On the offensive

A friend referred to a football concept as a model for prayer, as in defensive versus offensive prayer.

It is a great notion. A lot of our prayer, maybe most of it, is defensive: as in, “Lord I am battling to stand, our defenses are failing, please send in reinforcements; please help me”. That is the cry of someone under siege, defending their existence or the castle they occupy.

Offensive prayer is more like leaving our castle to take the fight to the enemy.

Another friend took his wife shopping, but someone stole her phone. It was an I-Phone, not easy to hack or convert, so the thief had limited options. My friend could also track the phone on his own I-Phone and knew where the phone had gone: deep into the dark, seedy heart of his city.

Nonetheless, they prayed for God to get the phone back. They felt they had to do something, even though the phone was insured.

He and a friend then set off fearlessly into the heart of darkness. En route, the thief phoned them to admit she had stolen the phone and wanted to give it back – and so it happened.

Now they could have prayed negatively, but they chose to take a stand and trust God for a better outcome. They could have just claimed on their insurance as we tend to do with our faith, but they chose to apply the authority of their faith.

What intrigues me in our faith is the level of defensive praying that happens. Yet, when God finished making the world, He told Adam and Eve to get on with it, to occupy and subdue the land. When the Jews reached the Promised Land, He said much the same to them.

Yet, in spite of Jesus having died for us and despite His also having risen again with the spoils of victory in His hand, the church is pretty defensive and generally inclined to ask God to go outside and do the necessary to give effect to what Jesus did. Did He ever do that? He told Moses to strike the rock, Joshua to attack the enemy, David to face the giant and so on. He rarely, if ever, intervenes directly, but directs us to act within His authority and power.

Our problem is we are expecting a divine intervention that is unlikely to come. He already intervened and if we can just get to terms with what He secured at the cross, we will take the land ahead of us, subdue God’s enemies, raise His banner over the land to reclaim all that we have lost.

Instead, we politely remember the time to place of the cross and surround that memory with pious prayers that effectively just keep it all fixed by its nails to what it was, not what it is.

What we should be doing is living in what He did, with courage, fire and conviction, for in Him we have all we need for life and Godliness.

(c) Peter Missing: bethelstone@gmail.com