1. While many private prayers, in the nature of things, must be short; while public prayers, as a rule, ought to be short and condensed; while there is ample room for and value put on ejaculatory prayer—yet in our private communion with God time is a feature essential to its value. Much time spent with God is the secret of all successful praying. Prayer which is felt as a mighty force is the mediate or immediate product of much time spent with God. Our short prayers owe their point and efficiency to the long ones that have preceded them. The short prevailing prayer cannot be prayed by one who has not prevailed with God in a mightier struggle of long continuance. Jacob’s victory of faith could not have been gained without that all-night wrestling. Much with God alone is the secret of knowing Him and of influence with Him. There can be no converse with a holy God, no fellowship between heaven and earth, no power for the salvation of the souls of others, unless much time is set apart for it. Just as it is necessary for a child for long years to eat and learn every day, so the life of grace depends entirely on the time men are willing to give to it day by day.
The men who have most fully illustrated Christ in their character, and have most powerfully affected the world for Him, have been men who spent so much time with God as to make it a notable feature of their lives. Charles Simeon devoted the hours from four till eight in the morning to God. Mr. Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer. He began at four in the morning. Of him, one who knew him well wrote: “He thought prayer to be more his business than anything else, and I have seen him come out of his closet with a serenity of face next to shining”. John Fletcher stained the walls of his room by the breath of his prayers. Sometimes he would pray all night; always, frequently, and with great earnestness. His whole life was a life of prayer. “I would not rise from my seat,” he said, “without lifting my heart to God.” His greeting to a friend was always, “Do I meet you praying?” Luther said: “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” He had a motto: “He that has prayed well has studied well”.
John Welch, the holy and wonderful Scotch preacher, thought the day ill spent if he did not spend eight or ten hours in prayer. He kept a plaid that he might wrap himself when he arose to pray at night. His wife would complain when she found him lying on the ground weeping. He would reply: “O woman, I have the souls of three thousand to answer for, and I know not how it is with many of them!” [Note: E. M. Bounds, Power through Prayer, 48.]
Bishop Andrewes was a busy man, and yet he spent five hours a day in devotion! Bishop Dupanloup, of Orleans, led a very active life, yet he spent four hours a day in devotion! The late Dean of Lincoln (Dr. Butler), was one of the most active and incessant workers of our time, yet he rose every morning, summer and winter, for fifty years at six o’clock, for the purpose of securing time for quiet communion with God. But we may go immeasurably higher for an example. We may look at our Lord’s life of unwearied activity, so unwearied that at times He and His Apostles “had no leisure so much as to eat”. Well, then, consider such texts as these: “In the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed”. “He withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.” Or again, “He continued all night in prayer to God” before choosing His Apostles. Or again, after “a successful day,” after the feeding of the five thousand, “when He had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray and when the evening was come, he was there alone.” [Note: B. W. Randolph, The Threshold of the Sanctuary, 90.]
2. Spiritual work is taxing work, and men are loath to do it. Praying, true praying, costs an outlay of serious attention and of time which flesh and blood do not relish. Few persons are made of such strong fibre that they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in the market. We can habituate ourselves to our beggarly praying until it looks well to us; at least it keeps up a decent form and quiets conscience—the deadliest of opiates! We can slight our praying, and not realize the peril till the foundations are gone. Hurried devotions make weak faith, feeble convictions, questionable piety. To be little with God is to be little for God. To cut short the praying makes the whole religious character short, scrimp, stingy, and slovenly.
I suspect I have been allotting habitually too little time to religious exercises as private devotion, religious meditation, Scripture reading, etc. Hence I am lean and cold and hard. God would perhaps prosper me more in spiritual things if I were to be more diligent in using the means of grace. I had better allot more time, say two hours or an hour and a half, to religious exercises daily, and try whether by so doing I cannot preserve a frame of spirit more habitually devotional, a more lively sense of unseen things, a warmer love to God, and a greater degree of hunger and thirst after righteousness, a heart less prone to be soiled with worldly cares, designs, passions, and apprehension, and a real undissembled longing for heaven, its pleasures and its purity. [Note: William Wilberforce.]
