Too Busy to Pray?

The Tyranny of the Immediate

If we are too busy to pray, maybe we are just too busy.  In today’s world many people are busy doing good and necessary things.  Accomplishing primary tasks instead of dwelling on secondary ones is a matter of setting our priorities aright.  Jesus set the example as he withdrew from the crowds to pray and commune with his heavenly Father. 

"But the news about Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray (Luke 5:15-16 NASB). Surely, preaching and healing the sick were good and necessary pursuits; but despite the clamor of the crowds, Jesus often forsook them for a higher priority, prayer.

I taught school for many years.  At one school I organized a small prayer group of believers on our staff.  Attendance was often sporadic.  The main reason that people gave for not attending was “something came up and I couldn’t make it.”  They were not making excuses; everything from desperate students to disgruntled parents would come their way.  The enemy of our souls will provide seemingly unavoidable distractions; which, if not resisted, will enslave us to the tyranny of the immediate.  The truth of the matter is that we will never have time to pray unless we consciously and tenaciously make time for it. There was a time I had to resist good to accomplish the best in relation to prayer.

God’s Priority or Mine

I hung up the phone and thought to myself, I’ve got a problem.  I worked as a missionary with Youth With a Mission (YWAM) for seventeen years, part of that time in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. On one occasion I was asked to help organize a week of prayer and fasting at our training center.  At the time I was taking care of all the logistics of coordinating a recruiting tour in 70 cities across the US and Canada.   Dave, my supervisor, called me, “Ken we have a golden opportunity, and we need to send out a mailing this week.  Drop everything.”  I hung up the phone and realized that if I continued with the prayer emphasis, in addition to the mailing, it would be virtually impossible to get it all done.  I felt this strong pressure to back out of my commitment to pray.  As I pondered and talked to the Lord about my dilemma, deep inside I felt Him saying, Trust me.  I said, Ok, Lord!

I put my nose to the grindstone, taking part of the day to pray and working as diligently as possible on the mailing with whatever time was left.  The harder I worked, the further behind I got with respect to my deadline.   Monday led into Tuesday and the urge to shorten my times of prayer just intensified.  I envisioned myself having to contact Dave and advising him that I would not be able to complete the mailing in a timely fashion.  At this point the most important question I had to answer was: What was my greatest priority?  Prayer was the answer; nonetheless it was becoming harder and harder to maintain.

About midweek I received a call from Dave.  He said, “Good news, Ken.”  And it was indeed good news.  Last Days Ministries, the organization founded Keith Green, the late Christian artist, contacted us and volunteered to take over all the logistics in promoting the tour.  All I had to do was pack up our contacts and provide them with our tour schedule, and they would do the rest.  Praise God, my life had been spared. 

I learned two lessons from this exercise in spiritual calisthenics.  First, if we take care of God’s priorities, He will take care of ours.  Second, prayer in the long term is always time efficient.  Time, or the lack of it, is the main hindrance to consistent prayer.  If I had capitulated to the immediate demand, I would only have accomplished my task (the tour).  By holding to God’s preeminent concern, prayer, I fulfilled His priorities along with mine.  The words that have echoed over and over again in the church are,

“I can’t afford the time to pray.” The truth is we can’t afford not to pray.

Prayer: Fundamental Or Supplemental?

Alistair Begg, Senior Pastor of Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, once said that our efforts in prayer are meager because we view it as “supplemental and not fundamental.”  Is it something we add to our own ideas and efforts to make them work more effectively? Or is it the fundamental starting point from which all authentic spiritual works originate?

In conclusion, there is a small but indispensable part of the Body of Christ who have resisted the tyranny of the immediate to persist in the place of prayer.  They are people of prayer, faithful servants who have chosen to make prayer fundamental and not supplemental.  I leave with you with a slight twist on the words of Winston Churchill: Never have so few done so much, for so many.