Making Time for Prayer When Life is Busy

Often I receive this question from other believers with full lives who are desperate for time with God but seemingly little time to seek him, and this struggle for many believers has developed feelings of guilt, overwhelm, and condemnation, which further hinders our spiritual growth. We know that we need to spend time with God in prayer, but we also have real life responsibilities for which we are accountable because kids get sick, spouses work nights, deadlines are due, bills

need to be paid, people need to be fed. All kinds of things that were responsible for addressing on a daily basis that fills up our schedules. And if this sounds familiar. You may have caught yourself saying or thinking any of the following. I feel so bad today because I miss my devotional time with God. Every time I make time to pray, I find myself falling asleep because I'm so tired. God is probably mad at me. I don't think I'm spending enough time with him. I'm so

anxious with everything that's going on in my life. I'm having a difficult time enjoying my time with God. If this is you, I want to let you know that I completely understand. When I became a mom of two, time became a luxury and I felt the pressure of trying to keep up with all the things and still spend time with God when I needed him the most.

I get it, and since then, I've learned so much about approaching busy seasons in our lives graciously, with wisdom to still find time for God in a way that doesn't leave us feeling overwhelmed. You know, Jesus says in John chapter fourteen, verse twenty seven. Peace, I leave with you my peace. I give you not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Peace. I leave with you my peace. I give you not as the world gives.

Do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. I want to start with this truth. The stress, pressure and overwhelm we feel in seasons of busyness of our lives does not come from God. Jesus gives us peace no matter how busy life may get. With that in mind, I want to offer you some practical ways that we can still make time for God, especially when our life life is busy. First, I want you to know that God understands your situation. I want

to start by setting you free today. I think a lot of people ask me about my time with God and how I studied the Bible. That's probably one of the most popular questions that I receive, because I do that for my ministry, beloved women. I do write a lot of Bible studies and I do have to be in my word a lot. But when it comes to my personal time with the Lord, I honestly have not

always had a specific structure that's worked every time. And guess what, God understands that, and he's not mad about it. As a young mom, there were days where I just didn't have any kind of scheduled prayer time because both the kids got sick this week and then I got sick and had deadlines and other responsibilities. And still God was with me, and he empowered me to do it, and he understands. We can't compartmentalize our relationship with God and feel like the only time that He's pleased with

us is when we're praying. God is pleased with you when you were doing what he called you to do. And sometimes that calling looks like changing diapers and cleaning up throw up, and getting the car serviced or the oil change, or listening to your spouse bent about the issues that they had on their job, or calling a friend and checking up on them. It doesn't always look like praying for three hours every single morning. Now that's

great if you do that, there's no judgment here. But what I'm saying, if you don't do that, that's okay too. When it comes to my prayer time with God, it's changed over the years, So sometimes maybe it will look like that three hours in the closet, and sometimes it'll look like praying on your way to work. You know, when I was in college. I did have a structure, I did have a schedule, and I was really good

at keeping up with it. But that's only because I made my schedule to where I didn't have classes until lunchtime. But then as a young mom, my prayer time with scattered in somewhat here and there. It never looked the same. And now my prayer time is actually moving to look a little bit more structured because I've grown wiser and life has become less demanding of my time in that way. And through all of those changes in seasons, God understood

and he met me wherever I was. So that's what I want you to understand first when it comes to making time for God in your busy schedule. First, know that God understands, which leads me to my next point. You need to discover what works for you. Take time to assess the season you are in and figure out what your prayer time with God is going to look like. It's not necessarily always going to be a whole hour long prayer every morning. Maybe it's listening to some worship music.

Maybe it's journaling. Maybe it's reading a scripture to base your prayer time on. Maybe it's reading a scripture and writing your prayers about it. There are so many ways we can connect with God in prayer and hear from him. I don't want you to feel like you have to be pigeonholed. It's just one particular way in what that looks like for you. You know, sometimes my prayer is a structured prayer in the morning, and when I say structured, I mean I was intentional about setting aside that time

specifically for prayer. But then other times my prayer might be impromptu. I may be walking in my bedroom carrying a load of laundry and since the Holy Spirit to sit down and pray right then and there. Or maybe I'm at the kitchen sink while washing dishes. Although I don't always keep a perfect prayer schedule, God is faithful to meet me where I am, and he will do the same for you. He is so gracious and he knows where you are right now in this season of

your life. So it's important that in all the busyness of our lives, that we keep our hearts open as to how God is speaking to us through it all, whether it's on our morning commute, on our morning run, or at night when the kids have finally fallen asleep. So just be sure you're open to being led by the Holy Spirit to what way that God is speaking to you. I mean, y'all, the Lord has spoken to me while washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and taking

a walk. I think we have to realize we can open our lives up so that God can enter every single area and speak to us wherever we are, whether we're in the playroom or the boardroom. God is here to meet you where you are. That's what I love about Jesus. He came to us. It's not about our trying to work up and strive to meet God's standard with this perfect prayer life. He's already come to us. Jesus met the standard for us. We don't have to

worry about if we're doing enough for God. If we're praying enough to God, God has already decided that you are worthy and that He loves you. When we rid ourselves of guilt and stop questioning if God is mad at us or if we're spending enough time with him, we make space to see the truth about God and how much He loves us, no matter how full our

lives are. And when we get to this point of seeing God in this way, making time for a prayer won't be a problem because we will be so motivated and inspired to want to pray and come to Him in the first place, to want to take our request to the God of the universe who loves us so much. When our prayer time becomes less about checking one more thing off of our to do list and more about connecting with the God who loves us, the more we

will pray no matter how busy we are. With that in mind, my last tip when it comes to making time for prayer when life is busy is to make it happen. Now. I know you may be thinking, what do you mean, make it happen? If it were that easy, I wouldn't be listening to this podcast, and I get it, but please hear me out. Your prayer time may not always look the same, and that's okay and God understands,

but we also do still need to pray. Prayer being a priority for you doesn't mean it has to look like someone else or that it needs to follow some elaborate prescription. But you do need to pray whatever that looks like for you, and however that fits into your schedule. Now, I hope that at this point you feel free enough to do that. What I mean is you feel free enough to receive the grace to not look at your prayer time with God as an obligation. Because here's the thing.

You don't have to pray, and God will still love you. The Bible is clear about his unconditional love for us. Two Timothy, Chapter two, verse thirteen tells us that even when we are faithless, God is still going to be faithful. He's still going to faithfully love you. He's still going to take care of you. He's going to fulfill his promise to you, regardless if you make time to pray or not. But you want to pray because prayer is not about impressing God. It's about you receiving the strength

you need from Him when life is busy. God is not going to be less powerful if we don't spend time praying to him today. We will be less powerful if we do not spend time praying to Him today. Sometimes this means when you would rather watch Netflix after putting the kids to bed, you take fifteen minutes to pray instead and really hear from the Lord. Maybe you wake up twenty minutes earlier, or you pick a day out of the week on your lunch break to take

a walk and pray. Trust me, the sacrifice of time and energy to pray will always be worth the reward. Just go back to episode one to learn about all the benefits of prayer if you need a reminder as to why we can spend so much time pouring our lives out to everyone us around us, and we need to make sure we make time for God to pour back into us through prayer so we can wake up

the next day and do it all over again. It's good to rest and work and be with friends and do stuff you want to do, but there is nothing that's going to fill you up like God can. So I want us to look at our prayer time with God as completely and utterly valuable and necessary. If I spend time with God or not, is the difference between if I'm going to be an angry mama all day or if I'm going to be a peaceful, calm mommy

today to be kind to my coworkers or not. If I'm going to let stress get the best of me or choose faith. If I can manage this full life with grace and peace or frustration and worry when life is busy, prayer makes all the difference. I want you to be free and know that you don't have to feel condemned and guilty in this area. But spending time

with God and prayer is a gift to us. It is a precious gift, and I hope that these tips encourage you to receive God's grace so that you can get creative and that you're motivated to pray no matter

how busy life gets. Listen, we have so much more to talk about when it comes to prayer, so I hope that if you were encouraged by today's episode, you will share it with a friend and subscribe so that you don't miss any future episodes of the Teach Us to Pray Podcasts, where will continue to learn how, just like breathing, prayer can become a natural, consistent, and life

giving part of our everyday lives. Un till then, be sure to connect with me Christina Patterson at Beloved Women dot org and check out the show notes in today's episode to download my free five day prayer guide to help you put into practice the powerful habit of prayer. Thank you so much for taking time to listen today, God bless you, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.

McGarvey for their production and editing on this episode. You can find more podcasts like this over a life audio dot com.