I can’t change the world. You can’t change the world, even prayer can’t change the world. Only God can change the world. When we pray we often find that God does change us, and sends us to change the world around us.

Love begins with prayer. There are loads of times that I can think back to when in the process of chatting to a friend, I’ve realised that through the struggles and the pain that they are sharing what they need to experience is the love of God. My usual reaction is to answer that by telling them it. It’s never really worked yet. On the occasions that I’ve taken that call action to be a call to prayer – God always uses it to transform that situation. To use that conversation. To develop that relationship.

Crazy things begin with prayer. Corrie Ten Boom said “We can never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer.” Sometimes when God gets us involved outlandish and powerful things start to happen.

Jesus begins with prayer. It wasn’t just how Jesus began His day. But His entire ministry! We read in Luke 4 that Jesus, following His baptism was led into the wilderness. To do what? To pray. In Luke 6 we read that Jesus went to pray before selecting the disciples. I’m sure it can’t just be me who would have been tempted to skip the prayer part and pick my favourite friends?

It isn’t always that simple though, and there are many (shared) reasons why we don’t pray all that often – even if we sometimes suggest we do.

1.     I don’t know how to pray.

2.     I’m too busy.

3.     I doubt it (or know it doesn’t) work.

There are loads of reasons why we choose not to pray. But if we want to truly love our neighbour and change the world, that always starts with prayer. It was true for Jesus and it is true for us.

How do we Begin with prayer?

We use these 4 Ps…

1.     Plan

2.     Prepare

3.     Places

4.     People

It will change your life as well! 

As we pray, little by little we find that as well as changing the situations we face, God also changes us. He shapes us more and more into the people that He created us to be. Following Jesus isn’t meant to be comfortable. It is meant to be life changing. There is no telling where He might send us and what He might send us to do!