Overcoming Stress (6)

(6) Make prayer your daily habit. Prayer is the great stress reliever. Jesus began His day with prayer. He often stopped throughout the day to pray, and He ended each day with prayer. Now, if Jesus made time for prayer, as busy as He was, how much more do we need to do it! Time alone with God can be a decompression chamber for life’s stresses. We talk to God in prayer, tell Him what’s on our minds, and let Him talk to us as we read the Bible. Then we look at our schedule, evaluate our priorities, and wait for instructions. If we lived that way, the pharmaceutical industry would go broke because we wouldn’t need a fraction of the tranquilizers they market! Many of our problems come from our inability to sit still. We just don’t know how to be quiet. God says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). And one reason we don’t know God more personally is because we can’t be still. We’re too busy to be quiet and just think. Someone said, “It seems to be an ironic habit of man that when he loses his way he doubles his speed.” The story is told of a World War II Air Force pilot who flew over the Pacific. When he radioed the tower and the controller asked for his location, he replied, “I don’t know—but I’m making record time!” A lot of us are like that, speeding through life without knowing where we’re headed. We need to start our morning with prayer like Jesus did and stop throughout the day to pray again and recharge our spiritual batteries.