Last Updated on November 14, 2022 by OCF Communications
In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.
—Luke 6:12
One of the greatest blessings we experience in OCF at the home office is the opportunity to gather daily before work to spend time together in prayer and devotions. The lunch-and-meeting room is transformed into a type of sanctuary where we come before God in His presence to pray for the ministry, our great OCFers, our military, nation, and world.
It’s also the setting for some great pre-and-post devotions banter and laughter as we share our lives and work with one another: what we did over the weekend, why our sports team tanked their game, or after talking about how fun the most recent hunting trip was, wondering aloud if hunting wild pigs in Texas would be a possible idea for a ministry fundraiser.
The topic of prayer itself was initiated during our prayer time by staffers who attended the OCF Staff and Council meetings a few weeks ago at White Sulphur Springs. They shared from notes taken during a teaching session by Keith Peck, a favorite speaker for OCF retreats, who had ministered to OCF leaders at the conference. The cumulative takeaway was that both our walk and our prayer life with Christ are motivated by how we view Him and how well we know Him.
During His life on earth, Christ diligently, continually, sought out time alone to connect and communicate with His Father. “…[H]e went up on the mountain by himself to pray” (Matthew 14:23, ESV). Through His “… prayers and pleas with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death” (Hebrew 5:7, NASB), Christ exemplified how to journey along the highway of life by modeling for us a lifestyle built upon prayer. Prayer is an intentional pursuit to communicate with God throughout all the twists, turns, straightaways, and unanticipated potholes of life. Prayer helps us cultivate an ever-growing, relationship with the ever-present God who created us to come to know and be known by Him.
All of which points to the question Christian speaker, author, and Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom once posed about prayer: “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?”
Thank you for answering Christ’s call to join in as a prayer warrior for the ministry of OCF. You are also invited to join OCF’s weekly Monday Night Prayer Initiative on Zoom, at 5pm MDT / 6pm CDT / 7pm EDT. Contact me for more information.
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