Pray What You Mean. Mean What You Pray.

We start meetings with prayer.  We end meetings with prayer.  Because that is what we do. And the middle, well, that is where the substance is supposed to be.  The meat.  The main course.  Until it isn’t. 

It was the most ordinary of ordinary chapel talks in the middle of an ordinary week.  Yes, probably, some students scrolled on their phones or snoozed in their seats, waiting for the Amen and lunch to follow. 

Even the speaker thought he had bombed his talk. Nothing witty or monumental.  He was, after all, just the assistant coach of the men’s soccer team.  Few positions rank lower than that.

He finished with prayer, as all such chapel services must end.  The worship team didn’t really even listen to his concluding words, getting their instruments and mikes ready for a final song…and then go out for lunch together as was their custom.

He prayed something like this:  “Holy Spirit, if You spoke to anyone…would you produce fruit in this room, in these souls, in these minds and these hearts?  Do a new thing in our midst.  Revive us by Your love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Words from his heart.

A final song.  The platform emptied, the crowds dispersed ….except for about 18 students who stayed behind to pray.  One young man told his story of repentance and coming to faith.  And then, as one young woman who was there said, the atmosphere suddenly shifted and things began to change. 

Other students drifted back into the chapel.  And then a few more.  The worship band, now back from lunch, began to play again. Worship broke out.  And lasted for weeks.

The extraordinary came through the door, occupied every pew, and flowed down the aisles.

It started with a prayer.  It always does.  And God delights to surprise us.  Again.

The young speaker had no idea when he prayed those words “revive us” what God was up to, and how God would grab that request and run with it. 

The revival of Asbury College 2023 did not just happen.  Not just an emotional response to a powerful sermon, but a spiritual awakening from the Holy Spirit, after what the speaker considered a rather mediocre talk. No one saw it coming.

But this week, I met and spoke to a young woman, freshly graduated from Asbury only a few years ago.  The outbreak did not surprise her.  “We had always heard about the revival at Asbury way back in 1970.  The whole time I was a student there, we prayed for it to come again.”

The chapel speaker simply tied up the service with prayer.  Are we even aware of what we pray?  Of the power of the LORD that wraps itself around our prayers?  Are we sensitive to the seriousness of praying to the Almighty? Do we have any idea what God does with fervent prayer?

The prayer of the righteous has great power as it is working.  James 5. 16

So then why are we amazed when God unfolds something like this?

Pray what you mean.  Mean what you pray.

We should not be surprised that God “answers” prayer, but how He responds, in ways far beyond our expectations and never in singular outcomes.  It is not that our prayers are more powerful than we know, but God is.  It is not that we make things happen by praying, but God who responds.

Through prayer, God invites us into His mighty work and the wonders of the universe.

“Where there is such prevailing prayer, something is bound to happen,” wrote Corrie ten Boom in her little book Amazing Love in 1953.

And amazement seized them all,

    and they glorified God

    and were filled with awe, saying,

“We have seen extraordinary things today.”

                                   Luke 5. 26

And all God’s people said, “Wow!”

Pray that way.