What Makes Prayer Powerful

Joni Eareckson Tada: Welcome to Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Joni and I just love to share the hope of Jesus through every hardship. And I trust that the hopeful words I say here on this program encourage you through your hardships because we all need help. Like the other morning when my two girlfriends were assisting me on getting dressed, getting up and out of bed into my wheelchair. Before they strapped on my corset, that's a tight surgical support garment I wear around my middle in order to help me breathe and sit up straight. We always pray before they strap it on me. And so, still lying in bed, I closed my eyes and I prayed. I prayed, oh God, I'm an empty bowl. I am so very empty and I need you to fill me. What did I mean that prayer? It wasn't as though my bowl were empty. No, I was saying, I'm the bowl. I am empty. I just don't have weakness. I am weak. I just don't wrestle with pride. I am proud. I don't just sin. I'm a sinner. God already knows this, but what makes prayer powerful this way is when we know it, when we admit what we're made of, especially before others. Confessing who we really are to others like my two friends standing over me on either side of my bed. I want them to know, Joni Eareckson Tada needs help. She's a sinner. And when we plead our weakness, it binds us closer to our Christian friends. It also gets rid of sin's deceitfulness. We can be so easily fooled into thinking that we are indeed the paragons of virtue we often project to others. Charles Spurgeon once wrote, "We are strong when we are weak because we gain our strength by prayer. And our weakness is our best argument in supplication. When you are engaged in prayer, plead your strength and you'll get nothing. But plead your weakness and you will prevail. "There is no better plea with divine love than weakness and pain. Nothing can so prevail with the great heart of God as for your heart to faint and swoon. The man who feels all the while as if he could not pray and yet must pray, he is the man who will see the desire of his soul. "Do not mothers always care most for the tiniest child or for that one who is most sick? Our weakness holds God's strength and leads him to bow his omnipotence to your rescue. When I am weak, I am sure to flee to God for help. It is wonderful how strong a man feels in such a hiding place. "When you cannot lay a stone and cannot lift a trowel by yourself, then you may begin to build for God. For he will make you a worker together with him. Your feebleness will be linked to the eternal strength and then the wall will rise with speed." So, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Let us be perfectly content to decrease that our Lord may gloriously increase. Friend, you may be an empty bowl today. You may feel bare and vacant and hollow, dull and enfeebled. You might be feeling very weak with nothing to offer. You may, like I said, you may be a broken empty bowl, but please remember, remember that before God your weakness is your best platform. If you plead your strength before the Lord, you will fail. You'll get nothing. No grace, no power, and most sadly, no favor from Jesus. So today, link your emptiness to God's eternal strength and watch what he will do. The Bible says time and again, when we are weak, Jesus is strong. Let's live that way today, friend. When we do, we'll have hope to see us through every hardship.