When you stop trying to control your life and instead allow your anxieties and problems to bring you to God in prayer, you shift from worrying to watching. You watch God weave his patterns in the story of your life. Instead of trying to be out front, designing your life, you realize you are inside God’s drama. As you wait, you begin to see him work, and your life begins to sparkle with wonder. You are learning to trust again.
– Paul E. Miller in A Praying Life
What do I lose when I have a praying life? Control. Independence.
What do I gain? Friendship with God. A quiet heart.
The living work of God in the hearts of those I love.
The ability to roll back the tide of evil.
Essentially, I lose my kingdom and get his.
I move from being an independent player to a dependent lover.
I move from being an orphan to a child of God.
– Paul Miller in A Praying Life
May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. – Colossians 1:11-12 (ESV)
I came across these verses about a month ago, and it has become my prayer for many people I know who are facing trials and struggles. I believe it might be a helpful model for you too in your prayers for the hurting and weary – maybe even yourself.
Strength – Our strength is small. And so we pray that God would strengthen us with his power and might each day as we walk through our trials.
Endurance – Sometimes it is easy to give up, to despair. And so we pray that God would give us strength to endure, to press on, to persevere, to hold onto him.
Patience – Sometimes it is easy to become impatient with trials that continue on and on, with the things that slow us down or hold us back. It is easy to get frustrated. Ando so we pray that God would give us strength to be patient in the midst of our trials.
Joy and thanksgiving – It can be incredibly hard to be joyful and thankful in the midst of trials. But Paul points us beyond our circumstances to a glorious truth that will never change. The Father has granted us salvation. This is reason to rejoice and give thanks. And so we pray that God would give us strength to remember our great salvation, and find joy and gratitude in it always.
Inheritance – Life can be hard now, but a glorious day is coming when there will be no more trials, no more tears, no more sickness, no more pain. We will dwell with our Lord forever. And so we pray that God would give us strength to remember our glorious hope.
Father, there are so many who are hurting and weary, ourselves included. Strengthen us with your mighty power so that we may endure with patience, joyfully give thanks for your great salvation, and cling to our glorious hope. Amen.
When I used to work for a Christian bookstore a few years ago, I would drive home from work and pull into the driveway. At that point, the front door would burst open, and my two young children would come racing out, jumping up and down, crying “Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home!” They were so excited that I was home and with them.
As God’s children we too can’t wait to be home with our Father. And so we cry out, “Your kingdom come.”
I saw a Peanuts comic strip recently. Snoopy is sitting next to one of the girls, and the girl tells him, “My Dad is a better hunter than your Dad!” She walks away with a big grin on her face. Snoopy looks after her and thinks, “My Dad gets fuzzier in the winter than your Dad!”
Many kids (and apparently dogs) think and want others to know that their Dad is the greatest. Their Dad is the strongest. Their Dad is the smartest. Their Dad is the best.
As God’s children, we know and want everyone else to know that our Father is the strongest, the smartest, the best. We want everyone to honor our great Father. And so we pray, “Hallowed by your name.”
Father,
Thank you for our country, and the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. Thank you for freedom of speech, press, and travel. Thank you for the freedom to gather to worship you, and the freedom to scatter to share the good news with others.
Even more we thank you for Jesus, and the freedoms we enjoy as Christians. Thank you for freedom from the penalty of sin, freedom from the power of sin, and the promise that one day we will have freedom from the very presence of sin.
Thank you for the wonderful freedoms you have blessed us with in this country and in Christ. Amen.
I was listening to part of a message about John Bunyan by John Piper this morning which referenced II Corinthians 1:9 – “Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
How easy it is for us to get this wrong. We try to rely on ourselves or on our bank accounts or in our own cleverness or…you fill in the blank. This is a huge issue in ministry as well. Am I relying on God or trying to do it myself? Of course, we have to minister, to do the work. But God is the one who blesses our ministry, who makes it effective…or not. We always need his grace, his help, his Spirit to be at work, or we labor in vain.
We know this, yet that self-sufficiency can creep in. We can get so excited and impressed with our newest sermon, program, idea, whatever. We think, “Certainly this will make a difference!” But if God doesn’t bless it, it amounts to nothing.
Perhaps God doesn’t bless our churches more because we simply couldn’t handle it. We would start to think too much of ourselves, begin to rely too much on ourselves. We would forget that we need God, and that it is all of God, not of ourselves.
I think this is where prayer comes in, though that too can become a mere formality tacked on to our own self-reliance. But if we truly believe we need God’s help, we will pray. We will plead with God to work through us. We will pray with fervor – “Your kingdom come.” We will join the Psalmist in praying, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yea, establish the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90:17)
May this be our prayer as we rely on him.
A few days late, but here are some noteworthy links from the past week (and in same cases older).
First, some good links on prayer: wandering prayer, morning prayer, and a prayer for generosity.
Justin Taylor quotes D. A. Carson about how we tend to drift from holiness, and ways we try to justify it.
Finally, some important questions for us to ponder from Chris Brauns and Coram Deo.
Before ascending into heaven, Jesus predicts the coming of the Holy Spirit. He tells the disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8). The Spirit will come with power, and in that power they will witness.
We see this play out in next few chapters of Acts. In Acts 2, the Spirit comes upon them, empowering them to speak different languages to share the good news with Jews from many nations. In Acts 4, Peter is filled with the Spirit and boldly witnesses to the same people who had Jesus crucified. Later in the same chapter, the church prays for boldness to witness, and the Spirit powerfully comes upon them, giving them boldness to declare the gospel.
The Spirit empowers us to witness – giving us boldness and courage. It is of course also the power of the Spirit that changes lives, making our witness effective. We need the Spirit’s help to witness. Do we seek it? Are we praying for the Spirit to give us boldness. Are we asking him to change lives?
The best around the web this week that I found deals with spiritual disciplines – habits that help us grow in love for God and people, and indeed that are expressions of our love for God and people.
Coram Deo reminds us of the need to keep it simple, coming back to the basic disciplines of life. Chris Brauns calls us to consistent prayer with a quote from Bryan Chappell. He Is My Delight gives a great example for compassion in outreach.
Brian J. Mikul 