Prayer My Only Option

When My Only Option is To Pray

When Prayer is Your Only Option – Part 1

Excluding normal means you include something else. That’s called uncommon. When you become a leader and you’ve done what normal people haven’t, others are inspired by how you did it. How you did what you did. You now have the opportunity to lead others to the greatness you’ve obtained. For example, if you’re Tiger Woods, the well-known professional golfer, as a person at the top of his game, he has the opportunity now to lead others to a place of greatness in his area of his giftedness. The same is true of every area of giftedness. When you’re great in your area of gifting, then you have what others need to become great themselves. By excluding normal and including uncommon, you get the opportunity to share what you have with others. Your philosophies begin to spread beyond what normal philosophies can yield.

As Nehemiah’s purpose was finished, his reason for existing completed, his accomplishments made way for the next leader, the prophet Ezra.^[1] Malachi seeing Nehemiah’s ability to exclude normal for uncommon led to Ezra using his gift in the same way. This resulted in Ezra becoming known as one who foretold of the coming Messiah for the people of Israel. Because Nehemiah prayed and took action on his thirty-thousand-foot prayer, it opened the way for others to follow his path to their own greatness. You possess this ability when you do the same. With this in mind, I’d like to go back to the beginning and share the reason for the “thirty-thousand-foot” prayer.

The reason for the “thirty-thousand-foot prayer” was born from the compassion I felt for a husband whose wife had a stroke and struggled to regain her life as she knew it prior to becoming a stroke victim. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will cover the following points to give you the best idea of how the thirty-thousand-foot prayer came to be:

1. You must recognize when a thirty-thousand-foot problem is present.
   Nehemiah’s brothers came to visit and gave him an update on the status of their hometown. Nehemiah was heartbroken at the thought of what he heard. So, he prayed. At this moment, he did like every other normal person, he prayed and left it with God, so to speak. It wasn’t until later that Nehemiah realized that a thirty-thousand-foot opportunity was upon him. Know when the thirty-thousand-foot problem has descended upon you.
2. You should pray for others with compassion.
   Praying with compassion is something I learned from one of the pastors on staff at our local church. Compassion is simply your attempt to put yourself in the shoes of another. Get a feeling for the situation and ask yourself how would you pray if this happened to you?
3. You pray when you need something that you can not provide for yourself or by yourself.
   The term is there’s nothing humanly possible that we can do. When you hear these words, the only option we have is to seek help outside of humanity. When you have a problem, a conquest so big you can’t see any way that’s humanly possible, then you have a thirty-thousand-foot prayer.
4. You never stop praying.
   I learned this recently, you pray until. That’s what it means when it says pray without ceasing, never stopping. When should one stop praying for results? Until…

We are finally coming towards the end of the thirty-thousand-foot prayer. Over the next few weeks, we’ll bring this subject to a close by going back to the beginning, the reason for the thirty-thousand-foot prayer in the first place. It’s the one prayer when prayed, your life will never again be the same as it was prior to such a prayer. In life, we all experience such events that yield in a thirty-thousand-foot prayer. The question is how will you handle yours?

Question: can you think of a thirty-thousand-foot opportunity that is present in your life today?

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Reference #1: ‭‭Nehemiah 8:9 MSG‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Bible.com, accessed February 17, 2021, https://www.bible.com/bible/97/NEH.8.9.MSG
All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.