The Last Resort

Is prayer our last resort - or our first step?  I'm afraid I have too often made it the last, rather than the first resort.  Therefore,  I love (and am challenged by) this passage from Stephen Altrogge at The Blazing Center:

"Have you ever said the phrase, “All I can do is pray,”? I’ve said it. And I think it’s one of the stupidest sentences to ever leave my mouth.

Think about it for a minute. When I say, “All I can do is pray,” this is what I’m really saying:

• All I can do is ask the omnipotent, almighty God, who holds the universe in His hands to work on my behalf.

• All I can do is ask for grace from the God who gave up His son for me and adopted me into His family.

• All I can do is stop trying to run the world and ask God to do something.

• I can run most of my life on my own, but when it comes to this situation, all I can do is pray.

• I’ve run out of things that I can do, and now I guess I’ll resort to asking God for his help.

• For a while I had this situation under control, but now I’ve got to ask God to lend a hand.

What a ridiculous statement. It shows my lack of dependence on God, my lack of faith in His power, my lack of trust in Him, and a serious overestimation of my own competence. Prayer is like my spiritual fire extinguisher, only to be used in times of emergency, when things get really bad.

In reality, prayer should be the first thing I do. Rather than trying to wade my way through a tough circumstance, I should immediately confess my dependence on God.

Prayer shouldn’t be my last resort, it should be my first resort. Not because my prayers are particularly mighty, but because God is on my side, and He is particularly mighty."