The Morning Hour: by Andrew Murray

Psalm 5:3
 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.
Isaiah 50:4
 The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.

Morning has always been considered the time best suited for personal worship by God’s servants.  Most Christians regard it as a duty and a privilege to devote some portion of the beginning of the day to seek fellowship with God.  Many Christians observe the morning watch, while others speak of it as the quiet hour, the still hour, or the quiet time.  All there whether they think of a whole hour or half an hour or a quarter of an hour, agree with the Psalmist when he says, “My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O Lord.”

In speaking of the extreme importance of this daily time of quiet for prayer and meditation on God’s word, a well-known Christian leader has said: “Next to receiving Christ as Savior and claiming the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we know of no act that bring greater good to ourselves or others than the determination to keep the morning watch, and spend the first half hour of the day alone with God.

At first glance this statement appears too strong.  The firm determination to keep the morning watch hardly appears sufficiently important to be compared to receiving Christ and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  However, it is true that it is impossible to live our daily Christian life, or maintain a walk in the leading and power of the Holy Spirit can be unceasingly and fully maintained.

The morning watch must not be regarded as an end in itself.  Although it gives us a blessed time for prayer and Bible study and brings us a certain measure of refreshment and help, that is not enough.  It is to serve to secure the presence of Christ for the Whole day.

Personal devotion to a friend or a pursuit means that they will always hold a place in our heart, even when other people and things occupy our attention.  Personal devotion to Jesus means that we allow nothing to separate us from Him for a moment.  To abide in Him and His love, to be kept by Him and His grace, to be doing His will and pleasing Him- this cannot possibly be an irregular practice if we are truly devoted to Him.

“I need Thee every hour,” “Moment by moment I am kept in His love.”  These hymns are the language of life and true.  “In Thy name shall they rejoice all the day”(Psalm 89:16).  “I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment” (Isaiah 27:3).  These are words of divine power.  The believer cannot stand for one moment without Christ.  Personal devotion to Him refuses to be content with anything less than to abide always in His love and His will.  This is the true scriptural Christian life.  The importance and blessedness and true aim of the morning watch can only be realized as our personal devotion becomes its chief purpose.

The clearer the objective of our pursuit, the better we will be able to adapt to attain it.  Consider the morning watch now as the means to this great end: I want to secure the presence of Christ all the day, to do nothing that can interfere with it.  I feel that my success during the day will depend upon my time spent alone with Him in the morning.  Meditation and prayer and the Word are secondary to this purpose:  renewing the link for the day between Christ and me in the morning hour.