The puritan pastor, Thomas Brooks, has helped me see prayer with new perspectives, and fresh light. Now and then his encouragement and lessons hit like a hammer on the thumb. The lesson when we smack our thumb with the hammer is to get your thumb out of the way. Unless of course, if you like pain. Not me. I think I’m allergic to pain.
Excuses that I tell myself for not following through on spiritual exercises and/or obedience vaporize in the light of this thought: “The day that I see Jesus face-to-face will I be able to tell Him that I couldn’t find time for prayer?” Obviously not. Just because I can’t see Him physically now, makes Him no less in my presence. When I use an excuse for disobedience today, I am doing the same thing–telling it to Him face-to-face. That though it hurts, right?
“Jesus, I’d make time to sit at your feet and learn from you–in Your word, and in prayer, but I just can’t make the time. Maybe another day. I’ll work on it, I promise.” Are you kidding me? Not only do I love being in His presence in the proverbial closet, but also, would I brush my King, my Savior, my God off like that? What could possibly be more important than my King? No, I will say, “Lord, I am anxious to sit with you in the morning and learn from You; to open my heart to You; to be refreshed by Your Spirit. My soul is thirsty for You. Help me put all things in their place in my life and make You priority number one.”
Luke 10:41–42 (NKJV) — And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
If I dare say that I don’t have enough time in my day for private prayer, may I remember this response from Thomas Brooks.
No man dares plead this objection before the Lord Jesus in the great day of account, Eccles. 11:9; Rom. 14:10; 2 Cor. 5:10. And why then should any man be so childish and foolish, so ignorant and impudent to plead that before men, which is not pleadable before the judgment-seat of Christ. O sirs! as you love your souls, and as you would be happy for ever, never put off your own consciences nor others’ with any pleas, arguments, or objections now, that you dare not own and stand by, when you shall lie upon a dying bed, and when you shall appear before the whole court of heaven, &c. In the great day of account, when the secrets of all hearts shall be made manifest, and God shall call men to a reckoning before angels, men, and devils, for the neglect of private prayer, all guilty persons will be found speechless: there will not be a man or woman found, that shall dare to stand up and say, ‘Lord, I would have waited upon thee in my closet, but that I had so much business to do in the world, that I had no time to enjoy secret communion with thee in a corner.’ It is the greatest wisdom in the world, to plead nothing by way of excuse in this our day, that we dare not plead in the great day.
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Brooks, T. (1866). The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks. (A. B. Grosart, Ed.) (Vol. 2, pp. 203–204). Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert.
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