The Impact of Prayer

always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy (Philippians 1:4 NKJV).

Paul was a man of great faith; a man of courage; a man of conviction; a man who accomplished more for God than probably all of the believers put together in his generation.  Yet, above all else, Paul was a man of prayer, which was the foundation for all the rest.  The works he started in his own physical ability to go into an area and preach the Gospel, were always watered fervently in the spiritual realm with prayer.  Paul knew that this was the necessary combination to accomplish the work of God’s Kingdom and that it was really not in his own abilities that he would see fruit from what he did.  That’s why he penned to the Corinthian believers:

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor (1 Corinthians 3:7-8 NKJV).

Paul knew that any work he put his hand to do on behalf of Christ would require diligent, faithful, relentless prayer and he was committed to do just that, which is why he could always make requests on behalf of the Philippians with the joy of knowing that God would bring the increase.

Prayer is the essential in the life of the man or woman who offers their lives in full time service to God that often gets overlooked in the midst of the crazy pace of ministry life.  Yet, when you stop to think it through, it becomes extremely obvious that without the prayers of faith in the above equation, all we really do is a lot of busy work for God.  It is only when we water it with the power of prayer that we invoke God’s hand to give the increase.

Today, I will spend a time in prayer, making requests for the people that I know need the miraculous hand of God’s increase in their lives.