…The Behinder You Get

[Note: As I seek to use the last month of 2013 to establish effective spiritual habits for the coming year, today I reprint an article I penned several years ago. May God bless our every effort to walk each day more closely with Him.]

My mother often encouraged my sister and I to slow and think about what we most needed to do with these words: “The harder you go, the behinder you get.” It is true. When we flail aimlessly or act without the end in mind, it doesn’t matter how hard we work, we often make little progress. So we conclude that we need to think in advance about what we want to accomplish and how we will do.

In the spiritual realm, prayer is an important part of determining what we should do. Many Christians get further and further behind in their spiritual lives because we are too busy to pray. We are too busy to pray because we misunderstand the nature of prayer. We see prayer as one more activity to work into our busy schedules. Or perhaps we see prayer as a way out of emergencies, thinking that when we cry, God has to bail us out. In the routines of daily life that burn time and churn up problems, we seldom pray. So we find ourselves “behinder and behinder.”

Prayer is part of the Christian’s planning process. Prayer focuses our priorities. Reuel Lemmons is often quoted: “I only get done what I pray about.” More recently, Bill Hybels has written a book with the challenging title, Too Busy Not to Pray. Jesus demonstrated the priority of prayer as his way of maintaining contact with the will of his Father. Indeed, prayer is the first step in accomplishing all that God desires to do through us.

Let me suggest five things prayer will bring to your life.

  • Prayer will help you establish priorities. Since you can’t do everything, you must do what really matters. And in doing what really matters, the Christian focuses on what really matters to God. Prayer helps me decide what I will do.
  • Prayer will help you touch people. Since you can’t serve everyone, you must minister to those God puts in your path. When God leads you to people, can you see them? When God opens doors of relationship, do you walk through them?
  • Prayer will help you know God’s presence. Distinguishing the important things is helped by a sense of God’s presence.
  • Prayer will help you know God’s power. When I am overly-busy, I need help to get done even the most important things. The busier I am, the more important is prayer as a source of God’s power in my life.
  • Prayer will help you know God’s passion. Even in the midst of our busyness, prayer helps us see God’s purpose and plan. Prayer injects my life with God’s passion—compassion and caring.

The lesson is that we must pray about what we do before we do it. Too often, our prayers to God are that he might bless what we have already done. For the Christian serious about understanding and doing God’s will, prayer is first. Don’t make it the last thing you do as you deal with challenges of life.