Prayer that Changes History

The greatest untapped resource that I know of is the prayer of God’s people, says Henry Blackaby. 

Andrew Murray writes, We must begin to believe that God, in the mystery of prayer, has entrusted us with a force that can move the Heavenly world, and can bring its power down to earth.

And Oswald Chambers states, The key to the missionary problem is not the key of common sense, nor the medical key, nor the key of civilisation or education or even evangelism.  The key is prayer.

How easily we forget. 

Throughout Scripture it is evident that the character and nature of God does not change, but His actions do.  How?  Through the prayer of His people. 

Remember when Abraham bargained with God over Sodom in Genesis 18:22ff?  The men turned away…but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?  What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?“

So Abraham begged for 50 righteous men, and God changed His mind.  Then forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and finally ten.  Though the story does not end well for Sodom, God was prepared to alter the course of history because of Abraham’s request. 

And Moses’ conversation with God in Exodus 32.  The people of Israel, in their selfishness and fear, had melted down jewelry and created an idol in the image of a golden calf.  God, burning with righteous rage, says, “I have seen these people, and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.”

But Moses went to bat for Israel, and, in vs.14 we see that God’s intended action changed… “the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.”

The prayer of one man changed the history of a nation.

There are many similar stories in the Bible; stories of how God’s anticipated action was modified because of people who stood in the gap on behalf of others.  And the stories continue today, how lives and tribes, countries and communities are transformed because of how God moves when his people pray.  

We read that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father, interceding on our behalf.  If that’s how He’s spending His time, isn’t it worth joining Him?  Don’t you want to see history changed, whether it be the history of one person or that of a nation, because of the prayers you’ve been a part of?  I do!

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Next blog: Prayer that Changes the History of a Family

Surrender: Upside Down Living in Hard Places

I first met him several months ago, this cool guy with a shaved head.  Of all the places in the world a person can choose, he wants to go to probably the most war-torn place in the world. 

He writes, “I was thinking…if I’m going to save one person I guess I’d like to do it in a country where few Christians go… I said to God that I’d be happy to go to the Middle East.”

Not only that, he wants to go to perhaps one of the hardest regions in that country.  Writing about the decision-making process, he says, “I decided to focus on a region in … and the… region came to mind.  I always felt that I would love to go there, but thought that was more my own interest than God’s.  But as it kept coming up I realised that very, very few people want to live out in those mountains, but I really do. From this time of searching, I came out with a conviction that God was indeed calling me there specifically.”   

Some of you might be thinking, "Well, he’s special, he’s different, he’s one of ‘those’ people".  But it wasn’t an easy choice to make. 

Later, when battling with the idea of going he wrote, “I do not feel ready, I do not feel strong enough, I do not feel spiritual enough, I do not feel together enough… but I know He’s calling me.”

What drives him?  He knows that in a mountainous area of a war-torn country are a people who have not heard about Jesus.  “I feel it’s a great tragedy that they are still unreached,” he states, “and I’m passionate about changing that fact.” 

“And,” he adds, a smile on his face, “I can’t wait to fall in love with them.” 

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Next blog:  Prayer that Changes History

Surrender: Upside Down or Right Way Up?

I’ve been thinking about surrender a lot lately.  I watch in awe as people sell their homes to go to a different country and live Jesus out loud – in a way that can make all the difference in the world to those they go to.  I think about one couple who had just finished both of their medical specialties and abandoned the potential of a huge income to go to an area of the hills of South Asia where people haven’t heard about Jesus.  I think of other friends who finally, after years of infertility and hopeful, prayerful waiting, progressed to the top of the adoption waiting list in Australia, only to obey God’s call to go, which for them meant giving up any known possibility of having kids.  Crazy surrender!  Upside down choices.  Their way of thinking is counter-cultural.  It doesn't make sense.

But it does to God.

In fact, He came up with that kind of thinking; where millions and millions of the world’s population who have no chance of hearing about Jesus matter to Him, where the 200 people who died as you read these words and who have never heard about Jesus matter to Him, as do the 300 who were born in these minutes and who at this time in history have no hope of hearing. 

In his redchurch.org blog, ‘The Rise of the 2^nd Wave Prosperity Gospel’, Mark Sayers writes, “It offers self actualisation rather than self-denial. Social Justice without personal cost. Discipleship without responsibility.”

And I wonder, how will people hear without self-denial?  How will they receive justice and mercy without personal cost?  How will they be discipled unless someone takes the responsibility, seeing them as entrusted by God?

I wonder.

We talk about surrender, giving all for Jesus, but…

...we just need to do this first

...we’re not sure we could handle that

...we’ll surrender anything except [insert idol of choice here]. 

But true surrender knows no limits – or at least it acknowledges limits and asks God to invade and do His thing to change us.  Don’t we want to be like that?  People who will step out of our comfort zone, without dragging our feet or having a foot in both camps?  People who will be bold and brave, or even scared-to-death-but-willing?  Then maybe we’ll be reflecting some of those upside-down things that God holds dear to His heart and look much more like Him than like the world that tarnishes and erodes.

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Next blog: Surrender: Upside Down Living in Hard Places


Shema Video

Living Jesus Out Loud in Chad.  See it come alive in this video!

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Living Jesus Out Loud in the Heart of Africa

One of our workers knows exactly what it's like to live Jesus out loud with his family in a hard-to-reach place of the world.  Writing from the heart of Africa, he says...

What does it take to live Jesus out loud?  The first thing I think of is telling people about Christ.  Now, granted, I have an evangelist’s heart, so my bent is in that direction, but sometimes we get lost in the ‘how’ of it all. 

At times, we are so relational that we miss an important opportunity.  We focus solely on building relationships with our non-believing acquaintances without making Jesus a natural part of that relationship right from the start.  So what happens?  We have a real heart to see the person come to know the Lord, we get to know him or her, and we become good friends.  And then, uh oh, somehow now we have to find a way to introduce the most important person in our life, our very worldview, to the neighbour we have been cultivating a relationship with for some time. And because we haven’t mentioned Jesus before, it becomes very awkward to do so now.

As if we are trying to trick our new friend.

Living out loud means not only being the hands and feet of Jesus, but also the voice of the gospel.  Our message, when shared in truth and love, brings honor to God and shows love and respect to our friends.  But we actually need to speak about Jesus. In my context, here in the heart of Africa, I have to remind myself of this every time I walk outside my door where all of my neighbors are Muslim.  They have never been told who Jesus really is, so I owe it to them to be both loving and bold in my encounters with them.

My passion is to live Jesus out loud among people who don’t know Him.  In our particular setting, that means two international flights and a three-day drive across the Sahel of Africa.  The result of such a journey means arriving at a destination where I get to spend time with whole tribes who, as yet, do not have even one believer among them. 

So how can we live out loud for Jesus?  Let’s ask the Lord to help us, and then look for opportunities, difficult though some may be.  Once we find them, let’s love people – the Shema in action.  And let’s make sure they don’t think we are just good people, but that they know we love and follow the great God.  And how that same great God – revealed in Jesus - loves them.  

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Next blog: Surrender: Upside Down or Right Way Up?

Shema: Living Jesus Out Loud

I love watching Jesus at work. In Mark 12:28-34 we can see a Pharisaic scribe testing Jesus, and, in response, Jesus turns the tables of history.  Jesus begins in vv. 29-30 by quoting Deut. 6:4-5, known as ‘the Shema’, which is the Hebrew word for ‘hear’ - the core cry of the OT law and religion. 

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

This is what all Jews would chant as their confession of faith, their core value. It summarized their way of thinking. At the heart of their identity, it would be recited every morning and evening as part of the pious Jew’s prayer. It still begins the service every Sabbath in every synagogue of the world. 

Hear, O Israel. Listen up, people of God! Hear and remember. Remember that you are my covenant people, that I am your God – the God of your forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Remember that I am the God who fulfils the promises I made with you as part of our covenant. Hear, O Israel. 

…the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Yahweh, the Great I AM, is the one and only God. There is no other. He is – and there is only one of Him. He is not a pantheon of gods, He is not a multiplicity – one god for this, and another for that. He is not like any of the gods that were and are worshipped by surrounding nations. He is not to be mixed up with them, like a Buddhist Jesus, or Jesus, your spirit guide.  He is unique, unrivalled. He is one.  

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (as Mark adds) and with all your strength.  Love Him with all your heart: the seat of the will and the emotions, love Him to the core of your gut. Love Him with all your soul:  with every breath, your very life. Love Him with all your mind: with every thought, with the way you understand and look at things.  Love Him with all your strength:  with all your energy and resources.

The writer is simply saying, love God with utter devotion, unconditional surrender.

Then others will know that the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  They will know by our whole devotion, our surrender without reserve, our allegiance, our affection, our living Jesus – God revealed to us in man – living Him out loud. 

And Jesus, quoting Lev. 19:18, says, ”Love you neighbour as yourself.”  The practical application of Deut. 6:4-5.  First, always first, is loving God.  Then, out of that reality, we love others.  We can love because He first loved us.  Sound familiar?  Love for God should never stop short of loving others.  And loving others without truly loving God, is just a clanging cymbal. 

In one stroke, Jesus has condensed the 613 laws of the Old Testament into two supreme laws.  Love God.  Love others.

It reminds me of a doctor friend who’s spending herself for a community of poor, writing scripts, praying for the women, travelling to the slum despite 45 degree heat, choosing not to advance her own career, living Jesus out loud to others.  The Shema, extended NT mix!

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Next blog: Living Jesus Out Loud in the Heart of Africa

Living an 'ACTS' Life in South Sudan

Last year, I met some people whose lives fit into the ‘radical’ lifestyle that was the norm for those living in the church we see in the book of Acts.  He is a doctor working with refugees here in Australia.  She, an Occupational Therapist, is one of those people you automatically feel at home with, as if you’ve been sisters for life.

They have an incredible dream.  Heading toward the world’s youngest country, South Sudan, they plan to work amongst the broken and downtrodden.  In their own family mission statement they say:

“We believe God wants us to be His hands and feet amongst the people of South Sudan.  He has given us a clear mission as a family – to join with others in re-building South Sudan…

• By providing health care to women and children
• By promoting the value and values of God-honouring families
• By proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, in words and deeds
• By praying that God’s Name and His Ways would be honoured”

This second point might sound strange, but in a country where families are torn apart, kids are orphaned, fathers killed by war, to model a family that honours God is huge.  And this family, in their beautiful vulnerability, will do it well.  Sharing their skills, their lives, their resources, their faith… they would fit well into the church we find in Acts.

Check out their website:  www.servantsofsouthsudan.net

LIKE their Facebook page: The Poole Family in South Sudan https://www.facebook.com/#!/PooleFamilyInSouthSudan

For more information visit: www.pioneers.org.au
or see Pioneers of Australia Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/#!/pioneersau

Next blog: The Shema – Living Jesus Out Loud