A thought on prayer

In my spare time, I’ve been reading a book by Ron Dunn on prayer.  It’s called: “Don't Just Stand There, Pray Something.”  The subtitle is “The Incredible Power of Intercessory Prayer.”

I was really impacted by something in chapter 3 of the book.  Dunn tells a story of when he was very busy in his role of senior pastor of a growing church.  Admirably, he wanted to spend an hour in prayer and he decided that midnight was the best time for him to do so (a night owl!  A man after my own heart).  He goes on to describe that there was one particular night when he had a very hectic day.  He writes that he had not done anything that we might call “spiritual."  He hadn’t read his Bible or prayed at all that day; he simply had been too busy.

So at midnight he prefaces his prayer in a way that I think many of us would.  Here’s Dunn on page 47 of his book, “The first words out of my mouth were, “Lord, I know I have no right to ask You for anything tonight,” and I proceeded to apologize for being too busy to pray, read the Bible, or witness - too busy to do anything spiritual.”

As I said, I think a lot of times we Christians have this kind of attitude.  I know I have fallen into this kind of thinking at times in my own life.  But listen to what Dunn goes on to describe that God seemed to say back to him...

“If you had prayed for eight hours today and read the Bible on your knees for eight hours, and led fifty people to Christ, you would have no more right to pray than you do now!”  Dunn concludes his story with these words: “I looked down at the floor of the throne room and saw that it was sprinkled, not with the sweat of my good works, but with the blood of His sacrifice."

Kevin Bauer