Pray Big, Live Big

I was recently at a pastor's prayer meeting and as we were praying I had a recollection of my high school basketball coach reminding me when I post up to get big and stay big. I was 6'3" 175 pounds and when the ball went to the corner my arms were to be outstretched and I was to have a wide stance so that the man with the ball could see me and potentially pass to me and theoretically I would turn and score a high percentage basket.

That's when the words in my mind changed to pray big, live big. I like to pray big prayers. I am a part of a relatively small group of churches called Newfrontiers. We like to pray big prayers. What I mean is that we pray for things like planting churches in top 100 churches in the US even though we just now have ten of those top cities. We pray for churches that will reproduce and plant more churches. We hold to promises that the knowledge of God's glory will cover the earth like water covers the sea. We pray for harvesters to get into the work of harvesting souls. That means when people become Christ followers, we want them to join us in the mission of being disciples who make disciples.

All of this praying for big things must be followed by living big. We live big by believing that this is the kind of stuff that is in line with the character of Christ and we can actually take bold steps and big risks because God will give us what we need. This is the part that really impresses me. It doesn't do much good to pray for big things then be fearful of talking to our friends about Jesus or talking to the church about a new idea to serve the community, or asking someone to take a new responsibility in the church.

Fear causes us to live small. It doesn't make any sense to pray these big prayers then not have any confidence in our great big God.

Let's pray big. Let's live big. Let's have faith in a great big God.