Prayer

I just finished a book by Walter Wink entitled The Powers That Be. This has been just an incredible read - I highly recommend it. I'm still trying to process everything - it's going to take me awhile to get my head around it. I'll get into it more later, but there's one paragraph on prayer that I just love and want to share with you.

Prayer is rattling God's cage and waking God up and setting God free and giving this famished God water and this starved God food and cutting the ropes off God's hands and the manacles offf God's feet and washing the caked sweat from God's eyes and then watching God swell with life and vitality and energy and following God wherever God goes.

One of the things he says in this book is that we can do nothing apart from prayer. Anything separate from prayer will end up becoming self-serving, self-gratifying, and self-promoting. He quotes [I think it is] Martin Luther King, Jr.: The most dangerous thing about fighting a monster is that we risk becoming a monster ourselves.

He talks about loving our enemies and how it is critical to our not only reaching those enemies for Christ, but also to our own growth and spiritual development. We cannot wait for the enemy to become lovable - we have to love the enemy first, then pray that God brings about a change in them - and us.

I have been working very hard to keep Equitas (the non-profit I formed last year to promote advocacy, education, and assistance in five key areas: genocide, clean water, human trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and poverty) non-religious. When communicating with others - specifically, potential donors and sponsors - about our projects, I have kept God out of the conversations, for fear of sounding too religious or "churchy." But I may need to re-think this approach. Apart from God, Equitas has not, and will not, accomplish its goals of bringing life to the marginalized and poor, and setting the captives free.