Needing to practice what I preach, I followed up on my sermon last Sunday (Matthew 6:5-8) with an examination of my personal prayer time. “Do you pray more fervently in public than in private?” I’d asked in that sermon.

Well, the Spirit stirred me to spend an extended time in prayer yesterday, for over an hour. I prayed for my soul, my family, my fellow leaders at church, and the members and friends of the church, and beyond. I was able to pray aloud (in my private study), and thus more carefully weigh my words — and the fervency of my heart — as I gave voice to my petitions. The time passed all too quickly.

When was your last extended season of personal prayer? An brother from a previous generation raised these petitions to the Lord:

Grant us always to know that to walk with Jesus makes other interests a shadow and a dream. Keep us from intermittent attention to eternal things; Save us from the delusion of those who fail to go far in religion….

Amen. pdb