Introduction
We continue with Part V from the booklet Spending Time With God, written by Pastor Danny Hodges of Calvary Chapel St. Petersburg in Florida. His down-to-earth style and practical, every day applications are certain to encourage you in your Christian walk, especially in developing a devotional life.Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part VI or Part VII.
We continue with the second essential ingredient of The Routine for spending time with God:
Prayer
Prayer is the second essential ingredient of fellowship with God. Prayer is simply talking to God. Through prayer, not only do we talk to God, but He talks to us. Jesus perfectly demonstrated what a prayer life should be like. He often withdrew to lonely, solitary places and prayed. Here are four practical suggestions on prayer that we find in the life of Jesus.- Find a Quiet Place. You're probably thinking, "You haven't been to my house - there's not one!" Then find the quietest place you can. If it's possible for you to leave and go to a quiet place, do that. But be consistent. Find a place where you can go consistently. In Mark 1:35 it says, "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed." (NIV)
Again, it is my conviction and my personal experience, that if we don't learn to hear God in the quiet place, we won't hear Him in the noise. I really believe that. We learn to hear Him in the quiet first, and as we hear Him in the quiet place we will take Him with us into the day. And in time, as we mature, we'll learn to hear God's voice even in the noise. But it starts in the quiet place.
