Come Alongside: This marvelous thing called prayer!

Recently a girlfriend I look up to asked me to come along on a speaking engagement she had, to support her and pray for her and share as I felt led.  I was so honored and blessed to be invited to be her “right hand gal” that day, and rejoiced with her when her words opened so many hearts that day.

I was reminded today about how God also invites me to come along with him on his “engagements”, to support him and pray with him about what he is doing.  I am so honored that he trusts me with the things on his heart, just like my girlfriend.

When the prophet, Daniel was in captivity in Babylon he understood from the prophecies of other prophets before him that the 70 year captivity was nearing its end.  Instead of just sitting back, relieved that God’s people would soon be going home to Israel, Daniel fasted and prayed for the exiles’ release from Babylon and return to Israel.  Why would he pray for what God has already promised and agreed to do?  In the natural, that scenario is quite odd.  If your friend tells you she is going to take you to a concert for your birthday, you don’t ask her or remind her again and again to take you to the concert.  But that is what Daniel did.  He took the prophecy, the revelation of what God intended to do, as God’s invitation for him to come alongside and pray the thing through.  So it is that God puts the desires of his own heart on those ones who are seeking him, and they get to pray in those things to completion, and then rejoice at the outcome.

So we sing and pray, “Break my heart for what breaks yours”, oh, God, and we will rejoice with you as your will is done on earth as it is in heaven.