Have you ever been desperate?   Really desperate?   So desperate that it drove you to your knees in prayer?    I have been there.   Often.   Really desperate for God to hear and answer my prayers.

One time of desperation I remember so vividly.   My wife Jeannie and I moved to a new city to plant a church.   We knew we had to rely on the Lord!   We had no people, no building, and no regular Sunday worship gatherings.   From our research we felt God was calling us to open a ministry center out of which we could offer various ministries to meet the hurts and needs of the neighbourhoods we were targetting.   We were ready to sign a lease on a new storefront, but we needed $1000 to sign the lease.   We just did not have the funds.  The deadline was Friday and by Friday noon we did not have the funds to lock in the lease.   I was desperate.   We were in the middle of a telemarketing campaign to tell people about our new church.   A number of volunteers had gathered to make the calls, and I was to join them.   When I met with these volunteers for prayer before they would spend the next three hours dialing phone numbers, I shared with them my plight.   We needed $1000 before the end of Friday business day.   I was desperate.   I told them that while they would 'man' the phones, I would be constantly in prayer that God would give us that $1000.   And so I prayed, and prayed, crying out to God about this need.   Around mid-afternoon a lady knocked on the house where we were meeting.   She handed me an envelope and said this was for our new church plant.    I thanked her.   When I opened the envelope, there was a $1000.   God had answered our prayers.

In the Bible we read about Ezra where he admits:   "I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from enemies on the road, because we had told the king, “The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.’ So we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer.” (Ezra 8:22-23)

Here Ezra tells us of a time when he gathered together with others for a time of prayer and fasting.   Ezra was taking a group of Jews back to Israel, to resettle them in the land. They were going to cross dangerous terrain and needed protection.   But notice what happens.   The king would have likely given them soldiers as protection along this journey, but Ezra refused to take it.   Instead he relied solely on God.   And as Ezra later reported, "The hand of our God was on us, and he protected us from enemies and bandits along the way." (v. 30)

There is a lot we can learn from Ezra's total reliance on God. The more desperate we are about something, the more intense our prayers.   Think back to what happened in churches following 9/11. Prayer meetings were full for several weeks. Desperation drove people to prayer. Once the desperation waned, the churches emptied.

As churches we are committed to make prayer a priority!   This is our first task!   We speak about being filled with prayerful and sacrificial compassion for the lost in all the world.  To pray day and night for revival in our land.    In some of our churches we see glimpses of prayer becoming a priority as prayer meetings are regularly organised and an increasing number of people coming out to pray.   But if prayer is ever going to be truly a priority among us we need to figure out a way to build in desperation.   We need to be reminded over and over again that revival in Australia will not happen simply by Christians doing more!  The problems in our society and world are not things that we can solve by ourselves, even with all of our good efforts.    We need divine intervention.   We desperately need God! 

May we cry to God, desperate to know his heart and to seek his face as we recognize our complete unworthiness and inability to “fix” situations on our own.   May we see our hopeless situation apart from God's amazing grace and overwhelming power to accomplish his purposes in our world!   And in our desperation may we truly believe, as the apostle Paul concludes one of his prayers:   "[God] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)