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Resilient Prayer in Escalating Crisis: Video
Are you a leader facing escalating crises on multiple fronts? Enjoy this video from Managing Editor Elizabeth Glass Turner, on resilient prayer for leaders juggling the unexpected, and recognizing signals of growing spiritual resilience. Excerpt below.
Excerpt: “The Holy Spirit not only shapes what you want or what you pray for, but how you pray in the midst of crisis, because you cannot pray for what you do not see. This is why resilient prayer begins with deliberately mindfully honing awareness. As you acknowledge your human propensity for blind spots, it allows your spirit to be sensitive to what you simply haven’t been aware of.
So when you pray from awareness of the seen and unseen, awareness of the immediate vs the eternal, the global and not just local, aware of the limits of your own control and autonomy – then you are inviting God to break into the present calamity in ways that you can’t foresee or predict. You are inviting God to put a burden on your hearts for the needs around you that the Holy Spirit helps you discern. You are inviting God to take your availability and propel it into the needs of this world, whether locally or globally, in small or in major steps.
When this honed awareness provides the basis and architecture of prayer, what will you find? Spiritual resilience that is steadfast in crisis – personal crisis, national crisis, global crisis; it may not feel like you are resilient; you may not feel confident.
So what are some signals that you are growing in spiritual resilience, whether you feel strong or resilient, or not? First, if you find that God is using you in ways you didn’t expect, that is a signal that you are praying with honed awareness. It is a signal that that awareness is structuring how you pray, and that how you pray – no matter what your circumstances – is demonstrating growth in spiritual resilience.
What you wrote off or thought nothing of, you now discover yielding unexpected good things. Maybe someone comments, or says, “you have no idea how much I needed to hear that.” Maybe what you underestimated instead blossoms and flourishes. If you find that God is using you in ways you didn’t anticipate, pay attention; you are praying with honed awareness, and how you pray is demonstrating growth in spiritual resilience – because you were faithful to small moments that seemed insignificant.”