Prayer

I preached a sermon last Sunday on prayer based on the text out of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4, verses 23 through 31.

I have been thinking about that sermon a lot this week. As I have revisited that scripture passage and the passage out of Genesis (Gen 16:1-16) where Abram and Sarai take matters into their own hands and have a baby with the assistance (if it can really be reduced that much) of Hagar, I have been hit time and time again with the same reality.

Often we ask God to bless our Ishmael's...we ask God to bless those things that we have planned, concocted, and set into motion, after they are well on the way to fruition.

One of the beauties of Peter and others of the early church is that they actually got it...they learned to pray expectantly before something happened. They learned to wait on God...on God's presence, on God's direction, on God's gifts...before they acted. They acted in God and of God through their preaching and healing and ministry to those that were entrusted to their care.

What would happen if we, the church, learned to apply this lesson to our lives again? I wonder what new outpourings of the Spirit might be present in our churches! I wonder what new signs and wonders God might do in our midst! I wonder how our souls would quake in the presence of God and what wonderful things might happen for the kingdom as we embraced a new found boldness and power for our mission and ministry in the world!?!

What if we acted where God was acting and where God called us to act, rather than acting and asking God to bless what we were doing? I would imagine that life, and the church that we serve, would be radically altered to the extent that the church would begin being the church rather than acting just as a group of people getting together to "do church" (thanks to Peter Storey for the analogy).

I say may it be so...Come Holy Spirit come...come and renew the face of the earth...let it begin in me, let it begin in us, let it begin in your church...and may the body be so radically altered that we truly partner with you in transforming the world! Amen.