How important is time spent in prayer?

Jeff Pollard explains that it is absolutely vital for Christians to have a real, living communion with the living Christ. If we do not know the love of God for us in Christ and if our hearts are not captured by the love of God for us, it would be too easy to fall for the lies, the distractions, outright attacks, and subtle insidious attacks of the world and the devil. We must be men and women of prayer and feed our souls with God’s wonderful truth as we prepare ourselves to go out into the world. Our hearts and souls must live in a communion with Christ. There must be a recognition that a Christian will enter a battle every day and a desire to begin our day with prayer.

Every single day when a Christian arises from his sleep or her sleep. The world, the flesh, and the Devil are alive, real, and staring him or her in the face. It's one of the reasons it's absolutely vital for us to have a real, a living communion with the living Christ. If we do not know the love of God for us in Christ, if our hearts are not captured by the love of God for us in Christ, and if we do not love Christ back, it will be far more easy to fall for the lies, the distractions, the outright attacks, and the very subtle and insidious attacks of the world, the flesh, and the devil. If we are not men and women of prayer, we will be hindered in repentance.

When we are daily pouring our hearts out to our God, when we are reading his word, looking into the glorious mirror of his word and seeing what we are and when we're starting the day like that, It prepares us to take on what we know we are, what we know at least at some level what we're going to face. Earnest prayer as we read through the Word, as we apply the Word to our lives, as we feed our souls with God's wonderful truth. We are indeed fighting the battle and preparing ourselves to go out into the myriad. In fact, into the absolutely extraordinary maze of ways that the world, the flesh, and the devil can seduce us into sin. There is no good thing in our flesh as Paul makes so abundantly clear.

And therefore, if we know that from the Word of God, then we want to be calling upon Christ as we begin the day. He is our prophet to instruct us. He is our priest who is offered the once for all sacrifice for all of our sins. He is interceding for us at the Father's right hand. He is our King to guide and direct us and to protect us from our enemies.

Our hearts and souls must live in a communion with Christ. Because I couldn't name all of the ways that the world, the flesh, and the devil can draw us into sin. There are more than I can figure out, and there's certainly more than I can number. But I know this. We can take on whatever lies before us if we know our God, if we understand His grace to us, if we rely upon Jesus Christ our Lord with all of our hearts.

So every day, every day upon rising, there should be the recognition in the Christian's heart, I'll be in the battle again. And immediately upon the heels of that should come and I go out into this world in the name of Christ, in union with Christ, trusting Christ to grant me the grace to live for Him today.