Kathi Lipp - Praying Gods Word for Your Life

My husband and I are heavily involved in the missional church conversation, which most of the time sounds like gospel but at times sounds like blah blah blah. (Sorry. I have some church baggage yet to shed.) Were definitely all in, but sometimes all the modern language thrown around by pastor types bogs me down. Weve surrounded the kingdom with a lot of rhetoric, strategies, approaches, leadership language, and theology development.

Prayer seems simple in comparison.

Except it keeps blowing our minds and changing the world, so...

About two years ago, my husband, Brandon, and I were on the cusp of adoption. Wed put the first two yeses on the table: yes to adoption, yes to Ethiopia. But my pesky husband kept bringing up the idea of two children instead of one. Fear and insecurity got the better of me, and I just couldnt get on board. Can I handle five kids? Do I have enough for all of them? Can we add two at once to this circus? And, once again, can I handle five kids?

But he couldnt shake it, and these big ideas are usually in my zip code, not his, so I knew enough to take this seriously. Something was up. And since none of our default strategies and structures could help us, we did the only thing left: we prayed and fasted for a week, asking God to lead usone child or two?

Our weeklong prayer fast was private; we didnt share it with a soul. On the last day of our earnest seeking, a dear friend called. She knew adoption was imminent for us, but nothing more. Our conversation went like this:

Jen, Ive been praying for your adoption, and I keep getting this really strange sense. I brought it up to my husband several times, and he finally told me to just call you and ask. If this is off or irrelevant, then just forget it, but I keep getting the feeling when I pray that you and Brandon are considering two children.

At this point, I have stopped breathing. The earth is frozen.

And again, if Im getting the wrong message, then disregard this phone call, but if this is true, if you are thinking about two children, we want to pay for the cost of the second child. Whatever the difference is between one and two, we want to cover the entire amount.

(Insert me utterly falling apart.)

As I write this, Im watching my two Ethiopians jumping on the trampoline in the backyard, tucked safely into their forever family, snatched from the brink of poverty and despair. These two little lives are now a part of our story; none of us will ever be the same. Ben, Remythey are ours.

God accomplished this through plain, basic, standard-procedure prayerour friends and ours. Mysteriously, divinely, he connected us to his will as we came before him in prayer, like he has done with the saints for centuries. Prayer isnt fancy or trendy. Its not seeker sensitive or culturally relevant or any of those phrases we throw around these days. It is simply connecting with God and his kingdom in the same way as all those who have gone before us: Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Hannah, David, Esther, Isaiah, Mary, Jesus.

When our rhetoric and work ethic and education and intelligence and talent leave us wanting, when they dont close the gap or light the way, we still have the ancient tools God gave us long ago: here is the bread and cup, here is the sacred rest, here is my Word, here are the simple prayers. These help broken humanity, brought together by Jesus, to commune with a holy Godstill the most epic miracle in history.

May this book be another tool that sends you to your knees, seeking God in the way he has always been found. His Word is living and active, and our God never sleeps; his ear is always attuned to his children speaking, crying, praising, hoping. May the ancient ways continue to transform us all into true disciples.

Jen Hatmaker, author of 7: An Experimental Mutiny against Excess