7 Ways To Supercharge Your Prayers: Day 6
Download the PDF Here:
Prayer Supercharger Day 6
Sign up to have the devotionals emailed to you:
Sign Up
Day Six:
Be Generous.
You can summarize a major part of the Bible with this simple idea:
When people start hoarding God stops listening and the consequences are dire.
The implications for our prayer lives are clear. God doesn’t listen to people who hoard.
It can be hard to know where to start with this because you live in the middle of a global economic context which is an absolute mess of inequality and excess. It is hard to know how you might change this. The largeness of the problem can cause us to do nothing.
Does it really matter if I choose to not shop at an oppressive multinational corporation? I don’t know. Probably. But those large intimidating issues are not what God would have you focus on first.
God doesn’t need you to be focused on the lack of generosity, injustice, and exploitation of the world at large. He needs you to be concerned about your personal lack of generosity, injustice, and exploitation. He calls you to change your mess, your neighborhood, and your family. That you can do.
And when you do! Oh, baby! The promises come true in magnificent ways.
In my own life, the simplest acts of open-handed generosity have unleashed provision, intimacy, and supernatural power like nothing else. It’s like if I am more generous with my time and money I can pray way less and get 100x more results. Not that it is about results. But you know what I mean.
Ask God what you are hoarding. Where you are not giving. What specific act of generosity he is calling you to. Then obey him and wait with expectation for what is to come. My favorite chapter to see this principle explained (although you see it everywhere) is Isaiah 58. Give it a read. Let it challenge you. Do what God tells you. And then watch the chapter prove true.
One more thing. Yesterday’s generosity can keep us from seeing today’s hoarding. Yesterday’s sacrifice became today’s blessing and now you need to sacrifice out of the new blessing. Do something new, something more and watch what happens.
Prayer:
Thank you Lord, that when I am generous and share with others I get more of you. This is admirably arranged! I make others lives better and you enhance mine. I embrace the logic of the win-win scenarios you have built into reality.
Memory Verse:
Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter– when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: “Here am I.” – Is.58:7-9