Another excellent post by Dr. Ronnie Floyd of National Day of Prayer…….
| Today I would like to share the following article by my friend, Bill Elliff. Bill is a pastor and prayer warrior, and will be joining us for the National Leadership Summit for the National Day of Prayer next week. There is still time to sign up at nationaldayofprayer.com/summit.
Now is the Time to Pray, When God Doesn’t Respond When my high school friend invited me to work with him on his car, I was happy to join him. One problem: I knew nothing about cars! He told me to start taking the engine apart and we would put it back together later. I did, he did—and for the next six months the engine parts lay in his yard. We actually worked hard, but our work was worse than useless. It merely created a junkyard on a really nice street! Many believers today are getting desperate. Seeing the moral and spiritual free fall in the world around us and the declining condition of the church in our land drives us to cry out to God. We need Him. We need His manifest presence. We need revival in the church and spiritual awakening among the unbelieving. We need our nation to be restored to its Kingdom calling as a mighty, gospel-sending station to the world. According to Scripture, the precursor to any great movement of God is always humble, repentant prayer. We thank God that people across the country are praying in record numbers. But wouldn’t it be tragic to discover that our prayers are not effective? Wouldn’t it be heartbreaking to learn that some things in our lives prevent our prayers from accomplishing what is so desperately needed? Wouldn’t it be devastating to find out that all our hard work in prayer is doing nothing to advance the Kingdom? What if we are simply littering heaven’s yard with unusable prayers? Evaluating Our Prayer Lives While Scripture contains hundreds of positive promises regarding answered prayer, God also outlines many things that will hinder our prayers. No one prays perfectly, and God is not playing with us. He does not make intercession so unattainable that only the super-spiritual can be effective. He understands our weakness. But He is also very clear about those things that can hinder our prayers. Are we willing to evaluate the effectiveness of our prayer lives? It may help to walk through the following questions, step-by-step, with an honest heart. And when God shows us areas of need, we can turn to Him in repentance and take the necessary steps to adjust our lives to encounter Him afresh in prayer.
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National Day of Prayer Task Force |
