What is prayer? Prayer is power, prayer is our highway to God. The pastor at The Antioch, the church I attend in Waco, put things perfectly today. He said that we are all like prisoners. We are bound by a set of bars that represent our issues, our problems, our depression, our anxiety, our worries. We pull on those bars with all of our might in hopes to be set free. But little do we realize that all we have to do was push. And just what is that push?
Prayer.
Just imagine all of the things that we could do through prayer. Imagine masses of people, standing together, joined by one common bond: God. How different would the world look today if instead of fighting, arguing and disagreeing, we simply took the time to pray together? Or how about when a shooting occurs and everyone puts a temporary filter on their profile picture, uses the #PrayFor____ hashtag, and moves on with life as if they actually did anything to help the situation? Sure, we may not physically be able to help a situation sometimes, but through our spirituality, we could work wonders.
I know of a woman who had stage four cancer-- all of the doctors told her that there was no way that she would live. They told her that in a matter of weeks, her life would be gone. She didn’t believe them for a single second, because she had faith in the Lord. Every day, many members from her church would circle around her bed and pray over her. As days went on, she got better and better until eventually the cancer was gone. The doctors couldn’t believe it.
You see, our relationship with God is all rooted within how we view God. If we view God as just an OK guy, then our faith would limit us to believe that He was capable of only doing OK things. However, if we view Jesus as our Lord and Savior, the One who heals sickness, fixes the broken and overcomes adversity, then we have a whole ‘nother thing going for us. If we view Jesus as the one who can part the seas and defeat all sin and darkness, then we have another thing coming. But most importantly, if we view Jesus as our savior who sets us free and breaks our chains then we will be UNSTOPPABLE. You see, with faith, we can move mountains. When Jesus walked through villages, people would come from all around just to touch the tip of his robe with hope to be saved. They wholeheartedly believed that a mere touch would change their lives. And guess what? It did. Jesus rewarded them for their faith-- the faith that brought healing and allowed them to be saved.
Now if Jesus could bring people out of leprosy and cancer and terminal diseases because of their faith, what could He do in this world if only we poured an ounce of trust into Him? What could He do if we got down on our knees and prayed together for this world and for those around us? The answer is, He would perform wonders. Our God will hear us and will answer our prayers. All we have to do is give him a shout.
So to everyone reading this, I leave you with a challenge: Pick a person in your life and pray for that person every single day. Just watch how their life changes because I can assure you that if you simply believe, things WILL be different. We may not be able to do all things, but our God can do it all. And that is the beauty of it.
