Radical, Disruptive Prayer

In the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 6:20-22), Jesus gives a list of characteristics or activities for which one will be blessed. He speaks of blessing those who are meek, those who are poor in spirit and those who are peacemakers. This list has come to be known as “the beatitudes.” However, the beatitudes did not include, “Blessed are the disruptive, for they shall not be paralyzed.”

Being “disruptive” is an attitude that Jesus encourages in us and one that he lived out himself; he was not only meek and mild, but he was radical and wild. On more than one occasion, Jesus was disruptive to the norms of the religious. He also was disruptive to the kingdom of darkness.

Jesus’ powerful life in prayer was constantly and effectively a thorn in the side of evil. When he prayed, kingdoms were moved, powers of darkness fled, and a great work of God was released on earth. He was even disruptive to those who chose to follow him, constantly upsetting their comfort zone. When they lacked this disruptive spirit, he came and awakened them to their need for vigilant, aggressive prayer, asking them, “Couldn’t you fight in prayer for even an hour?” He disruptively turned their world upside down. 

There are times in our lives when the battles we face, the tasks at hand, and the missions to which we are charged need more than casual, comfortable prayers. Comfort and ease in the sweet hour of prayer may be fine for morning devotionals, but when we are charged with a holy mission that seems totally hindered by the adversary, our true hope is found in radical, disruptive praying. Rather than a sweet hour of prayer, we often need hours of prayer.

Many Christians are so paralyzed that people look at their lives and see nothing atypical or peculiar about them. But we are called to be a peculiar people and when we are disruptive for the kingdom of God, we will appear peculiar, indeed.