we are.  In other words, if we continue to practice our disciplined life in exactly the same way over and over, the results are likely to stay the same.  Attaining higher ground often requires being willing to risk doing things differently.  Of course, a good way to move forward in our devotional life is to ask God what He would have us do.  His design for our quiet time might be quite different than what we might plan so it is always a good thing to ask.