“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Jesus (Mark 11:24)
To me, prayer can be confusing and fraught with questions.
Is God listening?
Why is there so much pain and suffering when I repeatedly ask Him to bring healing to the world?
Why are our shelters so full of people with no homes?
Does God even care?
Why bother praying at all?
My list of questions goes on and on.
But yet I still believe in prayer and, as much as I fail at this, I try to do it regularly.
One of my all time favourite Christian authors is Philip Yancey. He’s not someone who claims to have it all figured out. He often shares his many doubts and questions.
I like him because he’s honest about this Christian walk which is full of questions in the midst of a faith that God is in control. He recognizes that we do not always need all the answers. We simply need to trust God in faith.
In his book called ‘Prayer’, Yancey says:
“I now see it (prayer) not so much as a way of getting God to do my will as a way of being available to get in the stream of what God wants to accomplish on earth.”
We’ve been given the privilege of participating in God’s plan for the world.
Prayer helps us commune with God and guides us as we jump in to that ‘stream’ of what God is up to. And because we can find 2000 or so passages in the Bible about poverty and how God cares about justice for all people, we believe we are in line with God’s plan of shalom for the whole world.
This month we will focus on what prayer is.
We will focus on its purpose and its power.
And as we do that, we’ll especially keep in mind The Salvation Army’s worldwide focus on eliminating human trafficking.
It’d be great if you printed and displayed this poster wherever you have the clout to do so. It announces a worldwide day of prayer on Sept.25 to pray against this atrocity.
We know that unified prayer can change something. We also know that this problem is too big for us to overcome, but that the God we claim to worship is bigger than this and can step in and make it go away.
So on Sept. 25 let’s take Jesus’ words seriously and cry out for an end to trafficking once and for all.
And in our small corner of the world let’s keep praying for and striving to be ‘The Hand of God in the Heart of the City”.
Dion
Prayer
God of all answers,
We often don’t even know how to pray
What prayer is
What it does
Or why we even bother to do it in the first place.
But we do know that it allows us to speak and listen to you.
We also know that as Creator and Sustainer of all things,
That you can do whatever you want to do.
Give us faith to believe in prayer
And the discipline to do it
In the power of God we pray,
Amen