I read recently in the By Faith Magazine an article by Paul Miller about prayer. He says Christians struggle so much with prayer that only 10% of believers clim to have an effective or meaningful prayer life. I was not surprised by the statistic at all. I myself am part of the 90% without a meaningful prayer life. I know as a fact that Sacred Road would not be seeing the change in people's hearts and the growing church in White Swan if it were not for the prayers of God's People. But my cynical heart says to me that God is going to do what he's going to do despite people's prayers, and of all the people that have committed to pray for Sacred Road and the people in White Swan only 10% are really praying anyway. So what difference is it making anyway. I am assuming that because I because I am not in constant prayer, looking for the presence of the Lord in everyone, nobody else is either. In his book on prayer Paul Miller writes, " There is a disconnect between what I present and who I am. My words sound phony, so other's words sound phony too. In short my empty religious performance leads me to think that everyone is phony. " Even if the statistic is true, that only 10% of Christians are really praying, why does my heart doubt that those prayers are making a difference.
In my discipleship group we are going through a small book by Patricia St. John on prayer. It describes what prayer is, who we are talking to, why we should pray, and how and what we should pray. My girls are never excited to volunteer to pray during small groups and I did not want them as young believers the same idea that I have about prayer- that it doesn't really work or matter. I knew I needed to learn to pray just as much as they did. Last week at small group on Tuesday I took prayer requests as normal and I prayed for them to close out our time together, One girl has asked for prayer to get better, because she was sick. You could hear in her voice she had a cold. On Thursday, when we got together for d-group, out of the blue the same girl says, " Oh ya, I wanted to tell you that prayer thing really works. I am getting better. My cough is almost gone." I was shocked. At first I found my cynical heart telling me that she was going to get better anyway. It wasn't really the prayer that helped. I had just stripped the Lord of any power he had in making Justine better, plus the work he had done in her heart to believe, I am so thankful that the Lord uses my girls to point out my unbelief and that he is not letting my unbelief be contagious to them. He is teaching me and them the power of prayer.
