Sharing Your Faith Step 1: Pray

The MO Church had an uphill battle. New zoning laws did not "grandfather" in existing buildings. Church had two single rows of parking, but needed 5 rows to be compliant. But where? The one side of the building had a row at the base of the hill, where the more stout would park and walk up the hill. The other side of the building had a single row and the rest of the hill going up 20 feet. No additional parking there. They had 9 months to become compliant or move or close. After praying for a month, they knew they were lost. There was no way to afford to level the hill. But highway 71 needed to be widened. Crew didn't have the dirt needed to make the road bed. God brought the two together. The road crew leveled the hill, paid for the dirt and put in a free paved parking lot.

Preacher, still wet behind the ears, talking about faith healing being a test to God, walks over to the nearest woman at this revival meeting, mockingly  lays his hand on her forehead and prays the typical prayer of faith healing and then shoves her backwards into her seat. It wasn’t a hard shove, but wasn’t too gentle. Immediately, the grown son with anger in his eyes picks up his mom and rushes her to the hospital. Little to the preacher’s knowledge, but the woman had an inoperable brain tumor on her front lobe. Such force could cause her to seize and die. At the hospital, CT scan showed no tumor, no trauma. 

Much we don’t understand about prayer. More often, we use it as our last recourse. And perhaps when we see it answered, it frightens us. Yet prayer is our first tool, our first resource. It is more.

Prayer is preparatory for being used by God. Even Jesus prayed before selecting the original 12 disciples. (Luke 6.12). Prayer is constantly undergirding all that we say and do. At least it should be. Luke 5.16 says that Jesus often withdrew to pray alone, or with his disciples. As I was preparing this series, this topic has allowed me to see Luke’s Gospel in a different light. Often we think of the parables Jesus told, since most of the parables are recorded by Luke. Yet more than the other gospels combined, Jesus prays, tells his disciples to pray, as well as the nature of spiritual realm. Prayer is access to that realm, access to the Father, through Christ. Prayer is a mighty tool, one mightily neglected tool, too.

We pray for a new vision. Luke 10.2, “Look to the fields, they are ripe for the harvest, yet the workers are few. Pray to the Lord of the Harvest that he would send out more workers.” Consider Paul’s admonition in 2 Cor. 5.16-18, “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”

We pray for people with whom we will come into contact. God laid it on the heart of Philip to preach the Gospel as he went. (Acts 8.4, those who were scattered preached the Gospel as they went.) He was open to the Lord’s leading, in this case, to the road that headed to Gaza. While on that journey, he happened by a eunuch reading the scroll of Isaiah. It was an opportunity for him to share. In Acts 9, Ananias was told specifically to Paul. Talk about going out on a limb, or from the cage into the lion’s den! God may not direct us to someone particular. But he may indeed do just that. However if we are not praying for both a person and people we might come into contact with, then we can’t be directed by the Lord.

We pray for opportunities. Stephen is my favorite example of this. In Acts 6, He was selected as one of the original 7 deacons. He took the opportunity to preach Christ in his duties. And as the opposition grew against him and falsely accused him, he didn’t argue his arrest. He preached Jesus. This example would surely bleed over to Paul who would likewise take opportunities to preach. Acts 17.24, “For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”

Now this step, praying, is not just something we are doing once. This step we will see come into each of the other steps. Prayer will again be another step of itself. Praying, though usually saved for our last recourse should be our first resource. I hope that we will take a different look at prayer.

The end of every message, I don’t lay out an appeal to make a decision for Christ. I do, however, make an appeal to pray with you. Today will be no different. Next week will have the same appeal. Is there some way in which we, as brothers and sisters can pray for you now? Share with us. Let us pray with you.