Prayer for Charity #2

Financial difficulty is a reality faced by millions of people in the world. There’s precious little money for the essentials—things like food, rent, and car repairs—and luxuries like eating out and going to the movies have become a rarity in many households.

But fear not. God has your back, and He’s already given you the key to prosperity: prayer. But this isn’t just a matter of asking God for money. There’s more to prayer than that.

Fortunately, Christ gave us a template for effective prayer in what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6:9-13. Let’s take a look at how the Son of God says we should pray.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Amen.”

Notice something about Jesus’ example? Here’s the secret to effective prayer: it’s focused more on God than on us. It’s your will be done. It’s your kingdom come. And the words that are directed at us mention not riches, but “daily bread”.

Now, this doesn’t mean that, as Christians, we’re doomed to lives of poverty. It simply means that we need to shift our perspective a little, and pray for financial success in the context of our service to God—instead of wanting money for that new BMW, we need to want it so that we can give to the poor. We need to want it so that we can more easily do God’s work in the world.

That mental shift isn’t an easy one to make, though, so let’s look at this effective example of prayer that will draw financial success through following Jesus’ example.

No amount of wisdom will prosper you without an equal amount of love to temper it. In 1 Corinthians 13:2, Paul writes that “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” If you wish to prosper, you must have love for your fellow man, and be willing to be generous with what you do have.

Prayer:

Dear God,

I pray that You would give me a generous, loving heart.
Please help me to be as loving as I should be,
And help me to let go of offense and prejudice,
To let go of all the things that separate me from Your other children.

Please bless me, but bless me so that I can be generous to others, and to show them Your love and power.

Amen.

Unexpected Prosperity

Prosperity can mean many things, as you can see from the Biblical narrative. It might mean that you are simply provided with the essentials. It might mean that you are made a king. But usually, it’s something in between.

But if you pray for these things, you’ll foster the kind of heart that attracts the blessing of financial prosperity. When you are able to let go of the self and embrace your glorious purpose in God’s kingdom, you’ll find that anything is possible.