Last week I wrote of the importance of Scripture reading. I believe prayer is an equally essential and necessary component for cultivating a healthy life and progressing towards spiritual maturity. Prayer is complicatedly simple. Frustratingly refreshing. It is one of the hardest easiest things for me to do.

Too often I make excuses as to why I am apprehensive to go to the Lord in prayer. Like I need to prepare my heart and get myself in order and prove to God that I love him before I approach him in prayer.

Foolish. So foolish. The work of Christ didn’t tear the veil so that my pride and short sightedness could sew it up again. I go to the Lord in prayer precisely because he has already made me clean. Sometimes I picture the Holy Spirit knocking on my head saying, “Hello, Hello. Anybody home? Think McFly, think!”

I’ve often heard the question that if God loves us and knows everything we need before we even ask, then why do we pray. I like George McDonald’s answer. He says, “What if [God] knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need-the need of himself? What if the good of all our smaller and lower needs lies in this, that they help drive us to God? Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other needs; prayer is the beginning of that communion.”

There was a story that drove home the importance of prayer and reading Scripture to me that I read recently in the book “Liberating Ministry From the Success Syndrome” by Kent and Barbara Hughes. It goes like this.

“Some years ago a young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job. “That depends,” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you fell this tree.” The young man stepped forward and skillfully felled a great tree. Impressed, the foreman exclaimed, “Start Monday!”
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by, and Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on the way our today.”
Startled, he replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.” Normally we do,” answered the foreman, “but we’re letting your go today because you’ve fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show you’ve dropped from first place on Monday to last on Wednesday.”
“But I’m a hard worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last, and even have worked through my coffee breaks!”
The foreman, sensing the boy’s integrity, thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you been sharpening your ax?”
The young man replied, “I’ve been working too hard to take the time.” (p. 71)

Yikes! Let us not be among those who fail to take the time to go to the Lord and pray, filling ourselves up with his Word, so that we are well equipped to labor for him. If we are relying on our own strength, our ax will grow dull quickly, and we likely grow weary in our well doing. Either that or grow hard hearted out of frustration. Either way leads to a hallowed out ministry and ultimately a heart heavy with regret.

God has a better path for us. Let us walk that path. Let us take time to sharpen our proverbial ax.

Big Jesus Love. Start the year off right.

 “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” ~John Bunyan.

***On a separate note, it is Lori’s birthday today. Let’s help her New Year’s resolution of keeping her email inbox clean as difficult as possible by filling it up with Happy Birthday emails!

lori@realhopeforhaiti.org