“As a shadow has no power because there is no substance in it, even so that supplication in which a man’s proper self is not thoroughly present in agonizing earnestness and vehement desire is utterly ineffectual, for it lacks that which would give it force. ‘Fervent prayer,’ says an old divine, ‘like a cannon planted at the gates of heaven, makes them fly open.’ The common fault with most of us is our readiness to yield to distractions. Our thoughts go roving here and there, and we make little progress toward our desired end. Like quicksilver our mind will not hold together but rolls off this way and that. How great an evil this is! It injures us, and what is worse, it insults our God. What should we think of a petitioner if, while having an audience with a prince, he should be playing with a feather or catching a fly?”

Spurgeon often catches me by the scruff of the neck and makes me take account. The paragraph above is no exception. I am often distracted during prayer. To begin to pray is to have my mind flooded with trivia, with what I have to do next, and next and next. Catching flies. Spurgeon goes on:

“Prayer must not be our intermittent work but our daily business, our habit and vocation. We must be immersed in prayer as in our element, and so pray without ceasing. Lord, teach us so to pray, that we may be more and more efficacious in supplication.”

Amen.