“Give ear to my words, O Lord;
consider my groaning.
Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God, for to you do I pray.
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies;
the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.”
-psalm 5:1-8 (ESV)
In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster wrote, “it is the discipline of prayer that brings us into deepest and highest work of the human spirit.” To pray is to change, it is how the Lord works in our deepest parts and calls us to transformation and greater intimacy with Him. True prayer is both speaking and listening to our God. To follow Jesus is to be in constant, ceaseless prayer as a means to deepen our relationship with Him. It is not, as Foster puts it, something that takes up our time, but something that occupies our time.
