Urgent Care

Can we bear a bit of honesty?  The Church has as a whole forgotten to pray.  We organize meals, put together events, talk extensively about the Bible, argue over by-laws and form endless numbers of committees but give prayer the once over and then we’re off to something else.  We pray and then try to get something accomplished as if the accomplishing is not occurring in the praying.  The Disciples asked the Lord to teach them how to pray.  We know how to pray.  We don’t know how to start praying with determination and abandonment to the work of prayer.  Would Peter have been led out of prison by the angel if the band of believers quartered in the home of John Mark’s mother had not been praying?  We cannot say for sure one way or another but they certainly were juxtaposed with each other in the Scripture.  Would Lot have escaped Sodom if his uncle were not praying?  Would Job’s friends have escaped judgment if Job had not prayed?  Would Jericho have ever been taken if for seven days straight the Israelites had not prayed?  Given the stakes, why do we do so little praying?  The Lord insists that He will do the heavy lifting if we would just put the shovel down for a while and pray.  The seeds need rain and sun and good soil to bring about the harvest.  All of these required necessities come from God.  Only the seed distribution is our responsibility.  If three-fourths of the work is God’s and we must go to Him in prayer to gain His help in them, why do we give most of our time to seed casting?  It is the praying that is the most critical part of the harvest because to be brutally honest, we can chuck our seeds anywhere and God can make them sprout right where they land. We have so little confidence God actually exists and carries those who go to Him in prayer that we make prayer perfunctory and everything else a necessity.  Our Lord is not scanning the horizon for better workers to bless; He is searching for more faith-full workers who have come to rely upon prayer above all else to make it through their days.  Would the world collapse in a heap if you gave an entire day to praying and reading the Scriptures?   Would your family be crushed by the weight of your devotion to praying?  Or might it just be that more can be done in ten hours of prayer than a lifetime of plowing?

                                                                            

"When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.   2 Chronicles 7: 13-15 NIV