Scheduling Your Prayer Time

Prayer is absolutely essential for a healthy spiritual life.  And if you want to have a vital prayer life, you need to pray daily.  You need a daily appointment with God so that you can spend quality, quantity time with Him.  My daily prayer time is first thing in the morning.  That means I have to wake up very early, because I have to be at work for 5 am.  But it is worth it, or I wouldn't do it.  The following quote from J.C. Ryle is motivating:

I commend to you, in the next place, the importance of making prayer a regular business of life. I might say something of the value of regular times in the day for prayer. God is a God of order. The hours for morning and evening sacrifice in the Jewish temple were not fixed as they were without a meaning. Disorder is eminently one of the fruits of sin. But I would not bring any under bondage. This only I say, that it is essential to your soul's health to make praying a part of the business of every twenty-four hours in your life. Just as you allot time to eating, sleeping, and business, so also allot time to prayer. Choose your own hours and seasons. At the very least, speak with God in the morning, before you speak with the world; and speak with God at night, after you have done with the world. But settle it down in your minds that prayer is one of the great things of every day. Do not drive it into a corner. Do not give it the scraps, and leavings, and parings of your day. Whatever else you make a business of, make a business of prayer.

The idea of a daily appointment with God is not new.  J.C. Ryle wrote these words in the nineteenth century.  

The only way to be consistent with something is to schedule it.  I encourage you to revisit your schedule today and pencil in time for daily prayer.  It's worth it.