How big can you pray?
We all KNOW that God listens to prayer. He hears us. No struggles here.
I wonder if I prayed something really big, from my perspective, if God would answer. Yes, I KNOW He hears me but our struggle with having big faith is will He answer? For example, let’s say I and a few buddies were in a big fight with some other guys. The fight is outside and the sun is going down and it is becoming a little more difficult to defeat these other guys. So I pray, “Sun, stand still…and you too moon!” What do you think? Is it possible that how creation was made to operate would be interrupted for such a BIG result-oriented prayer?
The answer is “yes” it is possible. Actually the answer is it happened once. Joshua was fighting the Amorites. They had five kings and way more troops than Israel. Joshua engages in this battle after a long march and the enemies are beginning to flee from Israel. God has already been at work killing some of these enemies by hailstones (kind of cool). Then, in front of all Israel, Joshua speaks a prayer.
“Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you moon, over theValleyofAijalon.”
Here is what Scripture says about that prayer, “The Sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since…” The rhythms of creation are interrupted. The sun stopped. The moon stopped. The Lord answered Joshua and the Lord gave victory as His people conquered portions of the promised land.
While this fight was very different from a bar-fight (unless God sent us into that fight, unlikely) there is a BIG lesson for us men. The lesson is that there is no situation too big to pray for. There is no result too big for God to change. There is no reason to pursue hopelessness. God can fill the any situation with hope in a moment. He stopped the sun and moon easily. Nothing is impossible for God to do on behalf of His saints. Situations can’t lose hope, only people do. Maybe praying for God to restore your hope in some situation may be as big as the sun standing still and the moon remaining in place. The fact is it can happen and has happened!
