Pastor’s Thoughts: The stature of prayer…
March 17th, 2008 admin Posted in Pastor's Thoughts |
My oldest daughter is entering the stage when things are black and white, a time where you have to play by the rules. I know there will be a time where she moves past this, as it can be frustrating at times. But even though psychologists claim that at some point in life we move from concrete to abstract thought, I am not convinced that we easily move beyond this stage in our prayers.
What I mean is that we pray for specific things; Aunt Betsy to recover from surgery, our son in college to find purpose in life, the kids in Africa to get food to eat, the weather to be sunny and perfect for this weekend. The problem is that our prayers don’t necessarily get answered just how we want them to be answered. Does that mean we didn’t pray hard enough? Didn’t we pray right? Or doesn’t prayer work?
The Lord’s Prayer ends with a phrase that I have glossed over for many years. It is just a benediction of sorts that hasn’t given new insights. But recently I heard it called a verbal bow. A verbal stature of getting on my knees and saying, “I may ask for food, for healing, for purpose, or beautiful weather, but I surrender to You to deliver what is best, what I need, what is right. For you are God and I am not.” This ending of the prayer helps us make a leap of faith from a “black and white” prayer into an abstract prayer. It helps us to make our words be humble, verbally on our knees.
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever. Amen!
Daniel L. Hauser
Campus Pastor
March 28th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
During Spring Break, I went on the CrossPoint mission trip to Mexico. There, 22 youth and 6 adults were challenged many times to pray. We had an intense wind storm that knocked out power to most of the state of the Nuevo Laredo, we fought a fairly large fire with buckets of dirt, we had a traffic accident that could have been horrible. I’m still wrestling in my spirit with all that happened and the mighty power of God that we all experienced. The most indelible memory that came out of the trip happened during the fire. Someone who lives in the place we were staying built a fire and it accidently spread to the bamboo and palm trees literally a few feet from the houses. A few people from town and the CrossPoint youth and adults jumped in and fought the blaze with whatever buckets and dirt we could find. My thoughts immediately went into parent and teacher mode, but then I could feel God asking me, “Will you pray?” This situation was completely beyond me, and I knew that God needed to be given control. So as I ran to the scene of the fire, I went into prayer mode. We fought that fire, and by God’s amazing grace, the fire died down. One of most incredible things happened, and it is the most beautiful thing that happened on the entire trip. During the fire, several of our CrossPoint youth gathered in a circle and prayed. They knew that God is God, and they are not. No matter how hard we worked, God needed to be placed in charge. They knew that, and they gave the situation to God right there for all the world to see. We will all face horrible wind and fire and lack of power and dangerous roads in our lives, but God is still God. I thank God that He is willing to work through us to see His will done, but He gets the glory.