PRACTICAL REASONS WE FAIL TO MAXIMIZE PRAYER #3

Our failure to think of prayer as a privilege may be partly due to the fact that we can pray any time, “in every place.”

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.  I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” 1 Timothy 2:1-6,8

The door of prayer is open so continuously that we fail to avail ourselves to an opportunity which is always there. There are plenty of people in London who never have seen the inside of Westminster Abbey, partly because they could go there any day.

Consider then the aptness of Austin Phelps’ illustration: “In the vestibule of St. Peter’s, at Rome, is a doorway, which is walled up and marked with a cross. It is opened but four times in a century. On Christmas Eve, once in twenty-five years, the Pope approaches it in princely state, with the retinue of cardinals in attendance, and begins the demolition of the door, by striking it three times with a silver hammer. When the passage is opened, the multitude pass into the nave of the cathedral, and up to the altar, by an avenue which the majority of them never entered thus before, and never will enter thus again.

Imagine that the way to the God’s Throne of Grace were like the Porta Sancta (Holy Door, an entrance portal located within the Papal major basilicas in Rome), inaccessible, save once in a quarter of a century.

Conceive that it were now ten years since you, or I, or any other person, had been permitted to pray: and that fifteen long years must drag themselves away, before we could venture again to approach God; and that, at the most, we could not hope to pray more than two or three times in a lifetime!

 
With what solicitude we should wait for the coming of that Holy Day!” It may be that through sheer negligence and the deceiving influence of good but weak intentions, we are missing one of life’s great privileges, because it is so commonplace.

Let’s share a word of prayer from J. H. Jowett.

"O Lord, keep me sensitive to the grace that is round about me. May the familiar not become neglected! May I see your goodness in my daily bread, and may the comfort of my home take my thoughts to the mercy seat of God!"