How are you? How is your Bible reading? A cousin around your age once asked why we pray if God knows our needs. I’ve shared some reasons: He wants us to admit we need help and not be like a 2YO who insists on dressing themselves & gets everything backward, put their head through a sleeve, etc.; There is spiritual warfare so we pray God intervenes in a battle; He wants to see how bad we want it like you’ll see King Hezekiah did; etc.
King Hezekiah, in Isaiah 36-39 (and 2 Kings 18-20), faced 2 big problems. One was an enemy surrounding him. The other was that he was near death. Each time, he prayed.
Prophets told the future and preached God’s Word in the Old Testament. But, anyone could still pray if they followed God like Hezekiah did. In fact, the moment he became kig, he had torn down all the idols and altars to false gods. He may have asked why bad stuff happened if he was doing everything right. But, he didn’t waste time worrying. He went to God and relied on God’s power, not his own goodness. Isa. 64:6 says “All our righteousness is as filthy rags.” As good as we try to be, it’s nothing next to God’s perfection. We should still be good, so God hears our prayers and we earn blessings and rewards in Heaven. We should confess and forsake our sins when we mess up; Jesus is faithful to forgive and cleanse us.(1 John 1:9)
Youthquake was doing so well before this pandemic. Now we don’t even have camp this summer. The camp part is especially sad since so many need saved from their sins. This is why knowing your Bible is so crucial, though. Sure, there was sadness and frustration at first, but we realized we needed to pray, and knew examples like Hezekiah.
The first shows his prayer for deliverance in 2 Kigns 19:15-19 showing his prayer. Read it and see the complete trust he puts in God. Notice he lays out the letter the evil Assyrian king sent. This is to show God is personal – He sees everything – and also shows when we have no words (like some with camp being cancelled) we can rely on God to know our hearts and what we face. The second prayer, in 2 Kings 20, shows how childlike faith can move God. He wants to see how badly we want something that He wishes to give us.
God is longsuffering toward us (a fruit of the Spirit – He helps us to have the patience He has), not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance.(2 Peter 3:9) (I know Jenny, the 91YO I told about last week, will quote that when I tell her about camp.) This is one of the verses you can use praying to God that every person who would have been saved out at camp – and many more - trusts Jesus as Saviour anyway this summer. Sometimes, God wants to show us we don’t need fancy programs for His Spirit to work. We can show in our prayers we know that and that it’s God alone who gives us everything.
Now, of course He wants to use programs like Youthquake. We’ll have fun and great teaching again someday. Even now, the Holy Spirit lives in each believer, and you can grow in the Lord yourself. We use fun so kids come to hear the Gospel. But, you can share the Gospel with anyone, as I’ve shared. You can also pray for God’s Holy Spirit to work in peoples’ lives – not just so they hear about and trust Jesus as Saviour but so they can be free from sin, etc.. Then, the Spirit in you will become more sensitive to needs so you can pray. Once I felt led to pray for missionaries in Turkey for 2 straight weeks; in the middle of the night at times. I had no idea why but kept dong it till the Spirit stopped leading me. It turned out the family was in danger from a plot by radical Muslims to overthrow the government and start persecuting Christians. When the plot was stopped, that’s when I stopped feeling led to pray.
I wasn’t alone, God used a team of prayer warriors in different churches, but that’s how the Spirit unites us. So, pray for the above things like all the kids to trust Jesus as Saviour and for God to win in the spiritual battles I shared. Read those chapters, and pray for us. Sal and I will be back on the field someday. In the meantime, we should pray for each other, as the body of Christ.
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