Making Prayer a Priority

Dr. Wesley Duewel, former missionary to India and past president of OMS, said he could not remember a family prayer time in the last thirty years of his mother's life but that she would pray for China and for India. He said, "And I cannot remember one time when she prayed for China without weeping."

"During the past twelve or thirteen years, the world's greatest harvest in missions has occurred inside mainland China. There were approximately 900,000 Protestants in China before Mao, but since Mao's death, Christianity has flourished. The most conservative estimates today say that there are between 50 million and 60 million believers in China. As I've heard about this, I've often thought of mother's tears for China. She who wept with tears, day after day, now has the joy of seeing the harvest."

Sometimes women say they live to shop or someone says, "He lives to eat." But if we're like Jesus, we live for a different purpose. Jesus "always lives to intercede" (Hebrews 7:25). Intercession is His reason for being. It is not that He did nothing else, but it was His main purpose.
Some day we will realize that each moment we've invested in prayer is paying eternal dividends.

Jesus, please help me to remember that prayer is my main work today.

 "Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them" (Hebrews 7:25).