The Time Is Now - Developing A Lifestyle Of Prayer

Baptist. So I threw it away. Then came a second letter informing me that some rich guy had paid our way and that there would be free books. I started to think, You know, this might be a nice vacation. I'll go, eat the meals, skip all the prayer sessions, have some nice walks on the beach, write my letter of resignation and come home . . . and get some ji·ee books in the process. God had other plans. It was during those four days that I "got saved" and devoted myself fully to prayer. It was there that I realized I had tried everything as a pastor except prayer. Books, seminars, programs ... nothing provided me the keys to a thriving ministry. I even believed in prayer, but I had mistakenly assumed that traditional, convenient, comfortable prayer was all that was needed. It fit my schedule. At one point during the prayer summit, Dr. Aldrich explained that his best prayer times came when he prayed for an hour or more at a sitting. That sparked a question in my mind. Have I, at any time in my life, ever spent cm hour alone in uninterrupted prayer? I couldn't think of a single instance in all my forty years. I then began to understand how I had been spiritually starving myself, my ministry, and the people around me. I suddenly knew why so much of my minist1y and personal experience had been negative. I had been praying just enough to convince myself I was satisfying God- a practice I call "token prayer"-but not nearly enough to call myself a man of prayer. I committed simply to pray more. The missing ingredient in my unhappy minist1y career had been the quantity of time talking to God-sheer volume of praye1: Years earlier, even before I finished high school, I had learned that new commitments don't keep themselves. Summer after summer I would return from church camp, passion­ ately excited about a new commitment. Six weeks later the commitment was gone, forgotten. After several of these disappointing experiences, I approached my pastor. His counsel has guided me ever since. First, he said, I needed to make my commitments specific. Second, I needed to write them down. And third, I needed to read them regularly. I followed his advice as a junior in high school, and, for the first time, I made a commitment that lasted longer than six weeks. In fact, it became an integral part of my life. So, years later, on the bus ride back from the prayer summit, I took out a yellow legal pad and wrote a list of seven specific goals, topped by my commitment to become a man devoted to prayer. Twelve years of frustration and anxiety were enough for me. I determined to readjust my priorities. I read those goals every day after I returned, and my commitments to prayer and love took solid root in my life and in my church. The fifteen years since that day have demonstrated to me, beyond any doubt, that faithful prayer must lie at the foundation of any fulfilling life or thriving ministty. And God has shown me that love is a commitment, not just an emotion, and that prayer is the most effective demonstration of love toward God and people. These have been the most effective and fulfilling years of my personal and ministty life.