Saturday, March 05, 2016

Without Prayer All Ministry Loses Its Meaning

View from our hotel in Cancun
To pray is to be in relationship with God. This is because prayer is communication with God. How weird to claim:

1. I love God and am in relationship with him.
2. I don't have time to meet with him and pray.

Prayer is foundational and essential to authentic leadership. Henri Nouwen states:

"Prayer is not merely a condition for compassionate leadership: it is its essence. As long as we keep speaking about prayer as a way to restore ourselves from spiritual fatigue, or worse, to recharge our batteries, we have reduced prayer to a method and compassion to a commodity. Reminding ourselves that we should not forget to pray in our busy lives is like reminding each other to keep breathing! Prayer is the essence of the spiritual life without which all ministry loses its meaning. It is the fulfillment of the great commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind." (Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life, 79)