Pray More, Plan Less

We are starting a new ministry in the city. It is still taking shape and what it will finally look like is yet to be seen. Starting something new takes lots of planning. Lots and lots of planning. In fact when starting something new you can plan yourself right into complete inactivity. The details become endless and the roadblocks seem to multiply with each new day. Facing these challenges brings out the planner in me. I can figure my way around, over or through most obstacles with creativity, energy, smoke and mirrors, or just plain grit. The problem is that ministry is not supposed to be based on those things. Plans become dust in short order if God is not in them. Determination, drive, savvy and great organizational skills (which I woefully lack), will not carry ministry one step beyond the will of a sovereign God. Which leaves us (me) stymied with what to do.

The answer to that question is painfully obvious, yet routinely overlooked and neglected. Pray! In fact, why not pray more than plan? Why not pray more and plan less? Why not pray when others call for planning? Why not pray when planning makes more sense to us? Why not pray? While I am writing this blog I am listening to the new TobyMac song, City on our Knees. He asks:

If we gotta start somewhere, why not here? If we gotta start sometime, why not now? In a city on our knees.

I say TMac is right. Let's commit to prayer. Prayer when we know it all; prayer when we don't know what to do; prayer when the plans all come together; prayer when the plans make no sense; prayer in the face of all that is right and all that is wrong; prayer that confesses dependence upon God for all things! Why not NOW join God in His great adventure? Why not trust that his ways are higher (better) than our ways, and his thoughts are superior to our own? Committing to prayer means that we surrender our brilliance, our self-sufficiency, our own capacity, our competency and stepping into the great depth of a God we cannot exhaust. Prayer is God's great invitation to enter into the dialogue of the ages and to encounter the fathomless wisdom of the creator of all things. Why not?

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