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Making Christ the foundation of our ministry is not easy. It's one thing to acknowledge that apart from him we can do nothing (Jn. 15:5), but another to work that out in practice each day.
Part of the reason for this is that it takes time to stay in touch with the Lord Jesus each day. Our Lord himself is the perfect model of what it means to live one's life in union and communion with another. His earthly life was one of unbroken fellowship with his Father. And the gospel records make plain that he nurtured that relationship constantly through times - and often extended times at that - spent alone with his Father in prayer (Mk. 1:35; 6:46; Lk. 3:21; 5:16; 6:12; 9:18,28; 11:1).
But our busyness and the sin that still cleaves to us rebel against that. We would much sooner get busy and do something for Christ than actually spend time talking with him. And to justify our aversion to prayer, our sloth and unspirituality, we rest in the fact that we are "busy doing the Lord's work." In fact, we can even go to the extent of dismissing the prayerful man or woman as an impractical mystic.
The late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was very aware of that tendency. In one of a series of sermons on Ephesians 3:14-21 he had this to say. "We are living in days when the practical aspect of Christianity is being emphasized almost exclusively by some Christians. It is the day of activism and activists. The world has never been so busy in trying to deal with its various problems; and the same is largely true of the Church. The practical, activist type of Christian is suspicious of a teaching which he thinks will make people sit down in isolation and wait for experiences. 'They never do anything else,' he says, 'they are not practical Christians; they are not involved in all the usual activities.'" The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, pp. 251
However, Lloyd-Jones rightly took this attitude to task. "Such an argument" he said, "is based on sheer ignorance, not only of the Scriptures, but also of Church history. For the fact is that the men who have been busy in the service of their Lord and Master, in the long history of the Church, have always been those who have known him best and who have rejoiced most of all in his love… The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in one hour than the busy type of man can do in a century" (pp. 252-3).
It has certainly been my experience that time spent with the Lord is not time lost. An hour of quietness with Christ usually results in more efficient hours of work for him. Prayer renews our priorities, redirects our affections, and replenishes our spiritual energy. It's not that it earns favour or merits grace (the idea of merited grace is a contradiction in terms!). Nor, in a sense, does the Lord need our prayers. But we do. We need prayer to retain our focus and to renew our dependence. Without much time with the Lord we simply can't be fruitful servants.