Matthew 6:9-11 “In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. (10) Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (11) Give us this day our daily bread.”
We have seen in an earlier section that as part of our priestly ministry that all saints on the earth today are called to pray. So the question then arises as to how often we should pray? Again we saw in an earlier section that the priests under the old covenant were called to offer daily sacrifices to the Lord. And so if the priests under the old covenant were called to offer daily sacrifices to the Lord, then there is no reason to believe that the priests under the new covenant would be called upon to offer any less. Our Lord Jesus also gave us some indication regarding this issue, for He in fact taught us to pray daily. In the above quoted passage of scripture when Jesus specifically taught on the subject of prayer, He stated that we should ask our Heavenly Father to give us our daily bread. In asking the Father to give us our daily bread, Jesus said that we should ask that the Father gives us “this day” our daily bread, thus clearly implying that we should be praying every day.
Matthew 26:40-41 “Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? (41) Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Most Christians would not disagree that we should at least pray daily before the Lord, although sadly there are many Christians that neglect to pray even daily. The next question that then arises is if we are called to pray daily, is there a specific amount of time per day that we should spend before the Lord in prayer? Again in the passage of scripture quoted above the Lord Jesus has given us some indication as to how much time He thinks that we should spend before the Father in prayer. The context of this account is that the Lord Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before He was to be crucified, and He specifically asked Peter, James and John to watch and pray with Him. Our Lord then went off a little distance on His own to pray before the Father. At some point Jesus returned to where He had left Peter, James and John and He found them sleeping. When our Lord woke them up He made the statement, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” By His question when He woke them, our Lord showed His displeasure at their not being able to spend even one hour in prayer. Clearly our Lord does not deem one hour of prayer as being excessive.
Acts 3:1 “Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.”
After the Lord’s resurrection when Peter and the rest of the apostles had been born-again, they showed that they had learnt from the Lord that at least one hour of prayer per day was part of the Christian walk, for the above quoted passage of scripture reveals to us that Peter and John went to the temple at the hour of prayer. In other words that hour of prayer had become a part of their daily routine. And so from these passages of scripture we can see that an hour of prayer per day is not viewed as being excessive. Nevertheless it must be noted that this section is written purely to give the saint some scriptural guidelines on the subject, and not to be legalistic. Each saint must be led by the Lord for themselves in this area.
Michael E.B. Maher
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