I encounter seasons when prayer comes as naturally as breathing -- when I find myself desiring to talk with God about everything. And then there are times, many of them, when praying becomes so difficult I struggle to find even rote words to say. Though prayer is simply communication with God, God uses our prayers to accomplish his purposes on earth. He doesn’t need them, and our prayers don’t change his decretive will, but he works through them to transform lives and circumstances.
Jesus taught that if we ask anything in his name, according to God’s will, he’ll do it. Using the analogy of casting a mountain into the sea he made his point -- that God is able and willing to accomplish the seemingly impossible through prayers of faith, prayed according to the will of God. When the disciples were praying in the upper room, Peter’s chains were loosed and the prison doors opened. Prayers uttered by Jesus and the apostles brought healing, deliverance and salvation.
As I walk through the Gospels, following Jesus on an exciting journey from one miracle to another, I watch in awe from a distance as he not only lived out the Word, but as the Word transformed the world and the people in it. And the miraculous didn't end with his death and resurrection. In fact, I put on walking shoes to journey with Paul and the apostles through Acts and find that I need running shoes instead. Keeping up with their travels, and the miracles they performed as well as the difficulties they encountered along the way is like moving from one climatic event to another with little rest.
Fast forward a couple of thousand years to my own life. Though I believe that signs and wonders, in the dramatic way they were performed in the NT, have ceased. I don't believe that God has ceased being God! He still has the power to move mountains. And though I may not witness miraculous healings on a daily basis, I see and experience God’s power at work in the world. The impossible becomes possible. A declared atheist embraces Christ. Healing comes to a marriage once deemed hopeless. A loved one receives news that he's cancer free. Friends step out in faith to adopt an orphan. Longtime enemies move toward reconciliation. God amazingly provides for our needs when there’s no logical solution in sight – we’re suddenly offered the “right” job, a raise, and new opportunities. We pray for our church, our communities, our world and we see the miraculous as people come to know Christ, neighbors work together to bring order after a devastating storm, world leaders make a wise decision.
Behind all these actions, people are praying in Jesus' name. We cry out for God to intervene and then often fail to notice when change occurs. Not because we’re indifferent, but because change happens so gradually and in such a different way than we’d imagined that it’s almost unrecognizable. Unless we’re carefully watching each day, we miss the miracle God unleashes through our prayers. But to the watchful eye, it's like a beautiful sunset unfolding in our sight.
Recently a close friend sent me a video of time lapse photography of nature. The pictures, taken every few minutes over the course of many days, didn’t reveal impressive changes on their own. Yet when melded together in a video they showed an amazing transformation. The fog, which rolled in slowly throughout the day, came to resemble a raging sea when shown in fast forward. The sun, seemingly immoble, danced across the sky.
I wonder what we’d see if we zeroed in on a specific part of our lives that we’d prayed long and hard about, then placed the scenes together in time lapse motion so that five years was reduced to five minutes or an hour. I think we’d be surprised at the incredible changes.
God is at work in our lives and through our prayers. We can be absolutely certain of his love for us and his ability to move any mountain he chooses. So by faith we persevere in prayer, refusing to focus on the seemingly unchanging circumstances but on the God who is able to change all things. At the right moment, sometimes when we least expect it, he breaks through with the miraculous. Then when we look back, gathering snapshots from the past, we'll see with clarity the movement, the action, the transformation that was slowly taking place all along.
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Eph. 3:20-21
