CRU Weekly Ministry Tip #1, Fall 2011
Prayer is one of our most powerful tools and great privileges. We have access to God himself through prayer because of Jesus sacrifice for us on the cross. I know that through prayer, you can move God’s hand on your campus and in your situation. There are many passages in the Bible that talk about prayer. In Ephesians 6, after the apostle Paul talks about putting on the full armor of God, he finishes the section by saying in verse 18, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints…”
In Matthew 17:19-20 Jesus shares a principle about the power of God that can be unleashed on our behalf. After His disciples could not cast out a demon, Jesus says to them, “Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not drive it out? And He said to them, Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”
Does your campus feel like a big mountain that is hard to move? Do you wonder if you’ll see anything happen on your campus this year? The answer is to first take it to prayer before you conduct ministry on campus. Here are some reasons why we don’t pray:
1. We simply forget to pray. We get so busy that we get totally involved in doing the
ministry.
2. We just don’t feel like praying right now.
3. We don’t believe that prayer is going to make a difference anyway.
4. Prayer is just a lot of work and not very exciting.
The rebuttal to these excuses is that prayer can do some amazing things because it is the God of the universe who we pray to. We serve a big God who cares and loves us deeply and He wants to work on our behalf. We just need to ask Him and trust that He will be doing His will on your campus whatever the results may be.
Consider these final encouraging words in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18,
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
First thing back on campus this fall, gather your student leaders and pray for God to do a great work on campus. Now rest in Him as you follow through on your campus plans.