Prayer is one of the most dangerous activities you can ever do. Be careful with prayer, it can move mountains and it can even make you move!
I have never really understood how Jesus could say that a prayer could move a mountain. He had to be kind of nuts to say something like that. Jesus truly believed in the power of prayer. He tried to teach his disciples about the power of prayer. He tries to teach us about the power of prayer still today. But, what sort of mountains can be moved by my prayers?
A little warning.
This article is 100% harmless reading. It will not do anything to you and it will not danger you at all. But, you are warned… if you actually start to pray it is dangerous. It will have an enormous impact on your life. Read with caution and be prepared!
Prayer takes you close to God
Prayer is not an activity that can only be performed at a special location, in a special house, during a special hour or something like that. You can speak to God wherever you are, whenever you are there. As you pray you speak to God, but prayer is also about how God speaks to you. The more you speak with God, the better you get to know him. And it is interesting to see how we are impacted and influenced by the people surrounding us, both for the good and bad. Luckily being with God will influence us in a positive way.
In James 4:8 we can read „Come near to God and he will come near to you.” In the Bible we are promised that God will draw near to us as we draw near to Him. The level of intimacy is therefore resting on my shoulders, since I decide to what degree I want to draw close to God.
God reveals himself in prayer
We can read about God and get to know him as we read the Bible. But, we can also get to know God in prayer. Some of my greatest revelations about God has not come through Bible reading, but during prayer. These revelations always needs to be based on Scripture (since no new revelation I have can say something about God that the Bible doesn’t support), but I have often experienced that God has revealed Scripture passages to me when I pray. I might just walk around speaking to God when suddenly out of nothing he shoots at me with a Bible passage and suddenly it feels as if the light was turned on. Few moments in life are more beautiful than such experiences!
A quiet explosion
Close your eyes for ten seconds and think about prayer. What do you see? What do you hear?
We have so many different pictures coming at us as we say the word prayer. Maybe an old lady saying The Lords Prayer? A hippie from the Jesus Movement praying loudly whatever comes to his mind? Someone sitting hidden away in a closet with their hands folded?
I grew up praying to God „inside my head.” That was my style of prayer. Then I got into another church where praying was done out loud. That was like a revolution for me, and it was hard to pray out loud in the start. How could I pray out loud in front of other people? With time I got used to this form of prayer and truly enjoyed it. It also helped me focus on prayer and actually praying (as it was much easier for my mind to fly away somewhere else as I prayed only with my mind, without using my voice).
Even though I like praying out loud, one most not forget about the importance of being quiet. Praying isn’t just about telling God everything you want him to know. We need to learn the art of being quiet, to listen to him. Some of my greatest experiences from prayer origin from such moments when I just walked around quietly with God. I remember once I felt him whisper to me: „You are a great guy Sigbjorn.” I of course knew that from before, but still… Such experiences can be mind-blowing!
God will take control of your heart
I said that it is dangerous to pray. That isn’t just a slogan. It is true. Swimming together with alligators or eating your lunch pack in a lions den are dangerous activities. Praying is also a dangerous activity, but in a different way.
Have you ever complained about something in the house/flat where you live? Why aren’t there some fresh flowers around here? It would be nice with more pictures on the wall! You can complain and come with ideas all the time, but in the end you will often end up doing the actual job yourself.
It is so cool to see how God turns me into the prayer answer of my very own prayers. He will not only turn me into a prayer answer for my own prayers, but also to the prayers prayed by other believers (and non-believers). When you see someone suffer you will often react like Jesus did, with empathy, with sorrow and with a helping hand. It will not be easy to see people suffer around you anymore, after all Jesus lives in your heart and He is love. True love does not say good bye to a hungry person with a „God bless you.” True love always call for action and looks for solutions. I said prayer is a dangerous activity!
Standing on holy ground
There are lots of reasons for why praying is a dangerous activity. But on my list of five reasons I will end by mentioning how our God is a holy God. He is perfect. He is without blame and He is purity himself. As we come before God we must never forget that we come before a spotless God. We do not need to fear Him, but still we need to fear Him. This is a paradox in the Bible. The fear of God is a topic that is covered in big books, so I will not try to shorten it down to three sentences here. But, I want to say the following:
Let us not make God such a fantastic buddy of ours that we forget about the fact that he is the most holy, the creator of heaven and heart, the beginning and the end. Some make God too casual, while others make God so holy and distant that they forget about how God became man, lived among us and he is still walking around with us every day right now, wherever we go.
I am not sure where you are at, but let us try to combine the mixture of casual and holy and bring it into our relationship with God. Quite a task, isn’t it?
Where do you go from here?
Jesus died on the cross, because he loves us. He wants to be with us so much more than we want to be with him. The next time you enter the dangerous war room, the prayer room, do not forget about that! He chose you, he wants you and he desires to be with you!
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