Greetings to you in the powerful name of Jesus Christ – THE Risen Saviour! What a beautiful spring morning in the Kingdom! It is exciting to see how God ‘wakes-up’ the created world with such careful timing. I trust that you had a good weekend and holiday Monday with many evidences of God’s activity in and around you. Today I will be praying for you, asking Father to release health and strength and a joyful attitude to you.
This is an important time period for the ‘church’ as we enter into the last days of Easter and prepare for Pentecost Sunday. It is during the fifty days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost that the ‘church’ was being prepared, equipped, empowered, and commissioned for the mission assignment that they would receive on Ascension Day – May 25th this year. One of the resources that the ‘church’ was given – perhaps the most important and under used and most misunderstood – was and is prayer.
It seems that I have spent much of my ministry learning about, understanding, teaching others, and practising this mysterious resource called prayer. I read a quote that said…Prayer is like a greased pig at a country fair, greatly pursued but rarely grasped – Christian Prayer For Dummies. I suppose that we are not supposed to be able to fully grasp the concept of prayer because I think that prayer is about getting to know God – and we will never know everything there is to know about Him.
This morning God sent me another quote about prayer: We must begin to believe that in the mystery of prayer God has entrusted us with a force that can move the heavenly world, and bring its power down to earth – Andrew Murray. As much as I agree with what Andrew Murray said, I am humbled to consider what power I have and how little I use it. Just this past week I heard someone say…when all else fails, I pray. Since I often find myself in the same place, I am trying to change that thought to…before all else fails, I am going to pray.
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of – says Alfred Lord Tennyson and I believe that to be true, so I am going to continue to pray – talk to the Father – about those people and situations and concerns that swirl around me. I am going to keep ‘praying’ for this world. I am going to keep ‘praying’ as I get to know God better. I am going to chase that greased pig…I may not get a hold of him but I will sure enjoy the chase and will probably laugh at myself.
Be blessed!