To Be Like Jesus: Walking With God Through Prayer, January 26

 Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and begot sons and daughters.... And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. Genesis 5:22-24, NKJV. 

While engaged in our daily work, we should lift the soul to heaven in prayer. These silent petitions rise like incense before the throne of grace; and the enemy is baffled. The Christian whose heart is thus stayed upon God cannot be overcome. No evil arts can destroy his or her peace. All the promises of God's Word, all the power of divine grace, all the resources of Jehovah, are pledged to secure his or her deliverance. It was thus that Enoch walked with God. And God was with him, a present help in every time of need. 

Prayer is the breath of the soul. It is the secret of spiritual power. No other means of grace can be substituted and the health of the soul be preserved. Prayer brings the heart into immediate contact with the Wellspring of life, and strengthens the sinew and muscle of the religious experience. Neglect the exercise of prayer, or engage in prayer spasmodically, now and then, as seems convenient, and you lose your hold on God. The spiritual faculties lose their vitality, the religious experience lacks health and vigor.... 

It is a wonderful thing that we can pray effectually, that unworthy, erring mortals possess the power of offering their requests to God. What higher power can human beings desire than this—to be linked with the infinite God? Feeble, sinful human beings have the privilege of speaking to their Maker. We may utter words that reach the throne of the Monarch of the universe. We may speak with Jesus as we walk by the way, and He says, I am at thy right hand. 

We may commune with God in our hearts; we may walk in companionship with Christ. When engaged in our daily labor, we may breathe out our heart's desire, inaudible to any human ear; but that word cannot die away into silence, nor can it be lost. Nothing can drown the soul's desire. It rises above the din of the street, above the noise of machinery. It is God to whom we are speaking, and our prayer is heard.—Messages to Young People, 249, 250