In Zechariah 4:6 there is the very familiar text that has God telling His people that His work in the world was done not by might nor by power but by His Spirit. This means that we must be filled, shaped and formed by God’s Spirit if we are to be a people through whom God can work.

We must be a people filled with the power of God because “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

None of us can see into the future so it is crucial that we pray our way into the future. Jesus is the Beginning and the End even in the present. He “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). What Jesus did then He can do now. Let’s pray that we may be a people in whom He can do whatever He desires to do.

Pastor Jim Cymbala, of Brooklyn Tabernacle, offers a prayer that drives all this home for me. He prays, “Dear Father…Reveal your will and purpose concerning us, and then give us the grace to pursue it with all our hearts.”

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be open to you” (Matt. 7:7). Let’s pray our way into the future. Keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. Remember the counsel of John Bunyan, “You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed”