Sometimes words surprise me—like someone snuck up and popped out with a scream. “It’s a girl!”, “I hit a deer!” or “You got the job!”
(What words have startled you before?)
In Luke 11, it feels like Jesus pops out from behind the text and yells, “Be audacious!”
Audacity? Really?
When Jesus taught his followers to pray, as recorded in Luke 11, he told them to pray with audacity, like a bold, nagging friend asking for what he needs in the middle of the night.
In prayer, we are to:
Ask away!
Ask with boldness!
Ask consistently!
LISTEN to the Luke 11 podcast to take a moment to consider audacious prayer.
I’m beginning to think that this one word, audacious, can seriously change our lives.
Audacious Prayer in Times of Desperation
A few friends of mine face traumatic situations right now. An undiagnosed sickness causing extreme fatigue and hospitalization, a grandchild suddenly died, a family can’t pay their bills.
When trauma hits, we realize our desperation for miraculous intervention, so we become like the nagging friend Jesus described in Luke’s recording of His teaching (Luke 11:1–13).
We knock, and knock, and knock with audacious requests for Jesus to heal, to reveal, to provide, to show up!
But when life is “normal”, we go back to “normal” prayers. We return home to prayers for our vacations and forget to ask boldly for all things God tells us in His Word.
The Power of Prayer in Everything
In one account found in Mark 9, the disciples were casting out demons and healing sicknesses, but there was one they could not cast out.
They brought the possessed boy to Jesus, and Jesus rebuked the demonic spirit and freed the young man. When the disciples asked them why they could not do it themselves, Jesus responded, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”
If God responds in power to prayer for casting out demons, then He will respond in power to all our prayers when it aligns to His truth and His character.
When we ask with audacious prayers, God responds with audacious power.
Seana Scott
I wonder: what would happen
if we always prayed audaciously?
What would happen
if we ask boldly with big prayers all the time?
