Day 4

Today's Quote

The best prayers often have more groans than words.

- John Bunyan

INTERCEDE for the oppressed! Drive through an area of the city you typically avoid - places where the street people gather, neighbor-hoods that have high crime. Can you feel the oppression? Can you hear the cries?

Prayer Exercise: Adopt a section of the city or some group - widows, the disabled, veterans, single moms, an ethnic or immigrant group. Put them on the family prayer list. Ask God to intervene to meet both their spiritual and material needs.

PRAYING

...with wet eyes and a passionate heart!

Then the children of Israel ... cried out; and their cry came up to God ... God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant (Exodus 2:23-24).

Lord, we have come to see that saying a prayer is one thing and praying is quite another. We also realize that crying out is beyond praying, a different form of prayer. We confess that we are rather uncomfortable with such passion. We have grown used to well-ordered prayer and worship gatherings. We dislike disruptive, heart-wrenching cries. Sedate and sweet spiritual encounters have allowed us to attract upscale worshippers. But we sense that something is amiss. Something is awry. It is not the bizarre for which You long, nor the eccentric that excites You. Yet we lack the authentic and deep yearning that causes us to break rank and run for the water hole like a thirsty pilgrim. Our eyes are dry. Our prayers for a desperately needed revival are polite requests delivered with an indifference that renders them benign. They betray us. Our lack of passion signals that we can live without the revival we say we seek. Forgive us. We are numb. We have been sedated by the world and we don't recognize the degree to which we are under its influence. May we cry again, "Deliver us, O God Save our sons and daughters. Send a mighty outpouring of Your Spirit." May we do more than pray. May we cry out to You, O God. Shatter the silence. Shake up the polite deadness. Embolden someone among us to emerge from control of the worldly anesthetic. Let it be me. May I lift my voice in passionate prayer until You revive Your church. May I join my pastor and others as we desperately seek Your face. Amen.