“Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.

             -Psalm 55:17

One of the most important decisions you can make as a Christian is to develop a personal and intimate relationship with God by spending time in prayer and Bible study each day. This should go far beyond praying over your meals or sitting quietly while your mom or dad reads from the Bible before bedtime, but actually involve you making a serious and voluntary effort to draw closer to the Lord (James 4:8).

“Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.”

           -Daniel 6:10

According to the experts, approximately 10% of what we hear sticks with us. With this in mind, I discovered that even if you attended church every Sunday of your life for 78 years (the average lifespan), you would still only absorb about 17 days worth of preaching. By contrast, the average person will spend at least 64,000 hours, or 7.4 years, watching television after their 15th birthday! My point is simple: listening to what your pastor has to say about God once a week just isn’t enough. We must pursue a personal walk with God that holds a higher priority in our lives than the newest reality show or our favorite sitcom.

“And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?”

             -Mark 26:40

Years ago I heard a pastor challenge his congregation to spend just one hour in prayer each day and see what a difference it would make in their lives. Today, I’m challenging you to do the same. Though you might have to give up something that’s  important to you in order to meet this challenge, keep in mind that nothing is so important as your relationship with Christ. If we don’t hesitate to give something as insignificant as the television almost three times as much of our day regularly, then it shouldn’t be all that difficult to give God 4% of our time.

NOTE: Click here to see the formula I used for calculating my statistics.