Prayer is Work

Prayer itself is not hard, but the will to pray is.

Calvin Miller, A Hunger for the Holy

I confess that even as a life-long missionary, prayer has been hard for me. I appreciated so much working w

ith a teammate in South America who would ask me to pull over to the side of the road before we arrived at a Bible study we would lead. I would ask him what was wrong and he would say “Let’s pray”. Does that mean I didn’t pray before the study? No. But it was often the prayer at the house before we began the study. Or it was the prayers at the beginning of the week when I prayed for the different studies. The truth is, prayer was more utilitarian for me. I was about the work of God and prayer didn’t seem like “work”. But I think we all know that prayer is work.

To missionary author Elisabeth Elliot, “Intercession is the hardest work in the world--the giving of one's self, time, strength, energy, and attention to the needs of others in a way that no one but God sees, no one but God will do anything about, and no one but God will ever reward you for."

One of the reasons I love working with EnterMission is that we immerse ourselves in the word, we ask questions, we thirst together in community and we enter into a school of prayer. Our students spend time over several weeks going out, choosing someone from the crowd to observe and then praying for them. We call them, behind the back prayers. While the people go on about their day, we are working at prayer. Oh Lord, teach us to pray.