Giving Our Best to Prayer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 7, 1915

Giving Our Best to Prayer

THERE is no other activity in life so important as that of prayer. Every other activity depends upon prayer for its best efficiency. And not our activities only, but the very condition and attitude of our whole being, are determined by our prayer life. How important it is, then, that prayer should get our first attention and our best attention! The safest way to insure this would seem to be by keeping the morning watch; giving regular and ample time to prayer at the very beginning of the day, before breakfast, and before taking up the day's duties. The practice has been wonderfully blessed in many lives. It can revolutionize lives at the points of their greatest weakness,—not the morning watch, but Christ through the morning watch.

To give from half an hour to an hour at the start of the day to a quiet time alone with God, feeding on his Word under the guidance of his Holy Spirit, and talking freely with him about his work and the needs of the day,—our needs and others’ needs,—sends one forth into the day from the very courts of heaven. All day long we may, in Christ’s strength, live in the blessing that was thus won at the start. And we shall pray the more through the day, and at nighttime, because of the morning time alone with God. The pressure of other duties only increases the need of prayer at the start. In the midst of one of his most crowded seasons of activity, Jesus “in the morning, rising up a great while before day, . . . departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” If life has been barren or defeated, let us give this remedy a fair trial.—The Sunday School Times.