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The Need for Faith

Often the content of our prayers are centered on personal struggles, sickness in our families, or dreams and desires that we have. Those are good and important things to pray about, but were those the things the early church prayed for?

I had a professor in college who made a striking observation. "Sometimes we spend more time praying for Christians to stay out of heaven than we do praying for new people to be ushered into Heaven."

In today's reading, you're going to look at two examples of prayers from the early church. The first section is from Acts, and it catches the community of Jesus followers being pursued by a group of people who were trying to persecute them. When they prayed, notice that they didn't focus their prayers on deliverance from their difficulties.

Rather, they prayed that God would enable them to be bold witnesses for Jesus. What would change if we started praying for boldness as much as we pray for escape from painful situations?

The other reading for today comes from a letter that Paul wrote to some dear friends in a church he helped plant. In this part of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, he says a prayer that his friends would know Jesus better. What would change if we started to pray this first for the people in our lives?

Sometimes our faith can feel stale and that God isn’t doing anything in our lives. I wonder if part of that is because we’re not doing things that actually require faith in an all-powerful God. If we start praying like the two examples from our reading today, I can almost guarantee that we will no longer have a stale faith and that God will work in powerful ways.

Prayer Prompts:

• Ask God for boldness so you can be the kind of witness He desires you to be.
• Talk to God about a person or situation you feel He is calling you to as a witness.
• Ask God to take control over specific areas of your life that you have been holding back.
• Ask God to help you always to center your life around prayer with Him.