Embrace the Call
Can I be perfectly honest with you? I have been resisting God’s call on my life to pray. Oh, I’ve been praying, and I’ve been writing these Prayer Nuggets every month. I’ve led or been an active member of prayer groups for years now – not to mention joining in corporate prayer times at church. What I have shared in these monthly messages hasn’t just been something I thought sounded good – it’s all been real for me. So, how can I say I’ve been resisting the call to pray? The difference is in just doing it or embracing it, truly making it my own.
Philippians 3:12 “Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own.” AMP
When the church to which I belonged many years ago announced the formation of intercessory prayer groups, I eagerly attended the first session. As the leader ministered on prayer and intercession, including counting the personal cost of praying this way for others, I remember thinking to myself, “How could I not be willing to do this? Jesus interceded for me by dying on the cross. Should I do less?” This was one of those pivotal moments in my walk with the Lord, when He did something major in me that I didn’t recognize. As time has gone on, I have not always felt the burning zeal of my response that night, and have let my feelings determine my prayer response, affecting the people the Lord would have had me pray for, and affecting me.
Through the many years since then, I have been involved in prayer in a variety of settings within my own church and within the greater body of Christ. There have been some really great times of prayer, where I felt a strong unction and found it almost effortless to pray, and there have been long, dry seasons, where prayer was a “have to” thing I did. I have read many good books about prayer and intercession, and about great men of prayer, such as George Mueller and Rees Howells. While being impressed by what God did as a result of their prayers, I knew I was unwilling to live the kind of life that they lived which allowed them to walk in that place of prayer and authority, so I felt guilty and condemned. Still, I kept praying individually and with the different groups God had led me to join.
When my father died a few years ago, a season of my life came to a very abrupt end. With caregiving no longer a major part of my life, suddenly I was left wondering what I was to be about. I continued to do all the other things I’d been doing, but cried out for the Lord to show me my purpose. It took more than a year for me to hear Him say clearly that He had called me to intercession. You’d think I would have rejoiced to hear His plan for me, but that’s not the case. Instead of asking Him to clarify what that would look like for me, I assumed I would have to spend 8 hours every day secluded in my house doing nothing but praying. While some of you might find this to be an absolutely wonderful life, I thought I would shrivel up if I tried to live this way. It took some time for me to see that, indeed, I would have been miserable trying to do it like that, for it was not God’s plan for me at all. My expectation was all wrong. His plan is for me to pray and intercede on special projects in different ways than great intercessors of the past or the present. He has not called me to follow His plan for them, but to follow His plan for me!
Once I understood, I accepted this call He had given me, but I didn’t lay hold of, grasp, and make my own that for which He created me. I didn’t embrace it with my whole heart for the rest of my life, for there was still a part of me that wanted to do other things, too. In His wonderful mercy, and to get things settled in my heart, the Lord took me all the way to China. Part of my trip included an 8-session prayer conference in Hong Kong, in which I participated fully with the others in praying out God’s plans and purposes for China and His church. During the teaching in the final session, however, the Holy Spirit brought such conviction upon me concerning my resistance to embracing God’s call to prayer and intercession that I cried out in repentance. Again in His great love and mercy, He met me there, completely removing whatever that obstacle had been. It’s not that I knew by feeling, but as the hours and days passed, I began to see things differently, and my mindset about prayer has been changed. The only way I know how to describe it is that I’ve been waking up inside. With the Holy Spirit’s help, I have now and forever embraced God’s call on my life to pray, being willing to fight the good fight of faith to continue in His life for me. Though I know God will involve me in many other things, first and foremost I will pray. It is, after all, that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me and made me His own, and there is nothing greater I can do.
Dear Father, help each one of us to hear You clearly and then embrace (lay hold of, grasp, and make our own) that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of us and made us His own! In Jesus’ name, Amen.
© Copyright 2008 Kay V. Stocking
