When Have We Prayed about It?

Our ministry recently changed office locations. We had been in an office we loved for the past five years, surviving three landlords and no lease. Our landlord of the past two years asked us for a three-year lease, but we felt with our financial situation as a non-profit we could not agree. He let us stay . . . until he found someone for the space—which one day in early January appeared to be the case. The morning after an interested party traipsed though our office, picking out whose office would be whose, we decided not to wait for the vacate notice.

Within five hours we had found a wonderful, more functional space three times the size of our old office, for $600 less a month! A true miracle of God. But wait, we had not stopped and held an impromptu corporate prayer meeting to discern God’s will in this matter. We had not spent hours crying out to God on this issue. So what gives? Why the miracle with “little” prayer? As a prayer ministry, I almost felt embarrassed by this wonderful answer to prayer, with so little apparent prayer involved.

It got me thinking. I think in many believers lives—especially leaders—more prayer is taking place than you realize. Romans 8 talks a lot about living and walking in the Spirit. Verse 5 tells us that “those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” If you are a follower of Jesus Christ you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. If you are consciously intent on staying connected to Him, I suspect you have regular times of meeting with God, and you have moments throughout most days where regular thoughts about things turn into prayer. When a believer stays in this posture, the Spirit can speak to him or her, and can guide and direct, even if the person is not actively praying about a specific situation. A believer can “walk in the Spirit” and make Spirit-led decisions.

I long to see churches have regular corporate prayer meetings, and I long to see elder/deacon boards or large church staffs hold regular times of seeking God over the life of their ministry. But I also recognize that God can still lead and direct and bless . . . provided leaders have an ongoing prayerful, Spirit-led relationship with Him.

What’s my point? As a prayer leader or pastor, keep working to make prayer more at the forefront of your church, but don’t get so negative when it is not growing quite like you think it should. If your leaders are walking well with God in their personal lives, they can be led of the Spirit!

As for our miracle, I know that all our staff continually prays for increased territory for ministry, prays for God’s blessing over us, continually surrender our lives and ministry to Him. As we walk in that posture, God can do amazing things!

–Jonathan Graf is the publisher of PrayerShop Publishing and Prayer Connect magazine.