Deliberate Time With God

Michael Au writes on prayer:

Over the past few weeks I realized that prayer is really a discipline that God wants us to practice on a continual daily basis. The word discipline has some negative connotations to it but as we know the word disciple comes from the word discipline. Jesus said in Luke 9:23, ""If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." This command from Jesus reminds us how important it is to make that daily commitment to follow him. I believe it's very difficult to follow him when we don't spend our time in prayer with him. Days without prayer can be make us feel very lifeless. A mantra that I like to keep in my heart is "hard to easy, or easy to hard." I find that when I spend that morning time, no matter how hard it is to wake up a little earlier or how much I don't feel like praying, I always find my day is so much easier when I set apart some time just for Him. On the other hand it's much easier for me to snooze my alarm to get more sleep but the sacrifice is precious morning time with Him. I then wake up and am late to whatever I need to do causing me to be in a rush during the morning. And due to not praying my day is so much harder because I'm not in tune with the Spirit. Some of you may be saying well can't you just pray throughout the day, and not do the quiet times? I'm sure that you can, but I guarantee that your spiritual life will not be the full measure of what God has in store for you. This is because God has given time for us to give back unto him. Not just in service and love to others, but in service and love to Him in prayer! There are also days where I do pray passionately and my day is still not the best, but the chances of that happening are very rare. I encourage you all to make a habit of regular quiet time to experience more of God's sustaining and mighty power.

I'm also sure God doesn't mind what time of the day we pray to him. Jesus prayed in the morning and in the night. The most important thing is that God wants us to make that time for him. We always say, "seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Mt 6:33), and we can show God that we truly do seek Him by making that deliberate time in prayer with him.