Jan 27, 2023 We’ve Prayed, Now What? – Words of Grace – January 27, 2023
This weekend we conclude our 21-Day Devoted to Prayer season. What do we do now?
Maybe right now you feel badly because you never got around to praying for Grace Community Church the past three weeks. That prayer guide is still staring at you from the coffee table and you’re thinking it’s time to move on and hope to do better next year.
Maybe you are proud of yourself for making it through all twenty-one days and you plan to reward yourself with a day off from prayer.
Here’s a better idea: Let’s together be devoted to prayer every day, all year. No pressure to perform, no self-shaming for poor performance. Just start today, where you are, however remedial or advanced you feel as a pray-er, and pray.
Prayer is not a seasonal event. The only reason we have a season of prayer is to encourage our praying throughout the year. Prayer is not a program. A prayer emphasis is a way of building a pattern of discipleship into our lives.
Prayer is a way of life. It is a weapon of warfare. It is what Jesus died to provide and what we are saved to do.
So, let’s be constant in prayer. Don’t throw away the prayer guide. It’s never too late to learn to pray, and the prayers in the guide are always relevant.
Throughout 2023, continue to trust, entrust, ask, and receive in prayer. Keep these four words in mind as you pray for yourself, for other people, and for our congregation. Let’s start this weekend.
Let me leave you with something I read this morning from Keep a Quiet Heart, by Elisabeth Elliot, and then a final thought on why we want to be constant in prayer.
“If God is sovereign, and things will be as they are going to be anyway, why bother to pray? [Because] prayer is a law of the universe. God ordained that certain physical laws should govern the operation of this world. Books simply will not stay on a table without the operation of the law of gravity. There are spiritual laws as well. Certain things will not happen without the operation of prayer. God could cause books to stay on tables by what theologians call ‘divine fiat.’ Everything we pray for could occur in the same way, but that is not how things were arranged.”
To be constant in prayer is to live in accordance with reality, like we really believe in a sovereign God who ordained and arranged things to be. This, to me, seems to be the sanest way to live.
-Scott