I feel like I am only just now, in my 76th year, beginning to gain a true appreciation of the power of prayer.
Within our community, we have put a lot of emphasis for many years on the importance of listening
when we pray.
Obviously, if prayer is communication between us and God
what GOD says is a whole lot more important than anything that WE might say.
At least that has been my reasoning.
In fact, I have mostly been skeptical about us needing to say anything... except maybe "your will be done".
After all, what would be the point of us asking with all our heart
for something that God doesn't really want us to have?
And if he really does want us to have something
then why would he need us to ask for it before he could give it?
So I have pretty well gotten through life just asking God to do what he wants with me
and, perhaps, to let me know if I'm standing in the way of him doing it.
I've always liked what we call The Lord's Prayer, because it seemed to capture the essence of that approach
especially with its emphasis on God's kingdom and his glory, his will, and his power
with a few other thoughts thrown in about protecting us from evil and forgiving us when we give in to evil.
But how long does it take to pray that little prayer? Less than a minute.
And after you've prayed it several days in a row
it's easy to think you could skip a few days and it wouldn't make much difference.
After all, God knows my heart, right? He doesn't need to hear me saying that all over again.
But something motivated me recently to try some kind of marathon effort in prayer...
well, a marathon effort at my tiny stature as a Christian.
Five minutes.
I would pray for five minutes every time I had an urge to play a game of chess with my computer...
something that I've gotten into the habit of doing several times a day
whenever there was a little lull in my other duties.
Honestly, it did seem like a long time.
I would peek at my watch every couple of minutes.
And I would always run out of words well before the five minutes were up.
Sometimes I would start over when I realised it hadn't been five minutes.
Sometimes I would go back to just listening. And sometimes I would start day-dreaming.
All my life I've heard that saying, "Prayer changes things," and it sounded so trite.
I got the idea that the people who said it were just saying that they get the things they pray for
and I tried that a few times without success.
I felt guilty asking for selfish things
and I didn't have much success when I asked for things that I thought were unselfish either.
So I wasn't really expecting much to change.
But I did have one strong desire that came into play whenever I would think about prayer:
I wanted to know that I wasn't just kidding myself.
You know, about there even being a God on the other end of the line.
He didn't need to give me anything
but I didn't want to waste my life thinking that I was serving something that was just my imagination.
I really did want to see God's kingdom come... in power and great glory.
I really did want to see his will happening here in this wicked old world.
I really did want to see his name being reverenced everywhere.
And this is a pretty good description of how prayer started changing things for me personally.
It wasn't sensational. I can't put it into words. There is no objective evidence.
But I started to become more aware of God's presence in everything that was happening...
to me personally, but also in the world around me.
I could see that every moment of my life had so much more meaning than it had ever had before.
More often than not, I would never get around to playing a chess game.
By the end of five minutes, I knew there was something more important to do, and I had the incentive to do it.
It made me think of the testimony of Dave Wilkerson, back in the 1960s
when he threw out his TV and decided to spend time in prayer.
It released powerful forces that changed his life and the lives of many other people.
Back in the 1960s people had become so distracted by TV and all that it had to offer
that they had little time for God.
As unbelievable as it may have sounded then
today's generation of believers are even more saturated with trivia
but now it comes most in the form of laptops and cell phones.
They follow us everywhere we go.
God is lucky to get even five minutes in a day packed with texting, social media, emails, videos and games.
But think of what could happen if we could break out of that: five minutes here and five minutes there
until the first thought that crosses our mind when we have a little delay is not Internet trivia, but prayer.
Prayer just for God's kingdom to come.
I think Jesus told us to pray for his kingdom for a reason.
When we want it more than anything else, we just might get it. Not necessarily miracles. Not necessarily revival.
Not necessarily anything that we might humanly imagine, but just God's will.
A full revelation of what God wants for each of us.
There is a phrase from the Bible that comes to mind: "The manifestation of the sons of God."
It says that the whole world is hanging out for that day.
God and Jesus have become just words to so much of the world
but if we could lift ourselves out of the mire of mediocrity
long enough to get inspired by the reality of our Creator
we could become like our big Brother, Jesus... sons of God... turning the whole world upside-down.
And it could start with something as insignificant as five minutes... five minutes spent contemplating eternity.
Imagine a world where the name of our Creator is reverenced everywhere.
A world so different to what we have at the moment.
Imagine a world where all the glory of the Creator of the universe
overwhelmingly and eventually forces every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of our God and Father!
That is what we could become a part of... even if it means martyrdom first.
Real prayer is not about wrestling God into conformity with our will
rather it's about wrestling us into conformity with his will.
Please do consider letting prayer change you... for eternity.
I still don't know how to explain it with my rational mind.
At its best, it still seems little more than just sitting there and waiting.
But I do believe that the more we do it
the more we will see God working in our lives and in the lives of those whom we love.
Please try it today.
