Perfecting Faulty Prayers

God will take a simple salvation prayer, a simple prayer for protection, a simple prayer for healing, and he will add power to it. He will go above and beyond what I ask for or could even think of. You don’t have the capacity, but the Holy Spirit in you does. All this pressure is not on you. God’s saying, “I’ve got my hand on this. I’m going to take this farther than you’ve ever gone.”

It all depends on who’s hand is on you. It goes like this: A basketball in my hand is worth about 19 dollars; a basketball in LeBron’s hand is worth about 75 million dollars. A tennis racket is useless in my hand, but a tennis racket in Serena Williams’ hand is a French Open or Wimbledon. It all depends on whose hand it’s in.

Two fish and five loaves in my hands are just two fish sandwiches; two fish and five loaves in Jesus’ hands will feed five thousand people. A nail in my hand may produce a house burning down, but a nail in Jesus’ hand produced salvation for the entire planet throughout all of history and the future. It just depends on whose hands it’s in.

We are in God’s hands.

Some of you may have said, “I don’t know how to pray.” That’s the truth. Fortunately, the pressure’s off of us. The Spirit knows how to pray. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26, ESV).

How ridiculous is it to think our prayers depend on us saying the right words? There are so many dumb prayers that come out of my mouth; thank God he doesn’t answer those prayers! If God answered every prayer just like we wanted him to, life would be a train wreck. He sifts through our prayers and makes them right. That should give us confidence. Every one of us can and should pray.

As you’re being led to pray, God says, “Perfect. I’ll take your flawed prayer, correct it and put power to it. I will push it beyond what you can even imagine.”

^{After pastoring an inner-city congregation in Detroit for thirty years, Pastor Tim served at Brooklyn Tabernacle in NYC for five years and pastored in Lafayette, Louisiana, for five years. He became Senior Pastor of Times Square Church in May of 2020.}