The Bible doesn’t clearly spell out how long our prayers should be or at what time we should pray, but it does offer some good suggestions.
In Psalm 55:17 prayers are said in the evening, morning and noon. In Psalm 88:13 prayer is offered in the early morning. Psalm 119:64 promotes praying seven times a day. We read in the Gospel that Jesus prayed before sunrise (Mark 1:35) and in the evening (Mark 6:46). Daniel prayed three times a day (Daniel 6:10).
The great theologian Martin Luther suggested that prayer should be “the first business of the morning and the last at night.” His advise was this, “Cultivate the habit of falling asleep with the Lord’s Prayer on your lips every evening when you go to bed and again every morning when you get up.”
John Calvin encouraged Christians to pray “when we arise in the morning, before we begin daily work, when we sit down to a meal, when by God’s blessings we have eaten, when we are getting ready to retire.”
In his essay entitled, “The Character of a Methodist,” John Wesley wrote, “But his heart is ever lifted up to God, at all times and in all places . . . whether he lie down or rise up, God is in all his thoughts; he walks with God continually.”
Whenever we do it, it is such an amazing privilege to come before our Creator and to pray.