Communion, praise, manna and prayer in the morning

Let there be communion, praise, manna and prayer in the early morning. "O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee" (Ps. 63:1 Darby). "And returned and sought early after God" (Ps. 78:34 Darby). In both psalms we find the word "early" in the original. Early in the morning is the time for prayer. After having communed with God and fed on manna, one is strengthened to lay all things before God and to carefully pray over them. It takes strength to pray; the weak cannot pray. With the new strength gathered from communion and from feeding on the manna, one is able to pray—for himself, for the church and for the whole world.

So every new believer needs to know the four things he ought to attentively do before God each morning: communion, praise, Bible reading and prayer. If he neglects these four, the day will declare it. Even a person like George Muller confessed that whether or not he was fully fed before God in the morning determined his spiritual condition for the whole day. His early morning foretold the day. Many Christians find their days hard because their mornings are ill spent. (I acknowledge that a person would not be easily affected by outward circumstances if he knew the separation of spirit and soul and thus the consumption of the outward man. This, however, is a totally different aspect.) To new believers, the exhortation must be directed towards early rising, for once they become careless about this, they will be careless about almost everything. The difference it makes in the day is exceedingly great, whether one has had nourishment in the morning or has gone hungry.

I remember a well-known pianist once remarked: "If I do not practice for one day, I notice something wrong; if I do not practice for two days, my wife notices something wrong; and if I do not practice for three days, the whole world notices something wrong." Let us not forget that if we fail to have a good morning with the Lord, not only ourselves and our wives but the whole world will surely know it. Why? Because we have failed to reach the source of our spiritual life. Young believers ought to discipline themselves very strictly and get up early in the morning to practice communion, praise, Bible reading and prayer before God that thus they may be well nourished.