Opportunities (cont'd): Reinvigorate Our Prayer

Opportunities (cont’d): Reinvigorate Our Prayer.  Our current financial struggle is not an obstacle but an opportunity (11/20) to review our vision (11/27), renew our strength (12/4), and reinvigorate our prayer (12/11). 

As it is with individuals, families, corporations, and countries, being a church involves far more parts that we cannot control or could ever change than pieces which we can control and change. Even still, the few pieces over which we have limited control for minimal change are only possible because God entrusts those pieces to us and enables us to meet them faithfully. By praying, we learn first and often that God is God, and we are not. For instance, we cannot reverse global recession, predict job transferals, or divert hurricanes. We could never change where people live in Wayne County, how far they might be willing to drive to go to church, or what they prioritize for joining a church. All the while, the truck bed rusts out, the tooth needs a cavity filled, the grandbaby needs a larger car seat. We have no access to the machine room that operates life’s levers, but we know the Lord who does. So, let’s pray!

Prayer is not our last resort to try when all else fails but our first impulse of faith. By praying, we lean into our faith-relationship with God. God initiates: he speaks to us through his Word; we respond to him through our prayers. This is not circular reasoning but centripetal force; praying draws us into the center, the axis around which all our prayers spin, namely, God himself. We depend upon God to fuel even our dependence upon God! We pray not to get God’s attention; we pray because we have God’s attention through the merits of Christ. With prayer, we are transformed by God to want the same things that God wants. That is why, when we pray in Jesus’ name for the very things that God already wants to provide that we are guaranteed to receive what we ask. The abiding relationship is primary, the result of that abiding relationship is ancillary. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:7-8). Prayer changes us!

So then, how shall we pray? First, we pray by faith, believing God is exactly as he described himself to be in the Scriptures. Second, we pray in joy, understanding that God happily gives us his undivided attention when we pray. Third, we pray unto obedience. No matter the outcome, we were commanded to pray as the Bible explains prayer to be, distancing it from its various misuses. Fourth, we pray with unity. Most of the praying in Scripture is collective, such as, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). 

Those form four edges to our prayer playground, so to speak. Within that defined space we can freely move.