Let me quote again the words of the brother who knew the Lord in a deep way.

When the children of Israel planned to leave Egypt, Pharaoh’s reaction was to add more burden to their labor. Pharaoh’s goal was to make them pay more attention, even all their attention, to their work so that they would not have time to think about leaving Egypt. After you have decided or made plans to have a richer prayer life, Satan will begin a new strategy; he will make you more busy and will pile up work and need upon you so that you will have no time or opportunity to pray. Dear brothers, we must deal with this problem in a definite way. Of course, in fighting for a time of prayer, there may be some dispute concerning our responsibility, duty, and obligations. Some may think that by devoting ourselves to prayer we may neglect our obligations, give up our duty, and damage or hurt our responsibility. However, when we are faced with such situations, we should bring all these problems, that is, our obligations, duty, and responsibility, to the Lord and pray. (However, it is not easy to apply this kind of prayer to every believer. Moreover, this kind of word can often cause misunderstanding because some people are very happy to relinquish their responsibility; they will not seriously take care of their own responsibilities. They will most gladly and easily shuffle their family responsibilities to others in order to have time to pray themselves. May the Lord protect our words so that they will not cause such misunderstanding.) We have to understand that the enemy is trying to use responsibility, obligations, and other matters that touch the conscience, to create the best reason to stop us from praying. If we find that our prayer life has been completely annulled or has fallen into such a confined place that we become completely helpless in living a spiritual and transcendent, overcoming life, under these circumstances, we should pray to the Lord, “Lord, while I pray, I will commit my responsibilities to You. Do not allow anything to frustrate me or damage my time of prayer. Please guard this hour of prayer for me because it is during such time that Your glory is my consideration, and do not allow Satan to intrude into this hour.” We can also apply the principle of tithing to the matter of prayer. After we have offered to God the portion and position that He deserves and have tithed to God, we will discover that we can more effectively use the other nine-tenths of our time, more so than when we were trying to use all our time for ourselves before tithing it to the Lord. The principle of tithing is very effective. However, we should be aware of the warfare in prayer. We have to stand strongly, powerfully, and firmly upon our position in Christ and should pray according to the victory of the cross. We have to fight for prayer by applying the complete victory the Lord has gained on the cross, and we have to drive out any ground the enemy may have in prayer so that we can garrison our position in prayer. This is like Shammah, one of the mighty men of David, who stood in the midst of the ground full of lentils, defended it, and slew the Philistines, and the Lord wrought a great victory (2 Sam. 23:11-12). This ground of lentils signifies our position in prayer; it must be guarded through the victory of Golgotha against the intrusion of the enemy. The kind of warfare that results in prayer is a warfare for prayer. I am afraid that many times we have accepted the environment and considered it impossible to pray at certain times. Because things are happening and developing in a certain way, we think that we cannot pray at that time. Indeed, if we give ground to the devil, things will always come to restrict us from praying. This is the strategy of the devil. We must remove all the hindrances in the battleground of prayer by the Lord’s name and according to the victory of His cross. The cross can effectively gain for us the time to pray just as it is effective in other areas, as long as we know how to apply the power of His victory.

The above words can be a great reminder and warning to us. Brothers and sisters, we must fight for the time to pray, and we must secure a time to pray. If we wait until we have time to pray, we will never have the opportunity to pray. We must set aside a time to pray. Andrew Murray said, “Those who do not have a set time to pray do not pray.” Hence, we must be watchful and secure the time to pray. We must also guard this time with prayer so that the devil will not usurp it by his deception.
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