audacious prayer + practical obedience = faith

James 2:17

"Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

"If you're going to have the audacity to ask God for something, you'd better be ready to act.  Audacious prayer must be tethered to practical obedience.  Or else it's not faith.  It's just wishful thinking and positive mental energy.  No wonder so many of our prayers aren't answered.   We pray for a miracle, but we fail to make a move.

And most of the time, if you don't move, God won't move.  That's just the way he designed faith to work."

- Steven Furtick (Sun Stand Still)

Early [EARLY] this morning, at 1:16am to be exact, I couldn't sleep, so I decided to read.  Trying to compute words from a page to my brain always wears me out.  The book of choice?  Sun Stand Still.  I have just a few chapters left to go in the book and thought that maybe I could knock the rest out last night (or today?  I'm not really sure how that works?).  But a full page and a half in, I got hung up on the paragraph above and it got me thinking.  For two hours.

This book was formed around the story in Joshua 10 where God commands Joshua to defeat the Amorites in His name, Joshua then lifts up the famous audacious prayer, "God, make the sun stand in the sky!"  And God does.

So I went back and read through the story in Joshua 10 and something caught my attention after reading this section.  

In Joshua 10:9 it says, "After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by surprise."  See it?  an all-night march.  

Joshua didn't offer up his sun-stand-still prayer in the comfort of his tent, with friends, family, and everything that was comfortable to him.  He prayed that audacious prayer after an all-night march; after putting in some serious time on the clock.

Then I asked myself, [what do I pray for but don't do the work to encapsulate it in faith?]

At 9:40am [shoot, I better be leaving for church!] I still haven't really found any answer or clarity to that question.  But I wanted to share it with you, with whoever may stumble across this blog, to challenge you to examine your faith, your walk, your work and see if this equation...

AUDACIOUS PRAYER + PRACTICAL OBEDIENCE = FAITH

...is true in your life, in your heart.