As I’ve been going through this 90-day challenge to strengthen my foundation, the three habits I’ve been focusing on developing are daily bible reading, prayer, and exercise. The hardest one for me has been the habit of daily, meaningful prayer and quiet time. Bible reading and exercise have defined, specific goals for the day. I’m going to read one chapter in Proverbs and write one post daily on the Sermon on the Mount. I’m going to do planks for 2 minutes or run 1 mile. These are specific tasks that I can check off my list. Prayer is a little different. I can say that I will pray for 15 or 30 minutes every day, but that is a defined length of time. What am I going to pray about?
I am a busy dad with kids at home and many projects that need to be done. It is hard to find 5 minutes of quiet time at home. And when I am home, I look around and see all the things I should be working on while I’m at home. We have 5 drivers and 2 cars. (We are not a family that believes every 16 year-old deserves a car. When they can afford a car, they can have a car.) I typically have to schedule a car in advance if I want to go somewhere, and going somewhere every day by myself is difficult to arrange. But those are all just excuses that can be overcome. Prayer has not become a habit for me. I pray every day, but it is typically a couple of minutes here and there. I have not made the habit of a dedicated time to spend in quiet prayer and listening to God. A time to think and be still.
Several years ago, I decided I would take an hour every day for a month. I stopped by the church every day on my way home from work, after the church staff had gone home, and took an hour to pray and be still. For the first few days, that hour seemed to drag on. I’d fill some of the time with reading the Bible. After a couple of weeks, the hour was not enough time and by the end of the month, I was thinking more clearly and the direction I needed to go on some projects and goals for my life became obvious. But, I finished my goal of praying for an hour every day for a month and did not develop the habit of daily prayer. It was a good and much needed “project”, but not a sustainable habit.
Jesus continues his teaching with a section on prayer. He also continues to address the traditions and customs of the day as a matter of the heart. Prayer is a personal and private thing between me and God. It is not something that I do to draw attention to myself and make me appear to be “holy” because I pray a lot. That month of prayer became an incredible time for me. Being by myself in a quiet place helped to reduce the distractions and focus on my time with God.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Matthew 6: 5-6
Jesus tells us to go to our room and close the door. Partly so we are not making a show of ourselves as was a common practice in that time, but, at least for me, I need to get rid of the distractions so I can clear my mind and be still. My room is probably not the best place for me to go to eliminate distractions, so I must find someplace to go. I talk about “listening to God.” It isn’t that he literally speaks to me and no, I don’t hear voices. In the rare moments that I can get away and have some quiet time, God speaks to me through ideas and thoughts. When I finally stop trying to get things to work out the way I want them to and I stop trying to make the Bible say what I want it to say and I put my own agenda aside, God begins to “direct my steps” and I see things in the scriptures that I have not understood before. That is how God speaks to me.
“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Matthes 6: 7-8
Jesus also says to not go on babbling. An hour-long prayer may be a bit long, but that hour was not just prayer. It was not designed to let God know what I wanted. It was an hour for me to be quiet and listen to what God wanted. Too often we go to God in prayer, and our “prayer” is really more of a “wish list” that we present to God. “Hey, God. Thanks for everything you do for me. Here’s my wish list of what else I want you to do for me.” Our prayers often become a list of things we want God to do so that we can have a bigger kingdom of our own. God knows what we need before we even ask. Our prayer time should be more about building a relationship with God and listening to what he wants for us.
“This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”
Matthew 6: 9-13
Jesus goes on to give an example of how we should pray. This is, perhaps, one of the best known scriptures and is memorized and quoted more than almost any other part of the Bible, yet we still don’t practice it. It is not designed to be another “law” or something we do to check off a box. The entire teaching to this point, and beyond this, has been about not just going through the motions, but about building a relationship with God and getting our hearts right.
The prayer is short and simple. He starts it off by refocusing on seeking first the kingdom of God. “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” I am not praying to build my kingdom. My desire is to build God’s kingdom. He has one line that could be considered a “wish list” item. Give me what I need for today. The rest is about cleansing our hearts.
“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Matthew 6: 14-15
What is on the inside of us is more important than what is on the outside. What people do not see is much more important than what people see. It is easy to get caught up in our culture today with all the marketing and peer pressure and almost everything in our culture pointing to what we can see. We make sure our outward appearance is the best it can be with the right clothes, hair, skin, and sometimes even the right surgery. We spend hours and thousands of dollars making sure we get the outside right. Our social media photos have to portray the best looking us that we can and show all the great things I am doing. My kingdom needs to be solid.
But what about our hearts? How much time do we invest in getting our hearts right? Why do I have such a hard time finding 15 minutes a day to have quiet time with God? We talk about our money and giving 10% to God. That is an acceptable practice that many people follow, or at least desire to follow. But what if we gave 10% of our time to God? What if God got 2 ½ hours from us every day? How different would our world be if every Christian dedicated 2 ½ hours every day to prayer, Bible reading and even serving God’s people? What would our world look like today if we got serious and began to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”? What if we focused more on building our foundation on Jesus Christ instead of building big beautiful houses on very weak foundations?
