Time of Prayer

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

TIME OF PRAYER

Acts 3:1-5

3:1 One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer — at three in the afternoon. 2 Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. 3 When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. 4 Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" 5 So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.

NIV

This is the beginning of a story we all are familiar with, but we should stop for a moment before we get to the silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give to thee part we should stop for a moment and notice something here. We are not sure if this one day was like every other day, or this was just one day, but in either case, Peter and John were going for prayer in the temple. This certainly says something about the need to participate in what we might call corporate prayer, or congregational prayer. It would be doubtful that Peter and John would go to the temple for a time of personal prayer, as that is something they would have done in their private prayer closet, so to speak. Yet there is something to be said about praying together, but then we are not sure what kind of prayer they would have been engaged in the temple. Being a Jewish temple, it might seem natural that prayer was conducted in the manner accustom to the old Jewish ways, but Peter and John were new believers, not yet called Christians, but they were, in fact, different than others who had not yet accepted Christ. Yet the point here is prayer. They were going someplace to pray which was their custom. We should also go someplace to pray, either in our private prayer closet, wherever that might be, or to the church to pray along side our fellow believers. Prayer is being in communication with God, spending time in worship of him, giving him praise and thanks for all he has done for us, in us and through us, but more importantly it should be about listening for his voice. What he has to say, is far more important than what we have to say. If we spend all our time in prayer talking we have gained nothing from our time. God has promised if we ask, he hears us and he will answer us, so we should be careful to spent time listening. Of course there is importance of praying together as Peter and John must have intended to do in the temple that day, but those corporate prayer times might not be the best for confession of sin, or maybe that is the best time for that kind of pray. Maybe we should be confessing our sin to one another that we might be healed. It seems that we might have gone astray from that kind of prayer and we simply skip right to the asking for things part, or thanking for the things part. We simply do not know what kind of prayer Peter and John were going to the temple for, but we know for sure they knew the importance of prayer, as they were making a point to go to pray. We should make prayer a point of our life as well, making sure we spend time, either alone time, or time together in communication with God. There is such a diverse amount of teaching on prayer for us today, we could spend mouths reading all the books, and studies on prayer, with all sorts of acronyms as a guide to use. But the point is we should pray. We should be going to pray at the time of prayer.