03 Disciplines of Quiet Time: Prayer
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In the first episode we talked about the discipline of reading to behold glory, and last episode we talked about the discipline of meditation and memorization, or what I call M&M. And on today’s episode, I want to talk about the discipline of prayer in our quiet times.
If you can time-travel back a ways to the first episode of this series, you’ll remember that we separated quiet time into three foundational aspects: To be, to behold, and to become.
And in the first few episodes of this series, I’ve honed in specifically on the ‘beholding’ aspect, the second aspect, of quiet time.
But, in the next few episodes I want to focus on the first foundational aspect, which is ‘to be’ with God. Because before we can do any beholding of the LORD, before we can read to behold glory, before we M&M God’s Word, we have to be with Him first.
And there is no better way, absolutely NO BETTER WAY ‘to be’ with God than in prayer.
However, before I get started, I have a confession to make. I gotta confess that prayer for a long time has been one of my weakest spiritual disciplines. I don’t know if anyone can relate, but for the longest time nothing was appealing about my time in prayer and my prayer life was really dry. It was very ritualistic, you know, with the same prayer before eating food ‘please bless this food and bring nourishment to my body’, and a prayer always before bed, which I was always like half awake for anyway. I also felt like my prayers were very selfish and I treated God more like a genie to serve me than a God worthy of my servanthood.
On top of that, and again I don’t know if any of you can relate, but for the longest time I struggled to pray for other people. Like someone would ask for prayer and with good intention I’d say ‘yeah I’ll be praying for you’, but then I’d forget about it. Or I’d pray for them once or twice and then forget about it.
And then lastly, I must confess that for the longest time I did not include prayer in my quiet time.
My quiet times consisted solely of Bible reading, and if it were to have any prayer, it was of the intensely short category.
And maybe that’s you too…maybe you can relate to my struggles. Maybe your quiet times consist solely of Bible reading. Maybe you would say that your prayer life is one of your weakest spiritual disciplines too. Maybe you feel like your prayer life is dry, and maybe you struggle to pray for others too. Maybe you are consistently in the Word but you’re not consistently on your knees praying to God. And if that's you hear me because like I just said that’s been me too. But the Lord has worked on me and my heart and He’s grown me significantly in that spiritual discipline, and I promise He can for you as well.
And so that’s what I want to share about today. I want to share what the Lord has brought me to do regarding prayer in my quiet times that have helped transform my prayer life from very dry to a fountain of life.
So let’s talk about it: prayer as part of your quiet time.
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There’s a famous quote from AW Tozer where he said,
‘We go astray when we attempt to do spiritual work without spiritual power’.
Now I believe, though I may be wrong, but I believe Tozer said this quote in regards to preaching. However, this principle is true of our quiet times as well. And the reason why it's true is because we cannot even begin to understand anything divine (that is, anything of God) unless something else that is divine reveals it to us. That is why it is foolish for us to attempt to do the spiritual work of quiet time without spiritual power. We just simply cannot grasp anything in God’s Word or anything about His character or presence without it being revealed to us through His Spirit. Put simply, we need divinity to reveal divinity to us.
Take the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 for example. Jesus has just resurrected from the dead, and He begins to walk with these two men, yet the Scriptures say ‘Their eyes were kept from recognizing Him’. Then by the end of their conversation and Jesus’ breaking of bread, Scripture says in v31 ‘their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him’.
In that story, the two disciples were unable to recognize someone divine (that someone being Jesus), until someone divine (again, that someone being Jesus) revealed it to them.
Now also take into account that these two men believed in Jesus. These weren’t unbelievers blinded by the god of this world. These were men who fully believed and followed Jesus. And yet their eyes were closed to the divinity of Jesus until Jesus opened them.
Now what does all this mean regarding prayer and our quiet time?
Well it means we cannot behold the glory of God unless God opens our eyes. We cannot behold the beauty and glory of His divine Word unless His divine Spirit reveals it to us.
In other words, we stand no chance of reading God’s Word and understanding it, no chance of beholding it, no chance of grasping His character, His love, or His presence, no chance at all, unless God Himself helps us and reveals Himself to us. Because we simply can’t do it ourselves.
We need divinity to reveal divinity to us.
So with that in mind, what is it that most people do when something is too great for them to accomplish in their own might? What is it that most people do when they realize their own self-sufficiency won’t work? Better yet, what is it that most people do when they are in a situation that requires divine intervention?
They pray. When people are in a situation that requires divine intervention, they pray.
And I want you to understand on this podcast today that that is what our quiet times need. They need divine intervention from God to reveal Himself to us, to help us understand His Word, and to help us comprehend His character and His love for us. Because without that, without divine intervention, we’re just lost. We’re lost. We’re helpless.
And so if that is what our quiet times need…if they need divine intervention from God to reveal Himself to us, then that also means they need prayer from us for God to do that.
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Now there are quite a few prayers in Scripture that encapsulate all that I just said, perhaps none more exemplary than the one in Psalm 119:18.
In that verse the Psalmist prays ‘Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law’.
In this verse this psalmist acknowledges that their eyes are closed to the wondrous things in Scripture, and so they pray for God to open them. And if you look closely, you’ll see that word ‘behold’ in the prayer. ‘Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law’.
Now I direct your attention to that because the psalmist here is showing us something.
He is showing us prayer comes before beholding. That means prayer comes before we read the Word of God and prayer comes before we meditate on and memorize it. Because, again, we cannot behold the glory of God unless God Himself opens our eyes and we cannot do spiritual things without spiritual power. So for me, this is a prayer I pray close to daily before my quiet time. I pray for God to open my eyes so that I may behold wondrous things out of His Word. Essentially my prayer is an acknowledgement and a confession that I just cannot behold God and His Word, that I cannot understand it, without God Himself opening my eyes to it.
And I would encourage you to do the same. I encourage you to pray Psalm 119:18 before your quiet time. God delights in revealing Himself to you and He wants to open your eyes, and from personal experience I can testify that God has always answered this prayer for me and that my times in the Word have become much more fruitful because of it.
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Now there’s another prayer similar to the one in Psalm 119, and it comes from Paul in Ephesians chapter 1. In that chapter, he prays starting in v17 that ‘the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him’...boom. Stop right there.
This opening to Paul’s prayer reflects the Psalmist’s prayer in Psalm 119. Because think about it: Why would Paul be praying for God to give the Ephesians the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him if they were able to do that themselves?
Again, they couldn’t, and we can’t. We cannot come to greater knowledge of Christ without God giving to us the spirit of wisdom and revelation. Which, and I know I’m beating a dead horse here but I want you to get it, that means that we cannot behold the glory of God unless God opens our eyes. It means we stand no chance of reading His Word and understanding it, no chance of beholding it, no chance of grasping His character, His love, or His presence, no chance at all, unless we have divine intervention from God to help us and reveal Himself to us.
Now Paul continues his prayer in the next verse, v18, praying that God would ‘have the eyes of their hearts enlightened, that they may know the hope to which he has called them, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward the ones who believe’.
Here we continue to see this theme of eyes needing to be opened, because Paul is praying for the eyes of the Ephesians’ hearts to be enlightened, which the Hebrew word used there for enlightened means to give light to, to illuminate or to make visible.
So Paul is praying for God to give light to the eyes of the heart so that the church of Ephesus can see or know three things:
The eternal hope they have in Him (which is their salvation).
The greatness of God’s inheritance in His people.
Which, this one may be confusing because oftentimes we think of our heavenly inheritance in God, which is true, but here Paul is praying that the people would know just how much God delights in and loves His people, calling us His own inheritance.
And 3. Paul is praying for the church to see and know the immeasurable power they have supporting them. Paul wants the church to know just how great the power of God is toward those who believe in Him.
In other words, to sum all of that up and make that prayer as simple and general as possible, Paul is praying for God to open the eyes of the Ephesians’ hearts so that they can see Him for who He really is.
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Lastly I want to close by looking to the prayer life of Jesus.
Time and time and time again in Scripture we see Jesus up early praying to the Father.
Jesus loved communing with the Father and it was the first thing He did every morning. You see that all through the gospels: Jesus up early in prayer. And what I find so fantastic about that, which I’m sure I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, is that Jesus of all people had no need to pray.
He was the Son of God, who could call angels down from Heaven at any moment, who could turn water to wine, who could even turn grass to gold if He wanted to. The point is Jesus had zero reason to pray yet He prayed more than anyone to ever walk this earth. And if someone who had no need for prayer prayed that much, how much more should we?
I think, and granted this is my personal conviction, but I find it most spiritually fulfilling and edifying to have prayer be the first and last thing you do every day, and also the first and last thing you do every quiet time. And for me that conviction is based on the life Jesus lived as described in Scripture.
And so that’s how I operate. I have a journal in which I write down at the top everyday ‘prayer, with a semicolon’, followed by ‘read, with a semicolon’ followed by ‘M&M with a semicolon’. And I go in that order, prayer, read, meditate and memorize, and then close with prayer. Everyday.
And I truly believe from a biblical standpoint that those three disciplines are the main keys to a great and edifying quiet time, and I would encourage you to do that.
I encourage you to practice prayer before you open the Word of God, even when you don’t feel like it. Pray when you feel like it and pray when you don't…that's what Spurgeon says.
So I encourage you to make it a point of emphasis in your quiet times to pray first and foremost, and then I encourage you to read to behold glory and meditate and memorize what you behold. And I promise if you consistently practice those three disciplines in that order…prayer, reading to behold glory, and then meditation and memorization, you will begin to see your quiet time become noticeably more special and noticeably more fulfilling and edifying.
Now, all that said, there is still so much more…SO MUCH MORE that I want to biblically unpack with you all surrounding our quiet time, which we will cover over the next few weeks.
And there’s also so much more I want to unpack with prayer, because I mean this is just the tip of the iceberg, and so I am hopeful to do a series on prayer at some point in the future.
Anyways, I love you all so much. Seriously. I love making every episode of this podcast and I’m grateful for all of you who listen. See you all next episode.
God bless.
