A Deceitful and Sinful Lack of Prayer

I have a confession to make.

I have been fooling you all along.

If you go to College Park Church, you know me. I am the one in choir who stands pretty much front and center (I was put there I promise! I did not choose it!) and…moves…a lot…all the time… Its an exuberance I can’t really hold back. The Gospel is so freeing and so amazing and God’s love so inconceivable that I personally can’t help but be excited about it, enthusiastic about it, smile about it, sing about it.

But that joy has been a selfish joy. I am happy God has saved ME. I am joyful he has taken me from MY sin and claimed ME as his own so that I can claim MY inheritance. The joy is genuine, but it is incomplete, it is insufficient. It is not completely founded in God’s heart.

Why?

I have no heart for the nations.

Pastor Nate preached on Sunday and made a thrust with the sword of the spirit when he said that God is a glowing hot ember of love for the nations and if we are near enough we WILL catch fire.

If I’m not on fire, what does that say about me? What does that say about what I do on Sunday mornings Sunday in and Sunday out in front of you all, claiming that I love God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength?

For four REACH  months (CPC's annual focus on global missions), I have listened to the sermons, had meals with missionaries, done the prayer nights and breakfasts absorbed all of the amazing content that College Park offered. I would agree with every bit of it and say, “Yes! God I want to do your work! If you want to send me, send me! Open an opportunity!”

Then I would…wait. 

I’m not sure what I expected really. I expected at some point listening to a missionary talk about what they were doing that my heart would leap and say “I NEED to do that,” or that my heart would break for a specific people group or need. I waited. I would look over the Vision Trips and the schedules and my available PTO time and see that…well…none of them fit. So I would wait. And a year would go by and the next REACH would come and the same thing would happen. I wait…and nothing happens.

“Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

Both Pastor Willson and Pastor Nate have told us that the most important first step is to ask God for the nations. What did Jesus say himself when he looked and saw all of the wayward people of Israel harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd? He didn’t tell his disciples to “Go now and help them,” or “appoint some amongst yourselves to go.” No he said, “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:38 emphasis mine)

Of course nothing was happening! Of course my heart didn't leap or break! Of course PTO was a problem or schedules didn't align or the money wasn't there! How could it be?! I NEVER ASKED. How can I claim that I don’t go because I don’t feel God moving me if I never ask him to do it? How can I justify my inaction and disguise it in spiritual sounding “lack of calling” if my own lack of prayer shows where my desire really is?

I have a sung of a selfish Gospel. I have exuded selfish joy. I have proclaimed selfish freedom. I am truly, deeply, sorry.

Maybe, as Pastor Nate said, the dampness is drying out from the paper that is my heart. Maybe the anti-inflammatory sealant that I like to paint over my soul is finally being taken over. After four REACH months, its finally time to start praying. I don’t know what that means for my future. I don’t know where it will take me, if anywhere. Maybe I am a sender, an enabler, a Barnabas. But how can I be sure if I don’t ask?

What I do know is the rest of the promise in Matthew 7.

“Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heave given good things to those who ask him?” Matthew 7:9-11

I may have to do something hard or uncomfortable. It may cost me a lot. But God promises that it will be GOOD. It will be a GIFT. And more people will join me when Jesus returns to sing of a global Gospel, a Gospel not just for me but for all people and all tribes and all languages from all of time.

Amen.