Breaking the Silence

It is time to write once more. So I break the silence with this.

It becomes increasingly apparent that prayer is the best and most fruitful action that we, as the people of prayer, can ascribe to. Without prayer, all is lost.

There was once a man who felt the call of God on his life; he was sure God was calling him to do something great. The problem was he did not know what that great thing was. So he figured he needed pray.

This man came to Mother Theresa, and asked her to pray for him. "What shall I pray for you?" she said.

"I want clarity. I want to know, in no uncertain terms," said he, "what God's will is for my life."

Smiling, she replied, "No, I will not pray that for you."

Angered, the man responded, "But, why? Mother Theresa, all I want is what you have had all of your life. You seem to always know exactly what it is God is calling you to do?"

She replied, "I, sir, have never had clarity. What I have had is trust. I will pray that you will have trust."

When I first heard this, I decided my prayer life needed to change. As Children of God our first action must be prayer. So as I agree that there is a need for us to process this intentionally, it cannot--it must not--happen if prayer is absence. In fact, prayer could quite possibly be the most important thing we do.

What I am coming to terms with is that God was doing just fine before I came along, and that he would do great without me. When I am confronted with my own smallness in comparison with Yahweh, I recognize the need to pray. There is absolutely nothing I can do for God or for his kingdom unless I learn to pray and I learn to trust.

We talk about how our lives are dead, that they are no longer our own. Thus, we have no right to decide how to live in the kingdom of heaven, or how to be the Body of Christ, or how to live counter-culturally. We may only do this at the direction of Christ, and live this out at the direction of the Holy Spirit. This may manifest itself differently in each of us, but regardless, it will be God who tells us how to live, not ourselves.

So what I suggest is prayer. Lots of it. And together. You know, we see that the early church did just about everything in community. But they were always praying--they were always seeking the face of God in order to discern how to reach their world and make the church the church.

So we must pray. We must make our first course of action prayer, and I would daresay that we must not move until we feel that God has told to do so, and we dare not move in any way but in the way God reveals to us through prayer. And may God forgive us if we equate prayer with inaction or passivity.

One more story:

This summer, while at a family gathering, we got into a discussion about theology, about healing and tongues and prosperity and whatnot. And as we talked, my uncle (a mail carrier) interrupted and said to me,

"Kyle, what you need to learn from this conversation and from everything is that you must pray. I don't necessarily think that I am gifted to be a postman. If I had spent more time in prayer at your age, who knows where I would be now? Just pray and let that shape your beliefs and actions. Pray now, Kyle, if only for my sake."