How You Can Shape the Future Today

Does your spiritual life feel limp today? Could you use a blast to power and lift your life and that of others? Today I am enthralled by the power I hold in my hands as I unfold E. M. Bounds’ article Putting God to Work. This is one of those works that has the capacity to revolutionize your spiritual walk. In it, he explores the potential horsepower we have with the heavenlies, with our world, and with ourselves through prayer. Meditatively contemplate the points I outline below. Each point is a burner firing up the hot air balloon of your life. Be transported. Be transformed. Shape the future.

10 Prayer Afterburners

1. prayer is a specific divine appointment, an ordinance of heaven, whereby God purposes to carry out his gracious designs on earth and to execute and make efficient the plan of salvation
2. Prayer puts God’s work in his hands and keeps it here. It looks to him constantly and depends on him implicitly to further his own cause. Prayer is but faith resting in, acting with, leaning on, and obeying God. This is why God loves it so well, why he puts all power into its hands, and why he so highly esteems men of prayer
3. the denial of prayer is a denial of God himself, for God and prayer are so inseparable that they can never be divorced
4. prayer puts God, angels, and man to work. “What a wonderful reach there is in prayer!” It brings into play the forces of heaven and earth. God, angels, and men are subjects of this wonderful law of prayer
5. the work of God stays or advances as prayer puts forth its strength. Prophets and apostles have urged the utility, force, and necessity of prayer
6. God has placed himself under the law of prayer
7. prayer puts God to work on earth and therefore prayerlessness rules God out of the world’s affairs and prevents him from working… leaving man [believers and non-believers] on earth the mere creature of circumstances, at the mercy of blind fate, or without help from God
8. God says, “whatever you need for my cause, ask me and I will do it. Shape the future by your prayers. God says, “It is my work which you are doing. It concerns my causes. Be prompt and full in praying. Do not abate your asking, and I will not wince nor abate in my giving…” As an example, God stayed and answered as long as Abraham stayed and asked. He will do the same with you
9. by leaving prayer out of the catalogue of religious duties, we leave God out, and his work cannot progress without him
10. the fishes of the sea (Jonah,) the birds of the air (Moses,) the very climate on earth (Elijah) are all brought into subjection to this same law

Ignite your burners, church. Pray, men and women of God. Pray, believers. Pray, fathers. Pray, mothers. Pray, children. I pray that you would pray. In so doing, you fire up the very pulse of God, his roaring heartbeat. In praying your unleash his heart and unfold his hands. With this new mindset, pray and shape the future.

• which of these 10 points most resonates with you?
• which is a burner you haven’t fired up before?
• who can you pray for today and participate in their transformation?
• who can you share this and shape their future?