The Pray Big Initiative is meant to challenge each of us in the WT Global community to increased prayer for new workers. We know, and we believe that it is ultimately God who raises up new workers. He may use us in that process, but we are a dependent people.
I love the very first chapter title: Prayer is dependent, and Begg’s very first statement: “To pray is an admission and an expression of dependence.” Dependency is where it all starts.
However, that’s where our struggle also starts. In our devotional reading this morning, Rebecca and I came across this comment: “The thought that any fallen human being would be able to perform his or her way into acceptance with God has to be the most insane of all delusions. Yet we all tend to think that we are more righteous than we are, and when we think this, we have taken the first step to embracing the delusion that maybe we’re not so bad in God’s eyes after all.”
Dependency strikes deep to our sense of self-sufficiency, our ‘competency’ to do the work to which the Lord has called us. It’s not through mustering more prayer that more workers will join us. Though, yes, we do need to pray more to the God of the harvest. Our hope is in Him, and all our prayers are a humble expression of our worship and thanks, pleading with Him to be faithful to His promises.
Let’s pray together the prayer that Alistair Begg wrote at the end of that first chapter of Pray Big:
“Father, thank you for the privilege of addressing you in this way. Help me to remember that the Lord Jesus obtained this access for me through his death on the cross. Please help me to remember that I am entirely dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit as I pray, and entirely dependent on you in my life in every way. Help me to learn to pray as I pray for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”
Filed under: Dependency, Mobilization, Prayer |
Thoughts Along The Journey 
“Dependency strikes deep to our sense of self-sufficiency.”
It helps us to move from prayers telling God what we want Him to do for us to waiting and listening in prayer to find out what God wants to do for us and through us.
I need this reminder often as I shift in from self-confidence to God-confidence.
Part of reading Pray Big together is meant to encourage us to greater dependency on God, and having others remind us of prayer infused with Scripture and where we pray the Gospel to take root deeper and deeper in our hearts.