Pray

  

In the beginning of Philippians, Paul greets the believers of Philippi. It’s beautiful. You can tell how much he loves them. “Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God.” More than that, he says that he prays for them. This got me thinking. How often do we pray for the people around us? When? Now, I’m one to pray when things go wrong, when people are sick or hurting. I don’t always pray for people when everything’s doing just fine. I just don’t think to do it. I should though. We all should.

There’s so much power in prayer. It’s our time to communicate with God, our creator. It’s an opportunity to cover and intercede and more than that, it’s an opportunity to declare. Praying is just one way to speak life into ourselves and the lives of the people around us. It’s something that we as Christians should be doing more often than we do. It’s hard. Don’t get me wrong. We all have something going on in our lives; school, work, family. And that stuff takes up time.

When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the temple ripped from top to bottom. Suddenly everyone could access God’s presence. We don’t need a priest to pray and offer sacrifices anymore. We have free access. I don’t know about you but I think that’s pretty amazing. Through Jesus, we have forgiveness. We’ve been redeemed. We have the gift of eternal life. We have power over the things that come against us. More than all of that though, we are free to come to God Himself. Why pass up that opportunity?

In today’s church, I think we’ve lost sight of what brotherhood looks like. How often do we think about a fellow church goer with thankfulness and joy? We don’t have family in the church anymore. Society has changed the way things and people are seen and it’s everywhere. Christians need to fight it. If you look out into the world, there’s so much brokenness. People are wandering and lost and Church has just become another piece of society. But we aren’t of this world. We are seated in heavenly places and we have the power to lead people to a God who saves. We need to start acting like the church. We need to turn our focus back to God and the best and easiest way to do that is to start talking to him.

Unity comes with getting to know someone. So start with God. Talk to Him. Let Him know what’s going on in your life, let Him know you. I’ve found that the more you pray, the more God speaks to you. In life, you can’t just wait for someone to come over and talk to you. It’s the same with God. And once you have a relationship with Him, earthly relationships become much easier to develop. Especially within the church.

Cover people. Pray over them, over their lives. Intercede for People. Pray for them. Sometimes it helps to have another voice. Even if you don’t know that person well, you can tell when God is working some things out in their lives. You can see those prayers working. Declare. Speak into people’s lives. Instead of just asking, you are affirming. That thing will come to pass.

The more we turn our focus off the world and ourselves, the more we’ll see. There’s a lot out there. Prayer will develop your spiritual eyes and a sense of discernment. God will open your eyes to those broken people and you will know what to do.

Prayer is the greatest weapon we have at our disposal. Use it. Lives will change.