Prayer Is Disciplined

Jesus would often get up early by himself to pray, even when he’d been up late the night before ministering to people. I wonder if he felt like it.

That’s one of the reasons I often don’t pray. I just don’t feel like it.

It’s common for us to let our emotions dictate what we will and won’t do on any given day. In fact, sometimes we’re told implicitly if not explicitly that if we don’t do what we feel in any given moment that we’re being inauthentic. But the reality is that our emotions are fleeting and often changing. We seldom feel like doing anything hard or feel making a sustained effort at something. But that’s often what it takes to do anything meaningful.

That’s why prayer is a discipline. Or maybe it’s better put: prayer has a substantial element of discipline to it.

Pray with me. Father, it’s hard to pray when we’re weary or when we don’t feel like it. But we know prayer is important. It matters. Please grow the strength of our discipline so that we can be a people who don’t just pray on occasion when we feel like it; but that we would be a people of prayer, devoted to you and your kingdom come. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.