Prayer

If you look at your news feed and wish God would move, keep reading to learn how to pray the news and why we should pray the news. Can prayer make a difference in current events? Yes. Our prayers make a difference in greater ways than we can imagine. According to Scripture, the prayer of a righteous man is both effective and powerful. If that’s true, and we believe it is, we must be vigilant observers of our culture and the world around us. We must look for opportunities to invite God into current events and troubling situations and ask Him to intervene. The Prophet Elijah was a great example of prayer’s impact on the culture. At the urging of God, he prayed there would be no rain in ancient Israel and it didn’t rain for more than three years. (James 5:17,18). Scripture is filled with examples of world-changing prayers. What Does it Mean to Pray the News Christians, if we believe prayer is powerful, we should pray the news. As we scroll through news feeds (not social media feeds but actual NEWS), a variety of stories will capture our attention. It’s vital to know the difference between fake and real news. SNOPES.com or other online fact-check source can verify accuracy or lack of accuracy.    When we see troubling news items, our first response may be to question, “Can pray make a difference in current events?” Instead, consider how God might want to become involved in the stories you read. What intervention would bring glory to Him and line up with Scripture? Has God intervened in a similar situation in Scripture before? When you have an idea of what God’s done before and His potential plan, pray Scripture over the situation. We’ll give examples below. Can prayer make a difference in culture or current events? It depends on how you view prayer, how you view God, and how you pray. What is prayer? The Online dictionary defines prayer as “a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship,” or an “earnest hope or wish.” We define prayer as a conversation with the One who loves us most, Almighty God Himself. Want to know how to pray the news? Start with relationship. When we choose to follow Jesus, we choose a relationship intended to be intimate and loving. The Bible, God’s word, is, in a way, a letter from God to those He loves. It’s designed so we learn more about Him when we read what He’s said. Conversation, or prayer, is the natural response to time spent in His Word.  We learn to know Him through time spent with Him in conversation and through a faithful life of obedience. Talking with God, or prayer is not limited by space, time, or whether or not a Bible is in our hand. God is omnipresent (everywhere at once) and omniscient (knows everything at once). God is wherever we are and knows whatever we’re doing. He sees what we see and hears what we hear. Our Lord is with us. What prayer is not… As important as what prayer is in regard to how to pray the news is what prayer is not. Prayer is not the token we insert into the cosmic dispenser of wants and desires with the expectation that whatever we ask will mysteriously appear. It is not the command of a general to a lower ranking soldier with instant obedience expected. It is the humble request of a rank recruit requesting a favor of a 5-star general, the request of a child snuggled in the lap of a beloved daddy. Can prayer make a difference in current events? If we pray as Jesus prayed, it can. His disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. His response (Matthew 6:9-13) focused more on who God is and what He wants than our desires and needs. Jesus began prayer with worship and honor to God, followed with a request for God’s will, and, only then did He move into personal requests. Jesus asked for needs, rather than wants. Our prayers should follow that same formula. Why we should pray the news: The God who loved us enough to send His Son (John 3:16), who forgives our sins and carries our burdens (Psalm 68:19), cares about us. He’s concerned about the things that concern us. God desires righteousness and justice and, according to Scripture, is involved in the affairs of men in significant ways. Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.” If God can change the heart of a king, do we want Him to change it to a focus on righteousness and justice? Certainly, we do. Do you still wonder why we should pray the news or can prayer make a difference in current events? According to the apostle Paul, the answer is yes, prayer can make a big difference. The most important reason to combine prayer and politics or prayer and current events, however, is not because we think it will help. We pray the news and for current events because God commands it. “First of all, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:1-4 How to Pray the News Regardless of our political party or ideological preference, we are to pray for those in authority whether we agree with their policies or not. Those “authority figures” include elected officials, political appointees, and law enforcement officials, as well as managers and administrators in offices, teachers and administrators in schools, pastors, elders, and

Sam Wiley was my farm manager and “do everything” person for twenty-eight years. He was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met and a secret romantic. Sam brought me more flowers than any other man, although he picked them all from my yard. He loved children and animals and gardening. Unfortunately, Sam believed there were some jobs that women should never do. It took years for me to convince him to let me drive my own tractor. Use a chainsaw? Unthinkable. Bushhog? Not an option. Engine repair? Mechanics? Not fit for a woman. Sam taught me lots of things, but how to run the farm without him wasn’t one of them. He died in November 2017. Now I do the work he used to do. Well, I try. The insanely steep learning curve If I’m honest, I’m not that great at it. I don’t know how to hook the bush-hog onto the tractor and, even if I managed to get it hooked up, I don’t actually know how to bush-hog. The list of skills I don’t have is far longer than that of the skills I have. One thing I know how to do is string barbed-wire. I can fix a fence and make it tight. I believe I can build a fence from start to finish, but I haven’t actually done that yet. One step at a time. This winter, I had more days than I like to admit when I thought, “I should give up. This is too hard. I’m not this tough.” I look at the scars on my hands, the barbed wire scratches, and the stains ground into my skin and wonder if I want to be this tough. At my lowest point, something always happens that says, “Yes. Stay the course.” The fence-check I had one of those moments last Sunday. I woke up with a strong impression that I should check the fence around the horse pasture. This was a foolish prayer, but I prayed, “Lord, I’m glad to check the fence, but I promised You I wouldn’t work on Sunday. If it needs fixing, I’ll do it on Monday.” Yeah, right. After church, I pulled on my jeans and boots and headed to the pasture, armed only with a pair of pliers. I’m just checking the fence, not fixing it, I told myself, so I left wire and clips in the barn. Halfway around the pasture, I began to feel smug. All the wire was intact and tight. A few yards further along, I found a bad surprise. A big tree had fallen on the fence and smashed all four strands of barbed wire to the ground. The crash broke the wire down the line in several places. A gaping hole in the fence was big enough for the largest horse to walk through without scraping her sides. I didn’t dare leave it. The only option My non-existent options didn’t look good, but I tried to make a plan that didn’t involve returning to the barn for supplies. If I could get one strand loose, I could run it across the expanse and keep the horses in while I went to get a roll of barbed wire, I decided. This, of course, required me to get the wire out from under the trunk of the tree. It was bigger around than my thigh. I tugged, pushed, and tried to lift it without success. My next idea was to chop the tree in half using my pliers. I managed to knock off some bark but, after five minutes of pointless stabbing, I gave up on that idea, too. Finally, I realized I had only one option. Leave the hole. Go back to the barn and get wire and clips, and hope the horses stay in the pasture instead of wandering onto the neighbor’s property. The unlikely prayer I was already praying nonstop, but I stopped to pray again. “Lord, I need to fix this fence, but I have to have wire and I’m afraid the horses will wander right out of this hole while I’m gone. Please help me and show me what to do.” As prayers go, it wasn’t fancy. I didn’t rebuke any enemies. I didn’t offer suggestions for miraculous interventions. I just asked for help and wisdom and left the figuring-it-out to God. I stood there a moment, waiting to see if He would drop an intact fence from the sky, but He didn’t. Get going. Those two words rang in my heart. I was hesitant but I started walking down the fence line again. Pretty soon, I found one more patch of broken wire. My heart sank. The incredible answer After another few steps, I stopped in my tracks. A partial roll of barbed wire hung from a fence post. Heavy wire, suitable to make fencing clips, dangled from it. Everything I needed was already there. I stood in stunned silence for a moment. Sam was too sick the last few years to walk the fence. If he left it there, and he must have, it was several years ago. The wire was in place, years before the day I needed it. Because there wasn’t much wire on the roll, the weight was manageable and the roll easily portable. I lifted it off the post and started fencing. Just as He always does, when I didn’t know what to do, I prayed and God answered. He showed me how to get the wire freed from the smashing tree without cutting it. He gave me superhuman strength to lift the tree just enough to drag the wire from under it. In less than two hours, I was done and the fence was tight. Nothing is impossible with God This year, I faced the seemingly impossible more than once but the verse “Is anything too hard for Me?” always came to mind. (Jeremiah 32:27) The answer, every time, was no. Nothing is too hard for our Lord. Nothing is impossible.  I’ve seen this

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]My first experience with a Lenten fast was nearly two decades ago. A friend of mine, from a more liturgical denomination, pondered aloud what she would fast for several weeks before Ash Wednesday. The act of abstaining from something helped focus her mind on God. The discipline served as a tool of refinement and preparation for celebrating the joy of Easter. The idea of preparing my heart to fully appreciate the passion of Christ appealed to me, so I joined her for my first Lenten fast. Those forty days changed my life, and I learned a vital truth. God does something significant in response to sincere, dedicated prayer and fasting. It’s not always what I expect (or want) but it’s important. Forty days is a long time, and fasting something significant for that duration is hard. My friend taught me it’s much easier to fast something she felt called to by God. It’s also easier if the fast is linked to a prayer focus. Forty days of spiritual discipline requires all the faith and dedication we can muster. It also requires the help and strength of God, so it’s not something we should enter into lightly. Over the last few weeks before my first Lenten, I thought about fasting quite a bit, and a sense of anticipation steadily built. A prayer focus came to mind and God confirmed it over and over again. Why participate in Lent? Discipline is a vital part of the life of the disciple and fasting is something Jesus expected his disciples would do. (Matthew 6:16) His forty-day fast before He began His public ministry was a time of sacrifice, testing, and preparation. The complete surrender of His desires and needs set the tone for the rest of His earthly life. Our surrender of desire and dedicated focus on prayer is a time of testing, refinement, and preparation in our lives, as well. If your faith background is non-liturgical, you may not be familiar with Lent, but this might be the year to learn more. Consider a simple fast of a single item or a single activity during the next forty days. Use the time you’d spend to focus on the gift Christ gave on the cross and to draw closer to Him. What should I fast? People traditionally fast anything from sweets to meat to bread to shopping to social media. Some people even fast chocolate. Isaiah 58 describes the fast God desires as a sin fast when we obtain from a judgmental, critical spirit. The sin fast is the hardest fast of all. A “full” fast, of no food, is a rigorous trial and not something I recommend. No one should fast food and water, as going without hydration can be deadly if prolonged, even though Jesus did this fast.  The “limited” fast, of a single food or food group or a single activity, is most common. Others do a “Daniel fast,” based on his fast of “rich food” when he was first taken to Babylon. According to Scripture, he ate fruit and vegetables and drank only water. (Daniel 1:12) Our choice of fast should be guided by God. As James promised, if we need wisdom, including in the selection of a fast, God will give it. (James 1:5) What if I accidentally break my fast? I’m not perfect. On occasion, I unintentionally ate something I was fasting before I thought about it, especially at the beginning of a fast. I didn’t stop my efforts, though. Instead, I apologized to God, picked back up where I left off and finished the allotted time. The discipline is not a time for condemnation, but for reconciliation with and dedication to God. Will fasting change my life? Will a dedicated period of prayer and fasting change your life? Absolutely. Participation in Lent has almost always accomplished something significant in my life. It’s allowed me to forgive, release hurts, love the unlovely, embrace a deeper walk of faith.  Only God knows what He plans to accomplish in you, but one thing is certain. He will not leave you the same.  When should I start? Lent is designed to be an intimate time with God, not an opportunity to broadcast your spirituality to your friends and neighbors. Limit information about your fast to those to whom you will be accountable. There’s no time like the present to begin a deeper walk of faith. Why not start today to embrace discipline and strengthen your prayer life. You’ll be glad you did. “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face,  so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:16-18 [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]You might also enjoy reading: Proper Prayer Begins by Taming the Tongue  When We’re Finally Sick of Our Own Sin… Memorizing Scripture… and Jesus Is it Possible to Walk the Blameless Path?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Your shares and likes help extend my digital reach. It does even more when you pin to Pinterest. Heres’s a pinnable image I hope you’ll pin. Thanks so much for helping!![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”67272″ media_width_percent=”75″ media_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.leannahollis.com%2Flent-learning-love-discipline%2F||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]If you’re looking for an in-depth, life-changing Bible study for the Lenten period, consider the new James study, now available in an e-book format from Amazon.com [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]