From The Preacher
WARRIORS OR WORRY-ERS?
In some Christian circles, we speak of intercessors as “prayer warriors,” but not all are warriors; some are simply worry-ers. Once upon a time, a group of disciples began a spontaneous prayer vigil at sea when they sighted an ‘unidentified floating object’ (UFO) heading steadily in their direction. It was night, it was dark, it was cold, it was stormy, and they were without their Master. As they pierced fearfully through the darkness of night, they concluded that it was an alien being, and they were about to be attacked. At once, they broke out into a loud prayer meeting.
While they thus cried out – or prayed, dealing with the marine ghosts of the Galilee Sea, the mystery object, catching their voices, spoke back to them in human voice, “It is I; be not afraid” (Matthew 14:27). That wily ghost was about to add blasphemous impersonation to the tricks. One of the bolder men would not take chances, so he queried uncertainly, with a coded test, _“IF it is really you,…”_ (v.28, The Living Bible). He had to judge the voice again and the loving authority it claimed. But could it be true? Was it their Master that their fears had coloured as a ghost? If so, their desperate prayers had been unnecessary, being founded on fear rather than faith (James 5:5). They had been binding Galilee ghosts when they should have been singing welcoming hosannas to their Saviour from that threatening night storms.
If the Bible speaks about _“the prayer of faith”_ (James 5:5), it means that the opposite is also a possibility: the prayer of fear. It further means that God is concerned not only that we pray but also that we pray aright. He is concerned not only about our petitions but also about how we present them (Romans 8:26; James 4:3). The _“prayer of faith”_ and its opposites are all prayers, but one type is positive, the other is negative; and they do not carry the same potency. Frenzied ‘prayers’ arising out of fear, no matter how loud or long, are expressions of worry, not faith. Those that pray thus would be _worry-ers,_ not warriors, even where their acts might have been backed with vigils and fasting and loud voices.
The act of prayers is not what brings results; the person of the prayer (James 5:16) as well as the spirit of the prayer (James 4:3) are crucial to the integrity of the prayer. Sometimes we have wrongly prided ourselves in the loudness and length of our prayers as the guarantee for answers from God (Genesis 27:38; Matthew 6:7), but if there is no God to answer prayers, the ‘best’ and most ‘powerful’ prayers would be but a religious recreation. Not all supplicatory voices are the roar of warriors; some are the whimpers of worry-ers, even though they be faithful disciples contending the dark and the howling storms of night.
▪︎*From The Preacher’s diary*
The Preacher can be reached at: +2348035115164; +2348035115025; http://thepreacherdiary.com/; www.thepreacher.info
