Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of their essence.

Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of their essence. The ability to wait, stay and press belongs essentially to our communication with God. Short devotions are the enemy of deep devotion. Calmness, grasp, strength, are never the companions of hurry.

Short devotions deplete spiritual vigor, arrest spiritual progress, sap spiritual foundations, and blight the root and bloom of spiritual life. They are source of backsliding, the sure indication of shallow Christianity; they deceive, ruin, rot the seed, and impoverish the soul.

Hurried devotions make weak faith, feeble convictions, and questionable living. To be little with God is to be little for God. To cut short the praying makes the whole religious character short, miserly and slovenly.

It takes good time for the full flow of God into the spirit. Short devotions cut the pipe of God s full flow. It takes time in the secret places to get full revelation from God. Little time and hurry mar the picture.

A Christ like spirit in its sweet and passionless fragrance would not be so alien and hopeless a heritage if our closet stay were lengthened and intensified. We live shabbily because we pray poorly. Plenty of time to feast in our closets will bring marrow and fatness to our lives.

Our ability to stay with God in our closet measures our ability to stay with God out of the closet. Hasty closet visits are deceptive. We are not only deluded by them, but we are losers by them in many ways and in many rich legacies.

We must learn anew the worth of prayer, and enter anew the school of prayer. There is nothing which takes more time to learn. And if we would learn the wondrous art, we must not give a fragment here and there — "A little talk with Jesus" as the tiny Christians sing — but we must demand and hold with iron grasp the best hours of the day for God, or there will be no praying worth the name.

E.M. Bounds