The Principles of Prayer XXXVI

 You can’t claim to be a mechanic without the in-depth knowledge of how an engine works. If you’re a mechanic in name only, it will be revealed the moment you’re presented with a problem you have no clue how to fix. The same goes for every profession under the sun. Identifying as a painter, musician, mechanic, plumber, entomologist, or dermatologist holds little weight unless you know what you’re doing and have the requisite set of skills to carry out the tasks necessary to confirm that you are what you claim to be.

One clear identifier of a follower of Jesus isn’t the fish sticker on their back bumper, or that their radio is permanently switched to K-Love, but that they are men and women of prayer. By this, I don’t mean sporadic prayers once in a while, or when we have a need beyond our ability to resolve, but something we practice with such regularity as to be woven into our daily existence, so necessary to us that we can’t do without it.

There are four quantities of measurement as far as memory serves. There is length, then mass, temperature, and time. By any metric, Jesus was the shining example of one who prayed, whether in time, passion, length, or weight. Yes, I do believe some prayers are weightier than others. It’s one thing to pray over a meal your wife cooked; it’s another to pray so earnestly as to sweat drops of blood.

If we look to Jesus as our example, then we must look to Him as our example in all things. We like to point out that He overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple whenever we feel the need to pontificate on some point or another, but rarely do we point out that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer.

Keep in mind, this was Jesus, the sinless, perfect Son of God, yet He found it a needful thing to spend entire nights in prayer before the Father. If Jesus needed prayer in order to be strengthened and encouraged, what makes us think we don’t, or that we can get by with less?

If prayer and communion with the Father were the only source of comfort, strength, and encouragement to one such as Jesus, it’s easy to intuit that whenever we are in need of such things, prayer should be our first go-to as well.

Well, you see, I was feeling down the other day, and started reading the collected works of the wisdom of Joel Osteen, a short read by all accounts. Although it didn’t make me feel any better, I learned I should pretend it did. It’s not so much about feeling the joy of the Lord as it is about manifesting joy until eventually it becomes a reality. By the by, another term for manifesting is self-imposed delusion.

When we come before God in prayer, we don’t have to pretend to have peace; He gives us peace. The peace He gives is a peace that is superior to anything the world has to offer, because the peace God gives is the peace that surpasses all understanding.

When we endeavor to spend time in His presence, we don’t have to pretend to have joy; we receive the joy of the Lord for having been in His presence, are comforted and strengthened in our spiritual journey, and freely receive all the unquantifiable blessings the world is searching for to no avail.

There is no substitute for prayer. You can’t choose to do something else in lieu of prayer and expect the presence of God as you would, had you taken the time to come before Him and pour your heart out to Him.

Those of the early church took Christ’s example to heart and did not dismiss prayer as something optional, antiquated, or tertiary to a well-rounded, healthy, and strong spiritual man. Even when it came to doing good at the expense of spending time in prayer, the apostles chose to appoint others to distribute food to the widows, so that they might be able to continually devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.

If ministry is keeping you away from spending time in prayer, step back from ministry. No matter how noble a cause, no matter how indispensable the work you do might be, never allow it to take away from the time you spend in God’s presence.

But you don’t understand, brother. The ministry is growing, and there are only so many hours in the day. I understand more than most, just as those of the early church understood. However, they also understood that carving out time to devote to prayer consistently was a non-negotiable, and something necessary for their spiritual well-being.

We’ve heard enough stories of ministerial burnout throughout the years to see the pattern for what it is. When you dig a little and start asking the probing, uncomfortable, but necessary questions, the root cause of the disillusionment, burnout, and exhaustion is always the same. They got so busy doing the work, growing the church, the ministry, or the outreach, that they neglected their prayer lives, spending time with God, and being alone with Him. Even when they started feeling the drag, or the exhaustion, even when they began to notice that every day there was less joy in the work itself, they powered through, because people were counting on them, and they couldn’t let them down.

Because they neglected prayer in favor of the work of ministry, their strength leeched away incrementally, but consistently, until they found themselves hitting a wall, and didn’t have the energy to get back up.    

It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and a life of consistent prayer will build up your endurance, refill your vessel, top off your strength, and solidify your purpose so that you may continue walking in the calling to which you were called, whatever that might be.

When we fail to spend time in God’s presence, when we fail to pray consistently, we are essentially decoupling from the power source, and whatever reserves we might have had are quickly depleted.

Ministry, in whatever capacity, does not and cannot replace a life of prayer. Whether you preach, teach, sing in the choir, or sweep the church after service, none of these are substitutes for spending time in God’s presence. It’s not selfish to prioritize your prayer life; it’s wisdom. Jesus did it, and you should too.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Posted on 30 May 2025 | 11:45 am