May 21, 2018
So Peter was kept in
prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him... When Rhoda said
Peter was at the door they told her: "You're out of your mind." Acts
12:5, 15
Don't pray wishing
God might do something, pray knowing God is already doing something.
This may be one of the greatest
lessons ministry has been teaching me these past ten years! Before that, (and even now sometimes), I
would pray as if God wasn’t doing anything yet, thinking He was waiting on me
to get involved and start praying in order to be released to take action. That may have given me urgency in praying for
something, but it also created doubts, and sometimes guilt. What if I wasn’t praying for it correctly, or
what if I didn’t pray enough? Or what
happens when I prayed for something and it doesn’t work out the way I expected?
Then I saw the passage in Joshua
when the people prayed while Joshua & the priests entered the Jordan River. In that text, as soon as they put the first
foot in the water, it stopped running.
Somewhere about 17 miles upstream, God had stopped the flow, and was
rerouting the water. God was working in
advance LONG BEFORE they prayed & acted!
Then I started noticing how many times in the Bible God was working out
the details long before the people knew what to pray for. Even Jesus was an answer to peoples’ prayers,
and He was being planned by God for THOUSANDS of years beforehand. God already was doing something, our prayers
just engaged with what He was doing.
That single thought has made
prayer much richer for me, and much more freeing. When a prayer need comes to our attention, we
can pray knowing God was already involved and is working on His answer. When we struggle with a problem, we can be
comforted knowing the God we are talking to has something in mind WITH the
struggle, and an answer FOR the struggle.
And when we pray, it’s no longer just a checklist of needs for God to
handle, it’s a journey of involvement with God leading the way.
Try praying differently for the
next 10 days (the rest of May). Instead
of praying for God to Do Something, pray knowing He already IS Doing Something,
and seek what He wants you to do about it.
You will change from ‘telling God’ to start ‘talking with God’, and
might be surprised by the promptings that come to your spirit!
Rhoda and the group was praying
for God to do something, but didn’t believe it when God did. I would bet that if she was praying knowing
God WAS doing something, she may have answered that door more expectantly, and
the group would have been preparing to see what God was working on. Who knows what God may be bringing to your
door when you pray knowing He is at work!
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