Dan Davis, a minister in Israel once had an argument with God. He felt that he was being called to be a man of prayer and he knew that developing a prayer life required a lot of work so he did not want to do it. He was satisfied with praying before meals and maybe a couple of minute quiet time a couple of times a week. Yet the call would not leave and eventually he had to get away and allow God to birth this desire in his heart.
We cannot make ourselves people of prayer anymore than we can give up a meal and hope we are spiritual giants because of it. If God is laying something on our hearts to do, He will give us the grace to accomplish it.
Why prayer though, doesn’t God just do what He wants anyway? Calvinist beware, but we are coworkers with Christ and He has chosen to work in and through us to accomplish what he wants in this world. Reread the first chapters of Exodus and Luke. Before the coming of a deliverer, God put on the people a cry for that deliverer to come. There was a spirit of expectancy on the people because they were crying out for a deliverer like never before. This is a grace of God given to people to accomplish what He wants to see happen.
Once again there is a cry from the church for God to come in mighty deliverance to free us from the entanglement of things that have no lasting pleasure. The work on our part is to set aside time to place ourselves in God’s presence and allow Him to create this deliverance in our lives. Fasting is a freeing of ourselves from a small desire so a greater work can happen in our lives. Let’s not just quit eating so we can lose weight. Let us cry out that we would desire God more than we would that last piece of pie in the refrigerator.
Allow God to make us people of prayer that would be sensitive to the voice of God. In turn we will help accomplish what God wants to do in our generation.