Selah.
What difference do my prayers make? Your prayers? I believe the greatest difference of all is the difference they make in us.
Can we impact our world for Jesus if we haven't invited Jesus to impact our lives? To change us? To be more like Him? To be healed and whole so that we can offer health and completeness to others? (We are complete in Him, Colossians 2:10.)
It's only in His presence we become more like Him. More Christlike. And isn't that what Christians are supposed to be? Christlike?
This past March I was privileged to speak to a group of young people in Iowa on the subject, "Pickled in His Presence." A pickle isn't born a pickle. It started out as a cucumber and has to go through a process to become a pickle. The major part of that process is to sit in pickle juice. As it does, it takes on the flavor and characteristics of its environment. As we live in an environment of prayer, a continual connection with God, He changes us over time to be like Him. He can change us from a plain old cucumber to a zesty pickle and preserve a perishable veggie into something with an incredibly long shelf life.
Our prayers firstly and continually change us so we can be equipped to "Go ye therefore" and change our world. We must maintain our connection with God and choose to walk after the Spirit (not our own thoughts and desires) so He can use us, so we can hear His voice as He directs us to "speak here" or "do this there" or just "be still."
And that's an awesome thing, because following an awesome God is like totally awesome! Read the first part of Psalm 37 and you'll see that when we follow after God, He takes good care of us. When we delight in Him, He gives us the deepest desires of our hearts--not the things we think we want. We may not really know what our very deepest desires are until He's brought them to pass and we can look back and say, "God really knew what He was doing." And the cool thing about walking with God is He changes our desires along the way--elevating the good while His Spirit peels away layers of self-centerdness and self-preservation.
Prayer transforms our human natures. (Jesus wasn't into self-preservation, by the way). To maintain the change God makes in our lives, we must maintain our connection with the Changemaker. Take a pickle out of the jar for a bit, and what do you get? A shriveled up, inedible spear. Reminds me of that verse that says what good is salt if it's not salty anymore? Might as well throw it out!
I believe in spiritual warfare prayer. The Bible says Christians have authority in spiritual places unseen and our prayers can pull down strongholds and activate change...if...
Check out Psalm 28:9 in the NIV:
If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law,
even his prayers are detestable.
Ouch! I want my prayers to be heard, not a stench in the nostrils of God. When we walk with God, He writes His ways in our hearts (Proverbs 7:1-3, Hebrews 8:10). If we ignore His Word, we aren't walking in communion with Him and we won't have what we need to be effective in any attempt to reach our world. We won't have the building material to make a house of straw. Prayer is good building material. It's like those round parts of the Tinker Toys that connects the sticks together so we can make something. Without prayer, we would just have a pile of sticks.
To operate in the power and authority God has given us in spiritual places and to impact the lives of those we come in contact with, we must maintain and protect the intimate communion we have with God through our daily attitudes, conduct and prayer life. I heard someone recently say, "Prayer is the tip of the spear." A dull spear isn't a very effective weapon.
A spear...hey, pickles come in spears, too. So, my friends, walk in the Spirit and go ye therefore and Pickle Your World!
