The power of prayer

 ‘May our hearts be broken by the things that break the heart of God.’ 
– Bob Pierce  

I have been mulling over the power of God’s Word and the power of prayer through the two weekly Bible study groups that I am involved in: one in a prison, where 25-30 guys come together on Friday afternoons, and one in an evening homegroup with twelve of us.

I find myself being regularly humbled by the obvious work of the Spirit in the lives of certain individuals in both groups and in their resulting prayer lives. They confidently claim God’s promises for others and themselves.

In our prison Bible study group, we recently finished the eight-week Bible Overview series from the Bible Society. One of the sessions was on Exile and Return, which intersected well with a series in my homegroup on Ezra and Nehemiah.

Prayer is at the core of this great story of exile and redemption: waiting on God, lamenting on our failures as a world and as individuals, trusting in God’s faithfulness and then confidently claiming His promises. We see many powerful seasons of prayer in all these books, but especially in chapter nine of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah. Here, we see three godly individuals with a sense of the great heart of God, catalysing the already promised redemption plans of God through their prayers.

I worked for World Vision for some years, and the words of its founder, Bob Pierce, are a great prayer for us all in prison ministry: 

‘May our hearts be broken by the things that break the heart of God.’

So, let us be praying.