Bold prayer for powerful ministry

One of my ministerial mentors told me once about being a young man in the Highlands of Scotland. He was in his twenties, and he was a very gifted man, and he was, for the first time, being invited to speak at one of these great outdoor Scottish Presbyterian gatherings. And he was nervous about it. They are driving up in an open-air jeep. As they get there, he can see the panorama, and he sees the hill that they are going to—and it is supposed to be green, but instead it is gray. And he is puzzled. And they draw near, and he turns to his driver and says, What happened to the hillside? And the driver goes, Oh, the grass is there. What you are seeing is the people on their faces, because we have a new young minister who will be preaching today. And I was not surprised when he then paused and said, I preached with power. No surprise at all.

Let us then pray, Father, there are obstacles. We have all kinds of limitations. We are not that strong. But Lord, would you give power to your Word? You know, churches that desire to really make a difference and to expand the ministry, as we should in a Christ-serving way, will often say, Where are the resources? And before we say, Well, we don’t have the resources, so we are not going to do it, we need to get on our knees and start praying about it and say, God, you are sovereign. We know that you want your churches to aggressively be reaching out. You want to be able to bring more people to the church. You want us to be more vigorously reaching out and ministering within the congregation—all those things. What we lack, would you provide? That is how a church becomes bold in ministry. What about on the individual level? What is it that enables a Christian marriage to be spiritually close, and, though we are sinners, to nonetheless minister in love? What is it that enables a family—a Christian family—to really be growing together, serving each other, knowing that Yes, we have problems, but we are keeping it together? One of the answers is that we ask the Lord to do that and to give it as we minister together in prayer. Jesus makes that great promise: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. And that is a promise specifically intended to be taken up for those—and by those—who are seeking to serve the Lord and his gospel.¹

Richard D. Phillips