I hope you don’t leave this prayer series having just learned a few new facts about prayer: the difference between praying occasionally and making prayer an occasion; that a heart examined by God through prayer is a heart that’s useful to God; how prayer and predestination work together; that there’s a difference between struggling TO pray and struggling IN prayer, and that…
A loving community of Christ-followers glorifying God together by making disciples of all nations
A loving community of Christ-followers glorifying God together by making disciples of all nations
Prayer
Struggle. It’s something we all face at different times and in varying degrees of intensity, including struggle for the sake of others. We all know what it means to struggle through something personally. Physical, mental, emotional, financial, chemical, spiritual, relational—these are a few of the big categories of common personal struggle. But if you’ve ever labored long and hard for something on…
Paul doesn’t pray for the Colossians to be filled and strengthened so that they can get saved. He petitions God for their filling and strengthening so that they can demonstrate to the world what saved people look like and live like! And saved people look and live like their Savior, who constantly mediates a new covenant between God and man, whose blood constantly pleads for our forgiveness and redemption. As Christians (i.e., ‘little Christs’), do we do that for each other through prayer?
You can have a house full of electrical sockets, but if there’s no wiring connecting them to the power source, plugging your toaster or sweeper into the wall is pointless. Prayer is the line that carries our load before God, and prayer is the channel through which God’s power flows to His people.
“Prayer isn’t just an activity of relation; it’s an activity of revelation. God doesn’t just want us to know Him in prayer; He wants to show us things about Him and about us in prayer.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of occasional praying—we should pray on every occasion that we’re moved in our hearts to pray, no matter where, when, why, or for what or whom! But to be people like Daniel, we need something more; God wants something more from us, and for us. To be occasional pray-ors is to see God as someone to whom we occasionally go. But by making prayer the occasion we’re saying God is most important, and that spending time with God is the central organizing principle of our lives.
Praying to a God who bases His decisions on what we pray or don’t pray for is to pray to a lesser God than the Bible’s God. And to not pray because God predestines is to disobey the Bible’s God. But praying to a God who orders all things in His universe—right down to every word every person will ever say—is not only to pray to the Bible’s God but to have the fullest, most biblical view of prayer possible, and to embrace the fact that this God employs our prayers in the execution of His fixed eternal will and plan.
Perhaps none said it better than John Wesley: “Prayer is where the action is.” Wherever you are in your prayer life, let’s resolve together to get into the action, to pray with greater frequency and fervency, to truly be people of prayer!