12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. 13 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. 14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.[c]
So what jumped out at me from this section is that all of the disciples and the women and Mary Jesus’ mother and his brothers were devoting themselves to prayer. It is amazing that even for people who were so close to Jesus during His ministry and death and resurrection prayer was still something that would not happen at the level required without devotion, a conscious effort and choice not to do other things in favour prayer. I have often complained to God that my prayer life doesn’t seem to fit neatly into the rest of my life. My life sometimes feels like a puzzle made up of pieces like, sleep, exercise, devotion, family time, ministry, down time etc and its seems any given day doesn’t have enough space for all of them. So if I want to have devotion and family time then exercise goes out. Or I bring exercise in but then the family suffer etc. Inevitably the stone that ends up getting rejected is prayer. I can listen to a sermon while driving or have a Bible study with a member but prayer seems not to fit in. But here the disciples decided they were going to take some time out they were going to move of their comfort zones and into the upper room and devote themselves to prayer. They were going to pray until God showed them where the other pieces where supposed to fit. Once again the Spirit has drawn my mind to what my friend Tyler Morrison said recently while introduction the song ‘cornerstone’. He told the story of how when the people of God where building the temple they had this stone which just didn’t seem to fit anywhere in the temple and so in the end they rejected it and left it lying around until they were almost finished and where looking for the final stone, the cornerstone, the tried several different things but no of them fit or could bare the weight and then they remembered that stone they had forgotten and sure enough it was a perfect fit. Jesus is that cornerstone but prayer is the means by which daily Jesus takes up His rightful place as the cornerstone of my life.
Lord I need you birth within me a consistent prayer life. I have made many plans and resolutions in my life but they have all failed. I need like your disciples to come to the place where I am devoted to prayer. Be the cornerstone of my life today.
Amen
Heart Meditations 
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