Prayer and the New School Year

I'm sure every student out there is super excited to start the new school year. It is fast approaching here in Gainesville, and the start of every new school year brings about one of my major challenges... My schedule! The hardest part of every semester is trying to balance my life between God, school/work, and exercise/fun. So far in my schooling I have gotten only two at a time and sometimes only one for a period of time.

The purpose of this post is to emphasize why we need a schedule of prayer and some practical ways to go about creating a faithful and effective schedule.

One of the best ways to ensure your prayer life doesn't get destroyed with the change the new school year will inevitably bring is to have a schedule of prayer. What do I mean by a "schedule" of prayer? A schedule is where you set aside time every day for prayer. However, here is the hard part. The time you set aside NEEDS to be the same time every day! The importance of this is to make sure you do not forget to pray and that nothing gets in the way of your prayer. I know that sometimes a day will go by where I am just so busy in things I am doing that I forget to pray and it is always because I neglected to set aside a certain period of time for prayer.

As to what time you want to set aside it is up to you. However, saints have always recommended the morning as the best time to pray. I would suggest, and still defer to the wisdom of the saints, praying half your daily prayer in the morning and another half at night. I always find that my best prayerful days come from both starting and ending my day with conversation with God. As long as your prayer is at the same time and for the same period of time, then you are doing it well. The importance of this is so that it becomes a habit and it becomes an essential part of your day to where missing it would throw off everything.


How long should you pray? This is an interesting question and I think it depends completely on your state in life and what responsibilities come with it. If you have a schedule that keeps you working from 8 AM to 7 PM, then you don't have time to pray like a monk would. The ultimate key though is that you do not forget to pray and ignore God all day.

 I know some of you might think, and I for a long time thought this too, that I go about my day "thinking" of God and being "in" His presence do I really need to set a specific time every day to pray? I think of God all day!

I used to think this way and while it is a greater thing to do then to not think of God at all all day. However, prayer is more than thinking of God, while prayer involves that it is much deeper than that. Prayer is a conversation with God where you enter into the life of the Trinity and converse with God face to face. In order to do this, especially the listening to God part, we MUST set aside time in silence to talk and enter into a divine conversation where you come to know Christ.

Some of you are probably still thinking, my prayer is not like that, and I have been trying for a while and am experiencing nothing. Prayer is not always fruitful. All the saints can attest to this. Any Christian can attest to this. However, God speaks to us in prayer and as God says "so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:11 ESV) His word comes to us whether we hear it or not, and every time we pray we are being conformed to live as Christ did and as God wants us to live.

PRAYER MAKES US INTO SAINTS!

Soon I will be starting a series on different prayer methods to help you deepen your prayer life. Stay Tuned!!!

P.S. If any of you guys have prayer requests for me either comment with them or email them to me at connor35uf@gmail.com 

AMDG