I once heard prayer described as “sitting down on the inside.” How desperately we need to sit down on the inside in today’s helter-skelter world. We live in a fast-paced world of continual motion. There’s no lane left but the fast one, and all who try slowing down in it get run over by it. If you’re not wired, wireless, Facebooked, YouTubed and Twittering, you’re left behind in a cloud of dust by today’s high-tech world.

It seems like everyone goes around today plugged into global communications, tuned in to twenty-four hour cable news, holding a cell phone, iPod, or BlackBerry in their hand, and with an iPad on their lap and a BlueTooth in their ear. With all of this continual clatter and incessant information over everything from international affairs to the most infinitesimal details of our lives, how is God suppose to get a word in edgewise? And how are we to steal away a second of silence for prayer and meditation in the midst of today’s round the clock clamor?

Just as static on a telephone line can prevent us from communicating with others over the telephone, static on the prayer line can keep us from communicating with God in prayer. Therefore, all static must be spiritually tuned out if we are to hear God clearly in our prayer closets. We simply can’t tune in to God with a bunch of background noise buzzing in our ears. The devil knows this, and this is why he always tries to mess up our spiritual reception with worldly interference. 

Too many Christians today are plagued with spiritual “Tinnitus”—a continual ringing in their ear. This nonstop roar of today’s pell-mell world prevents them from communing with God in prayer. Being bedeviled by today’s high tech world, they’re distracted from God morning, noon, and night. As a result, they have little spiritual reception and are hardly ever tuned in to a heavenly frequency. Prayer is definitely a struggle for them, due to all the beeping and bleeping in their ear. 

“To tune in to God, we must tune out the blaring sounds of our busy lives. Only then will we be able to clearly hear the Spirit whispering divine truths to our hearts. And it is when we, like Elijah, hear the Spirit’s still, small voice, that we’ll finally cover our faces and come to know that He is God (1 Kings 19:11-13 ).”