Proactive Prayer

My minister has a saying that goes, "Faith=Knowledge+Belief+Action."

Action.

So often my prayer life is a jumbled call-out of needs, often repeated until the stress I'm feeling is lessened or I just sort of give up, figuring God heard me enough times. Oh, I have my times of praise and worship and times of thanksgiving and just chatting with God, but I'm focusing on the prayers of needs and wants for this particular post.

This morning, "Proactive Prayer" popped into my head. When I pray for the needs and wants, am I willing to pray proactively, or just whine a bit? Proactive praying, to me, is to pray with the full intent of following through, moving forward and doing what God would have us do in faith.

So often, prayer is depicted as a stillness in your life, as it very well should be in many circumstances. "Be still and know that I am God," the Bible says. But, we also have to pray with our feet. Jesus healed the lame man, but it was up to the lame man to get up in faith and walk! Something has come up. Do we sit in our recliner and pray for the Lord to guide us in this emergency, or are we praying as we're already running to tackle the problem?

Proactive prayer.