“I confess that I am a messy, disorganized and impatient reader: if the book doesn’t grab me in the first 40 pages, I abandon it. I have piles of half-read books waiting for me to get acute hepatitis or some other serious condition that would force me to rest so that I could read more.” ~ Isabel Allende
There are people who apply that same principle to God. They are messy, disorganized, and impatient people of prayer. If their prayer doesn’t grab them at first attempt, they tend to drift to something else. It is only after they are brought down with illness, disease, unemployment, and the like that they begin to take a prayer life more seriously.
Why do we wait until we have to do something before accomplishing it? Believe me, I am not setting myself above others in any way, shape, or form on this one. When I was in college and graduate school, it was quite well known among my classmates that I would wait until the night before a major paper was due before I would sit down and type it out. Yes, I may have thought a lot about it and knew what I wanted to say. But, my rough draft was also the finished product.
God does not want that from us. God wants us to take time to develop a relationship with Him. He does not want to see us coming and going. He would prefer that we went to Him and stayed with Him. In order to get to that point, it takes a lot of patience and practice.
Our prayer life does not happen overnight. We do not simply sit down and say “I’m a person with a deep prayer life” if we have never started.
Take the time to be with the Lord today. Do not put it off until you are brought low and need Him though you do not know how to speak with Him. That would make your relationship with Him strained and very uncomfortable. God does not desire that kind of relationship. He desires us to be comfortable with Him, to sit and visit with Him just as two good friends would do, and to spend as much time with Him as possible.
FAITH ACTION: If you have been putting it off, do so no longer. Create a certain amount of time — each day, if possible — that you can dedicate to God and spend it with Him in prayer, spiritual reading, or other spiritual endeavors.