Pray boldly (3)

Max Lucado wrote about the power of prayer in the life of his friend Greg Pruett: “He is trained as an engineer, linguist, and Bible translator. But his most significant contribution might be in the area of ‘extreme prayer.’” In Greg’s book by that name, he related how he returned from Guinea, West Africa, to assume the role of president of Pioneer Bible Translators. It was 2008 – the Great Recession. The ministry’s financial chart indicated a freefall toward insolvency. Greg had no experience in leading such an organization and no tangible place to cut expenses. Resources were few, and the donors were disappearing. Greg knew of only one response: prayer. “That’s when I began to learn not to pray about my strategies, but to make prayer the strategy.” In July, he wrote a half-page letter to his teammates worldwide, calling them to prayer. He urged them to stand before God’s throne with specific and bold requests. Greg described the result: “When I saw the end of the year report, I knew God had heard our prayers. My eyes welled up with tears…If a financial expert were to analyze this graph, they would put their finger on the month of July and say, ‘What did you do right here? Whatever it was, you need to do a lot more of that.’ I searched in vain for a tangible explanation. I wanted to find trends to explain how it worked, so we could do it again. I never could…I just knew God provided. All I had was God – and prayer.” Is that all you’ve got? That’s all you need!