Prayer – pure logic,

We just finished our 5 to 6 week. This is the week of each month when we pray from 5 to 6 a.m. It has become a way of life, and I must admit I have grown fond of it. I wrote on Wednesday night that the next morning might be a real challenge because at 5 a.m. I would be on the plane. I was sitting quietly in the VIP lounge at Addis Ababa airport, drinking the tea the flight attendants had kindly served me, and I was due to catch my flight at 1:45 a.m., which was almost midnight. I was writing and reflecting on what an adventure it has been since we began this week of early morning prayer, but this was definitely the first time I had spent this time praying on a plane.

Prayer, I must say, is an activity that I love, I learned from the beginning of my Christian life. The church I belonged to when I was converted had prayer meetings every day, and we could go any day of the week, which we often did. It was only after I moved to Europe that I discovered Christians who did not see the need for it and were not willing to devote time to prayer; and churches where prayer meetings were devoted to preaching and a few summary prayers without conviction or passion. Whereas when we said we were meeting to pray, it was to pray frankly.

When it comes to prayer, my logic is very simple. To pray is Communicate with God. If God is as wonderful as He is said to be, we should love and want to communicate with Him. If not, there is something wrong, and it needs to be addressed. I took this issue to God a few years ago when I realized I was losing my initial passion for prayer. I told Him I wanted to love praying, because if He were truly great and good, it was abnormal that I didn't want to spend time with Him. I began to pray this, 'Lord, teach me to pray,' 'Lord, help me to pray according to your heart.'

I decided to pray for at least an hour a day. I set my alarm to go off after an hour, so until the alarm went off, I couldn't stop. At first, ten minutes seemed as long as it had been an hour; but gradually, time began to run out, and I began to pray longer, until I was praying for several hours a day. I even experimented to see how long I could last. I went deeper and deeper into the Spirit and began to experience God's presence in a real and palpable way. And each time, it was more and more immediate. God's presence had become real and desirable, and even better, within my reach.

Learning to break through in prayer is worth the effort, it is a re-education of oneself, it is developing new appetites. Teaching people to pray, or should I say training people in prayer, is also more than gratifying. How can I describe the extraordinary joy one can feel when seeing people who previously could barely pray 20 minutes begin to pray for hours without tiring. Anyone who has learned to pray will never be defeated in life because they will always have a solution even in the depths of darkness; God will speak to them, He will teach them, He will lead them and He will bring them freedom. In our ministry, those who will become leaders must first be men and women of prayer.

Prayerlessness is symptomatic of a declining spiritual life. Furthermore, isn't it an affront to God to seek to serve Him without truly communicating with Him or receiving instructions from Him? Prayerlessness reveals pride, a refusal to acknowledge our absolute dependence on the Creator. Prayerlessness denotes selfishness, how many lives could be changed and needs met if we would only make ourselves available to pray for them. Prayerlessness denotes a certain idiocy because it means living our lives deprived of the beauty of communion that Christ gave His life to provide for us, it means missing out on the fragrance of God's presence that transforms an otherwise humdrum human existence, depriving ourselves of peace, rest, and that priceless relationship.

There will probably be times when you think you have no desire to pray, but this is a purely superficial feeling for someone who is used to praying. What to do? Ignore it and just get on with it. Indeed, as soon as you get going, the fatigue disappears, you become aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit and you are literally carried by Him. You begin to see, to hear, to taste, to experience things in God, you are galvanized, taught, supported. You speak and God speaks, He acts through and in you, you cooperate with Him in the accomplishment of His will on earth. It is most intoxicating!

Let us pray!