How Much Do You Pray Each Day?

[Jerusalem Blade]

An hour of prayer, if it is a struggle, we have time to deal with it, and seek the Lord's help. It is a serious business, maintaining a closeness to Him, as the rest of our day may be colored heavy and sad, or joyous – depending on if the Lord granted us favor in His loving presence.

"My flesh and my heart fail: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever [or He is mine forever NLT]. (Psalm 73:26)" There is power in His word, and having time to go through His promises and getting hold of them is sometimes very helpful. I am not in a rush when such things are at stake.

I wasn't too pleased with all of Bunyan's thoughts in his section of the booklet Vital Prayer, but he may have been addressing one resisting drawing near to Christ, which was not the case with me.

 

[StevieG]

I'd be interested to know how most people go about their daily prayer life? Do you try and carve out a significant amount of time at the start of the day or spread it out at different time?

For many years I would have tried to spend a large amount of time in the morning in prayer, but personally find it helpful now to try and have more frequent, but shorter times, throughout the day.

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

I'd be interested to know how most people go about their daily prayer life? Do you try and carve out a significant amount of time at the start of the day or spread it out at different time?

For many years I would have tried to spend a large amount of time in the morning in prayer, but personally find it helpful now to try and have more frequent, but shorter times, throughout the day.

Throughout the day I pray through some formal prayers that are already written down when I have time. At night after my kids go to bed I try to pray formally for a lengthy amount of time. We also do family worship where we pray, but the praying isn't very long. But then throughout the day as things are on my mind and heart, I kind of just informally communicate with God.

I think the main thing I noticed, is during the times of my life where I've prayed less, it just seems like something very important is missing, that I'm not living life to it's fullest potential. It's like I have a desire for something, to share everything I have with God, and when I don't do it, it is very unsatisfying. The more I pray, the more I have rest and peace in my connection with God. Which is tough because we never want to rest on our own works, but it's more of just a satisfaction knowing I am doing what God designed me to do. To me a good analogy is hunger. If I don't eat for a while, my stomach is telling me to put stuff in it. And once I feed it, there's a very satisfied feeling. That's how prayer is for me.

 

[TooManySystematics]

Teaching it's members how to pray is one of the most important tasks of the church and something that I fear many Reformed churches are not particularly good at. I think most people's attitude is that prayer is "caught" rather than taught. But I've found Praying the Bible by Donald S. Whitney a very helpful book for providing a method for prayer that assists both deep and lengthy prayer. If you work through one of Paul's epistles, thanking Him for what the epistles says about who God is and what He has done for us in Christ and by the Spirit, and if you ask Him to inscribe the imperatives on your heart, then you can spends hours in rich, meditative prayer.

 

[Dkshotwell]

Personally I find prayer more profitable if I pray intermittently throughout the day, as need and circumstance call. I’ve tried to sit and pray for an hour or more at a time because that is what I have always been taught as the normal Christian’s practice. Honestly, I cap out at maybe ten minutes before I realize that I am in the “trying to be heard for my many words” realm. I pray to the point without flowers because I’m not eloquent in thought or speech. I’ve never been able to compete in the prayer time Olympics.