PROGRESS WITHOUT PRAYER IS PRESSURE

PROGRESS WITHOUT PRAYER IS PRESSURE
Rev. Arnel Tan
“Then we can spend our time in prayer and preaching and teaching the word of God” Acts 6:4 NLT


The progress of the early church is now heating the pressure for problems. One thing hard with success is it can be fatal to the spiritual life of an individual or church. Progress is something wonderful to experience and admittedly this has been the driving goal of our hard works. While progress is a positive thing it has also its own side effects. The truth the person or any organization that is experiencing progress or success without spiritual reserves will soon wake up facing unbelievable pressure.

The Apostle and the membership of the early church showed a remarkable sign of deep spiritual maturity when they adamantly stood for prayer as the priority over projects. The prayer lives of the apostles and the prayer life of the church resulted to spiritual sensitivity that they detect the trap of progress without prayer. This dilemma of many of us today, aside from our depleted prayer lives; we are also depleted in our ability to discern what God desires. I want to clarify that to be progressive is not bad. The issue here is the forgetfulness of many to put prayer over progress.

When prayer is priority over progress the pressure of progress is controlled. In prayer we see the difference between our good intention and God’s approval. The desire to know God is intensified compared to just being busy doing Christian activities. In prayer pressure is off because we have the focus over the one thing that God wants us to do. In prayer we learn to rest and not join the rat race for further success. In prayer the Lord develops within us the spiritual sensitivity to detect when something is wrong even when the outside signs say nothing is wrong.

Progress becomes an unbelievable and unending pressure because prayer takes the back seat. Less prayer leads to prayerlessness. Here the work that God has started is now perfected by human effort. No wonder why Paul used the word “foolish” to rebuke the Galatians of their human effort in doing the work of God. The progress we see the more prayers we say. How impossible to handle the blessings of abundance when we are not intoned with the Giver of these gifts. Warnings have been issued all through out the bible from the books of Deuteronomy to the Epistles we have been warned not to fall to the trap of progress. As the Lord allows His favor to flow let us be on our knees to pray! If problems brought us to prayer the more we should be on our knees when things are progressing for it is here that we are most vulnerable to forget God.