One of the Greatest Perils

The late Jamie Buckingham wrote:

“Francis Frangipane once told me of the beginning of his little church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A spiritual idealist, he committed himself to spend every morning – all morning – in prayer. Then his church grew. People with problems began to show up. There weren’t enough hours in the day to minister to God and minister to people, too. He cut his prayer time to three hours a day. Then two. One day, he said, a young friend who had just spent the morning with God stopped by the house. He had a message from God. ‘What did God say?’ ‘God said, Tell Francis I miss him.’”¹

“Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.”
– Luke 6:12, New International Version

“I am profoundly convinced that one of the gravest perils which beset our ministry is a restless scattering of energies over an amazing multiplicity of interests, which leaves no margin of time or of strength for receptive and absorbing communion with God. We are tempted to be always ‘on the run,’ and to measure our fruitfulness by our pace and by the ground we cover in the course of a week!” (Charles Spurgeon).²