I'm beginning a series of posts on prayer. What you'll find below is a slightly modified version of a note I sent to some ministry leaders earlier this month... I'm dead serious about all of us - every single person - knowing a new closeness with Christ and being formed into his likeness this year. Part of what I believe will make this possible for me and us is me becoming a leader devoted to prayer. However, I've got to confess that prayer hasn't always been so easy for me, mainly because there is a huge obstacle that up until recently I never dealt with. Just in case this is an obstacle in your life, too, I thought I'd share a little bit. So what is the biggest obstacle for for me (and perhaps for you) with regard to prayer? It is believing that praying isn't really doing anything. Now when I say that I'm not implying that I believe prayer to be ineffectual; rather, I mean to say that I don't feel as if I'm actively doing anything when I pray. This obstacle, this false belief, creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for me. Here's how it happens. I'm wired to be a doer. I'm action-oriented. If there's a problem, I immediately start thinking about what needs to be done, what my role in it is, and how I can rally others to help solve the issue at hand. Because of my proclivity to get things done, I place a high value (maybe too high of value) on actions and their observable results. I feel bad when actions don't lead to desired results and I feel good when a plan comes together. Am I alone here? Probably not. My proclivity, paired with this false belief, is one of the things that has made prayer so difficult for me. While I know that God calls us to pray I don't always see immediate results from that action, which can torque me. So, I'm caught between a rock and a hard place, between how I'm wired and the call to pray. If I stop to pray, I feel pressure because I know there are so many things to accomplish on my to do list or project plan (and while I'm praying I'm not working on them)! But then again, if I don't pray, I feel as if I'm not living up to some Christian ideal. Hence the cognitive dissonance: I'm uncomfortable either way. So what's the way out? It isn't in changing my action-orientation. Instead, the way out is to reframe the obstacle, the false belief, with the truth. Consider these words from C.S. Lewis:

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will... It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God's mind -- that is, His overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures. ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), "The Efficacy of Prayer"

Let's apply this not only to me, but to us now. That we're not doing anything when we pray is a lie. The fact is we accomplish much through prayer, for prayer is a means through which God executes his will in the world and in the life of the one who prays.

• Through prayer, the sick are healed (2 Kings 20:1-6);
• Through prayer, protection is realized (Psalm 91:15);
• Through prayer, plagues begin and end (Exodus 8:8-13), fire drops from the sky (1 Kings 18:30-39), drought begins and ends (James 5:17-18), and the sun stands still (Joshua 10:12-14);
• Through prayer, the one who prays is changed as their will is conformed to the Father's (Matthew 6:10) and peace enters their heart (Philippians 4:6-7), even if the prayer is one of complete sacrifice (Mark 13:34-36).

Through prayer, both the cosmos and the pray-er are transformed by God. So never believe the lie that to pray is to be inactive or unproductive. Never believe the lie that you can accomplish the really important and pressing things in life apart from prayer. Real ministry ceases without praying, which is why Paul instructs us to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 4:17). So use your action-orientation to your benefit, make your first action, every time, to pray, because it is through prayer that God chooses to work his will through you and in you! To comment or ask a question, follow this link.