Over the last several weeks, I have been making my way through a book by Craig Groeschel titled Dangerous Prayers. As I have been pondering this idea, a few things have been on my mind. First, are we praying safe prayers or are we willing to pray the dangerous, life changing prayers. I have to wonder if we really believe that God can still work in miraculous ways. Second, I wonder how much we miss God’s answers to prayer because they don’t look like we expect, or were not in the timing that we expected.

Groeschel discusses three prayers that are frankly dangerous prayers. If we are serious when we pray them, we better be serious, because God will change us as a result of them. The three prayers are:

Psalm 139:23-24 – “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Search me. This is a prayer that takes guts, as we may not be happy with the things God points out when he searches us. It may even be painful to know what he might find.

1 Corinthians 11:24 – “And when [Jesus] had given thanks, he broke [the bread] and said, “This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me.”” Break me. Asking God to break of our ways, our selfishness, our stubbornness. This is a dangerous prayer. We must be broken first in order to fully follow Christ. He needs to be Lord of our lives. Going even further, once we have been broken, we are to ask him to continually transform us to be more like Christ, to break our hearts for what breaks his. This is a dangerous, life-changing prayer.

Isaiah 6:8 – “Then I heart the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here I am. Send me.”” This is an extremely dangerous prayer. We never know where God may send us. It might be in our current context or it might be somewhere totally unfamiliar to us. It is certainly not a safe prayer, both from the aspect of potential drastic change, but also from the standpoint that God might ask us to go somewhere that is not the most safe for us physically.

Search me. Break me. Send me. I challenge us in 2021 to stop praying safe prayers. Let’s pray dangerous prayers, believing that God will work miracles in and through us that are not explainable any other way. I’m sick of safe prayers. I want to see the miracle working God we see in Acts to work that way in and among Hope Community in 2021 as we reach out to lost and broken people with the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Who’s with me?

~Pastor Todd