Teach Us to Pray - Making Time for Prayer When Life is Busy

0:00Teach us to praise brought to you by Life Audio and is a part of our Faith Toolkit series. For more inspirational faith affirming podcasts, visit LifeAudio.com. Hello, friend. You are listening to the Teach us to pray podcast with me, Christina Patterson, where we teach believers practical and real life tips on how to grow your faith and relationship with God through the power of prayer. You know, as a busy mom and ministry leader, I often receive the question, how do you make time for God? Often I receive this question from other believers with full lives who are desperate for time with God, but seemingly little time to seek Him. And this struggle for many believers has developed feelings of guilt, overwhelm, and condemnation, which further hinders our spiritual growth. We know that we need to spend time with God in prayer, but we also have real life responsibilities for which we are accountable.

1:00Because kids get sick, spouses work nights, deadlines are due, bills need to be paid, people need to be fed, all kinds of things that we're responsible for addressing on a daily basis that fills up our schedules. And if this sounds familiar, you may have caught yourself saying or thinking any of the following, I feel so bad today because I miss my devotional time with God. Every time I make time to pray, I find myself falling asleep because I'm so tired. God has probably mad at me, I don't think I'm spending enough time with Him. I'm so anxious with everything that's going on in my life, I'm having a difficult time enjoying my time with God. If this is you, I want to let you know that I completely understand. When I became a mom of two, time became a luxury, and I felt the pressure of trying to keep up with all the things and still spend time with God when I needed Him the most. So I get it, and since then I've learned so much about approaching

2:03busy seasons in our lives graciously with wisdom to still find time for God in a way that doesn't leave us feeling overwhelmed. You know, Jesus says in John chapter 14 verse 27, peace I leave with you, my peace I give you, not as the world gives do I give to you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you, not as the world gives do I give to you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. I want to start with this truth. The stress, pressure, and overwhelm we feel in seasons of busyness of our lives does not come from God. Jesus gives us peace no matter how busy life may get. With that in mind I want to offer you some practical ways that we can still make time for God, especially when our life is busy. Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark.

3:11This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning plus reading plans, devotions, and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead, the Daily Bible app reads verses, reading plans, and chapters allowed handy for the headphones moment of your day. Choose from versions like ESV, NIV, KJV, and more, and bookmark favorites to revisit later. Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. Feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. First, I want you to know that God understands your situation. I want to start by setting you free today. I think a lot of people ask me about my time with God and how I studied the Bible. That's probably one of the most popular questions that I received because I do that for my ministry beloved women. I do write a lot of Bible studies and I do have to be in my word a lot. But when it comes to my personal time with the Lord, I honestly have not always had a specific

4:13structure that's worked every time. And guess what? God understands that and he's not mad about it. As a young mom, there were days where I just didn't have any kind of scheduled prayer time because both the kids got sick this week and then I got sick and had deadlines and other responsibilities. And still, God was with me and he empowered me to do it and he understands. We can't compartmentalize our relationship with God and feel like the only time that he's pleased with us is when we're praying. God is pleased with you when you are doing what he called you to do. And sometimes that calling looks like changing diapers and cleaning up, throw up and getting the car service or the old change or listening to your spouse vent about the issues that they had on their job or calling a friend and checking up on them. It doesn't always look like praying for three hours every single morning. Now that's great. If you do that, there's no judgment here. But what I'm saying, if you don't do that, that's okay too.

5:13When it comes to my prayer time with God, it's changed over the years. So sometimes maybe it will look like that three hours in the closet and sometimes it'll look like praying on your way to work. You know, when I was in college, I did have a structure. I did have a schedule and I was really good at keeping up with it. But that's only because I made my schedule to where I didn't have classes until lunchtime. But then as a young mom, my prayer time was scattered and somewhat here and there. It never looked the same. And now my prayer time is actually moving to look a little bit more structured because I've grown wiser and life has become less demanding of my time in that way. And through all of those changes and seasons, God understood and He met me wherever I was. So that's what I want you to understand first when it comes to making time for God in your busy schedule. First, know that God understands which leads me to my next point. You need to discover what works for you. Take time to assess the season you are in and figure out what your prayer time

6:20with God is going to look like. It's not necessarily always going to be a whole hour long prayer every morning. Maybe it's listening to some worship music. Maybe it's journaling. Maybe it's reading a scripture to base your prayer time on. Maybe it's reading a scripture and writing your prayers about it. There are so many ways we can connect with God in prayer and hear from Him. I don't want you to feel like you have to be pigeonholed and she's just one particular way in what that looks like for you. You know, sometimes my prayer is a structured prayer in the morning. And when I say structured, I mean, I was intentional about setting aside that time specifically for prayer. But then other times, my prayer might be impromptu. I may be walking in my bedroom carrying a load of laundry and since the Holy Spirit to sit down and pray right then in there. Or maybe I'm at the kitchen sink while washing dishes. Although I don't always keep a perfect prayer schedule, God is faithful to meet me where I am and He will do the same for you. He is so gracious and He knows where you are right now in this season of your life. So it's important that in all the

7:22busyness of our lives that we keep our hearts open as to how God is speaking to us through it all. Whether it's on our morning commute, on our morning run or at night when the kids have finally fallen asleep. So just be sure you're open to being led by the Holy Spirit to whatever way that God is speaking to you. I mean, y'all, the Lord has spoken to me while washing the dishes, doing the laundry and taking a walk. I think we have to realize we can open our lives up so that God can enter every single area and speak to us wherever we are, whether we're in the playroom or the boardroom. God is here to meet you where you are. That's what I love about Jesus. He came to us. It's not about our trying to work up and strive to meet God's standard with this perfect prayer life. He's already come to us. Jesus met the standard for us. We don't have to worry about if we're doing enough for God. If we're praying enough to God, God has already decided that you are worthy and that He loves you. When we read ourselves of guilt and stop questioning if God has

8:24mattered us or if we're spinning enough time with Him, we make space to see the truth about God and how much He loves us no matter how full our lives are. And when we get to this point of seeing God in this way, making time for prayer won't be a problem because we will be so motivated and inspired to want to pray and come to Him in the first place, to want to take our request to the God of the universe who loves us so much. When our prayer time becomes less about checking one more thing off of our to-do list and more about connecting with the God who loves us, the more we will pray no matter how busy we are. With that in mind, my last tip when it comes to making time for prayer when life is busy is to make it happen. Now, I know you may be thinking, what do you mean make it happen? If it were that easy, I wouldn't be listening to this podcast and I get it, but please hear me out. Your prayer time may not always look the same and that's okay and God understands, but we also do still need to pray. Prayer being a priority for you doesn't mean it has to look like

9:25someone else or that it needs to follow some elaborate prescription, but you do need to pray whatever that looks like for you and however that fits into your schedule. Now, I hope that at this point, you feel free enough to do that. What I mean is you feel free enough to receive the grace to not look at your prayer time with God as an obligation because here's the thing, you don't have to pray and God will still love you. The Bible is clear about his unconditional love for us. Second Timothy chapter 2 verse 13 tells us that even when we are faithless, God is still going to be faithful. He's still going to faithfully love you. He's still going to take care of you. He's going to fulfill his promise to you regardless if you make time to pray or not, but you want to pray. Because prayer is not about impressing God. It's about you receiving the strength you need from him when life is busy. God is not going to be less powerful if we don't spend time praying to him today.

10:27We will be less powerful if we do not spend time praying to him today. Sometimes this means when you would rather watch Netflix after putting the kids to bed, you take 15 minutes to pray instead and really hear from the Lord. Maybe you wake up 20 minutes earlier or you pick a day out of the week on your lunch break to take a walk and pray. Trust me, the sacrifice of time and energy to pray will always be worth the reward. Just go back to episode one to learn about all the benefits of prayer if you need a reminder as to why. We can spend so much time pouring our lives out to everyone us around us and we need to make sure we make time for God to pour back into us through prayer so we can wake up the next day and do it all over again. It's good to rest and work and be with friends and do stuff you want to do. But there is nothing that's going to fill you up like God can. So I want us to look at our prayer time with God as completely and utterly valuable and necessary. If I spend time with God or not is the difference between if I'm

11:32going to be an angry mama all day or if I'm going to be a peaceful calm mommy today. If I'm going to be kind to my coworkers or not. If I'm going to let stress get the best of me or choose faith. If I can manage this full life with grace and peace or frustration and worry when life is busy prayer makes all the difference. I want you to be free and know that you don't have to feel condemned and guilty in this area. But spending time with God in prayer is a gift to us. It is a precious gift and I hope that these tips encourage you to receive God's grace so that you can get creative and that you're motivated to pray no matter how busy life gets. Listen, we have so much more to talk about when it comes to prayer. So I hope that if you were encouraged by today's episode you will share it with a friend and subscribe so that you don't miss any future episodes of the Teach us to Pray Podcast where we'll continue to learn how just like breathing prayer can

12:33become a natural, consistent and life-giving part of our everyday lives. Until then be sure to connect with me Christina Patterson at belovedwoman.org and check out the show notes in today's episode to download my free five day prayer guide to help you put into practice the powerful habit of prayer. Thank you so much for taking time to listen today. God bless you and I'll talk to you in the next episode. Teach us to Pray is a production of Life Audio and the Salem Web Network. If you enjoyed this episode would you take a minute and leave us a review in your podcast app? It really does help more people like you find the podcast. To hear more from Christina Patterson be sure to check out her fantastic site, belovedwomen.org. A special thanks to Kelly Gibbons, Steven Sanders, Steven McGarby for their production and editing on this episode. You can find more podcasts like this

13:37over at LifeAudio.com. Share how grace, commitment and cooperation can help couples live the everyday moments of marriage together. To listen go to LifeAudio.com and search for Team S.