Prayer: First Priority

1986

First prerequisite for answered prayer is this: That it’s got to be a priority in our lives. God doesn’t except leftovers. “I will not offer to my God that which costs me nothing,” David said. If it’s leftover time, then it’s probably not going to be an answered prayer. I used to pray, and I still do when I was pumping gas. I would I’d think, “Well, this is kind of wasted time anyway, might as well pray.” I would pray while I was falling asleep and probably somewhere in the middle of my prayer because I fell asleep. But, essentially, I would use odd moments to pray. I don’t think there is a problem with using odd moments to pray, but it wasn’t a priority thing with me. It was not priority number one in my life. I was praying at odd moments, but I wasn’t giving God my “best” time. Whatever time you have—if it’s your key time, that time deserves to be time in prayer. Your prayer closet needs to exceed and supersede other commitments in life. That’s what the apostles said, “We don’t have time even to do good deeds because we need to devote ourselves to prayer and ministry of the word.” Acts 6:2-4. Those were good things. That was a good choice they could have made to wait on tables of the widows. And yet they said, “Now wait a minute. We need to make our number one priority in our life: prayer and ministry of the word.” So, prayer is very, very important in our prayer closets and meeting God there. It’s got to be first on our list.

I’d like you to consider something, and it’s called tithing. I think we know from our religious backgrounds that tithing means literally ten percent. The Pharisees gave ten percent of their income, and I hope that you’re doing that too, by the way. “Unless you surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you won’t enter the kingdom of God.” And Jesus talks about acts of righteousness, and He names them. He said prayer is an act of righteousness, alms giving or contribution is an act of righteousness, fasting is an act of righteousness. And He says, “Unless you surpass their righteousness, you won’t enter the Kingdom of God.” Now I’d like you to just think about that in terms of the fact that you have been far more blessed than anybody, any people on the face of the earth and all of history—first of all, financially. But second of all, by the gift that’s in Christ does not mean that you’ll do less than the Pharisees did, certainly. If you have any appreciation at all of which Jesus has done for you, you won’t do less than what the people who only had to look forward to that did. So I hope that that’s something you’re already doing.

H: Is it true that…I always took that to mean that surpassing that would mean that they brought a promise—they suggested a promise that the Savior was coming. We simply surpass what any Pharisee could have ever done by the jar, the treasure inside. We attest to the world that Jesus has come. And that surpasses the Pharisees’ righteousness.

M: Yeah, I think that’s true. I guess the problem with that is that can be used as a cop-out. Because Jesus did talk about acts of righteousness. He did say that the acts of righteousness are prayer and alms giving and fasting. He didn’t say your act of righteousness is to be in me, and you don’t need to do anything else. So while I agree with what you’re saying—that our righteousness is in Christ, and you can pray and give alms all you want and there’s no righteousness in that at all in it of it itself. There’s no way to justify ourselves by doing those things. Still like Paul said, “Because God’s grace was so immense to me, I decided to work harder than all of the rest. Not I myself, but God’s grace working in me.” So the proper response to the righteousness of Christ and to His grace is to do more than anybody else ever did. That’s true. We’re not justified by doing these things. But our proper response if we really believe in the righteousness of Christ, our only response is to work harder than all of the rest—to do more than we could ever have—where the Pharisees had no power to do that. They didn’t have the indwelling Spirit. They didn’t have a faith that comes from God being in them and around them and with them. They were doing it just out of brute force. Now how much more Paul said, “out of grace,” can we give to God back that which He’s given us so richly. So that’s an excellent point. I guess that’s not really the point I was making, although it’s absolutely true

They gave ten percent of their money, and I still would fully recommend that you consider that. That you owe more than the Pharisees ever could have dreamed of owing back to God. I think you’d have to agree with that much anyway. But the point I’d like to make now is that I’d like you to also consider tithing your time—giving ten percent of your time. Now you know how many hours there are in a day, and you know how many of those are you are awake. I think that God certainly deserves that. He deserves a tenth of your time. Surely He deserves a tenth of your time that’s just devoted purely to Him, to prayer, and to ministry of the word. The number one reason I believe a lot of people drift aimlessly through a particular day that they’re living is because they stayed up really late at night fellowshipping with Humphrey Bogart or with Johnny Carson or Ted Koppel. And because they refused to crucify their nightlife, they missed their appointment with Jesus Christ in the morning. And what basis do they have to build the rest of the day on? It’s got to be flesh because the day started in flesh. It didn’t start in communion with God. I guess what I’d like you to think about doing is crucifying your nightlife and being very, very disciplined. Self-discipline is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s something that comes from God. Be diligent to add self-discipline. It’s also a command. So think about doing that and get up early and spend some time in the presence of Almighty God. If you really care about walking with God, you’ve got to begin that day with Him.

H: If I crucify my nighttime, that’s my most active time to pray, and in the mornings I can’t even tie my shoes. Maybe morning people should sacrifice their mornings and evening people should sacrifice their evenings.

M: Ok, whatever you need to do to spend that time alone with God.

Another time to crucify is that time right after you get home from work that you’ve always claimed was your own. I deserve this time. You’re not your own. You were bought for a price. You don’t deserve that. Slaves don’t have any rights. And so, therefore, I’d like you to make sure that you give God the time that’s due Him. Otherwise, you’ll drift. You’ll be the one that’ll pay the price, not God.

H: Coming home from being immersed in the world to refresh yourself in Christ—that’s when I found a blessing.

M: I think it’s also possible, and I know it’s possible to pray continually. And to be in one of these high-powered meetings or someplace and still be on the verge of prayer throughout that time and not be consumed by the world even in that environment. Then it’s not so hard to come back and pray because now at last you’re able to do what your heart’s been yearning to do all through the day anyway. So, that’s a possibility.

P: I have a hard time with praying when other people are around. How can you communicate with your wife, say—and at the same time be in constant communion with God?

M: I think Nehemiah is a good example of that. In Nehemiah 2 he was talking to the king. He was in the presence of the king. The king asked him a question. And then he said, “I prayed to my God and answered him.” See the king didn’t wait for Nehemiah to drop to his knees and to bow down and to pray an elaborate prayer and then get up and then answer him. But it was that Nehemiah was so close to God that he could respond, and he was very spontaneous in that. The king probably never even noticed that. And I think like with my children, I can be wrestling around with them on the floor and then just kind of put my hands on top of their heads and pray for a second either verbally or silently and continue to play with them. I can still be involved and interact with them and listen and talk to them and still also be in a spirit of prayer and a spirit of joy and have fun with them at the same time. You don’t have to totally kind of veg out if you’re in prayer. You can be alive and be part of the world and be sensitive to those around you.

K: One of the traps that we could fall into with the concept of tithing is, “I gave my 10%, I paid my dues.”

M: That’s right. Bear in mind that you're not ever justified by those things, and it certainly is good to look ahead. “For the joy set before Him, Christ endured the cross and He despised the shame.” He looked ahead, and He saw where He wanted to be. That’s what I’m asking you to do is to look ahead. And to know where you want to be at. If you’re not there, don’t be satisfied with that. You have to have a healthy dissatisfaction. If you’re praying 5 minutes a day, you can be dissatisfied with that legitimately so.

P: We could be taking a half-hour, an hour just by yourself coming before God and building that relationship with God as part of becoming like Nehemiah—rather than spending all our prayer time with other people…

M: For sure, and we talked about that last week that Jesus, “frequently went off to a solitary place to pray,” (Luke) where there was no distractions, there was nothing around, no responsibilities, the phone couldn’t ring in that solitary place. He was away where He could be alone with God. That’s part of that cultivation, and that’s who Jesus was. There’s no reason to not be that way when we see that’s who Jesus was, and we know that’s who we want to be.

W: That’s really a psychological need of each person—time by yourself, and scripturally is time by yourself with God. It’s something that if we really look at the Scriptures that what we need as people is right there for us.

M: Right, and I think it really goes even far beyond the psychological need; although God knows we’re made up that way too. It goes into the realm of—if you really want to accomplish anything for God, and you really want answers to your prayers, you’re gonna do that. You’re gonna make time for that somehow, someway. You’re gonna find time for that. Again, we need to make it a priority to serve God in prayer.

An interesting verse in terms of not having time to do it is Psalm 127:2, “In vain you rise up early and stay late, toiling for food to eat. For God grants sleep to those whom He loves.” It’s an interesting passage. You go back through there and really look at that carefully. What it says is in vain you work hard. You work hard. You try to accomplish all these tasks through the day. You work so hard, and it’s all in vain because God is the one that grants that success anyway. See God controls time. If you realize that if you submit your life to Him, you don’t need to scurry around trying to make ends meet all the time. Because you’re not going to be able to do it anyway apart from God. In other words, if there’s a task that takes a certain amount of time, it’s within God’s power to make that task take half as long. You’ve all seen that happen. “Wow, I’m done already. That couldn’t be. It’s always taken me twice this long.” But see when you’re serving God time is not a relative thing with God. He doesn’t care about time. You also know that if you are walking selfishly and if God wants to, He can make taking doing the dishes take four days—interruption after interruption. The hot water heater busts, and this happened… He can make a task take one half as long or four times as long. The real thing that we have to do is entrust our life to God. See, you can take time to pray because God controls time anyway. Don’t selfishly hang on to time thinking you need to make your own way. So prerequisite number one for answered prayer is to make prayer priority number one, not leftover time.