Prayerlessness
and what we might be missing
Scripture Reading: Luke 11
I read a story several years ago in the "Daily Oklahoman" about a Spanish businessman who became a millionaire because of a prayer. The businessman, a devout Roman Catholic, stopped at a church to pray during a business trip to Stockholm, Sweden. When he entered the church it was empty except for a coffin containing the remains of a man. The 35-year-old businessman, Eduardo Sierra, knelt and prayed for the deceased man for twenty minutes. When he arose from prayer he noticed a note asking those who prayed for the deceased to sign their name and address. He was the first to sign the book.
A few weeks later Sierra received a phone call from Sweden informing him he had just become a millionaire. The man he had prayed for a few weeks earlier, Jan Svenson, was a real estate dealer with no close relatives and his will stated, "whoever prays for my soul gets all my belongings." That is quite a reward for praying!
Now, I don't believe in praying for the dead and I don't think we ought to pray just to get stuff "to consume upon our own lusts." But this businessman was not praying to get but rather out of concern and he received an unexpected gift in return. Had he never prayed he would have missed out on being a millionaire. The funny thing is he would never even realized it. He would have marched on in ignorance never knowing what might have been.
I wonder how many unrealized blessings we are missing out on as a result of prayerlessness. I'm not talking about bizarre wills and becoming the heirs of strangers, but about the things God would have done had we prayed. How much spiritual growth have we missed, how many opportunities to advance the kingdom have passed us by, how many errors could have been avoided, and how many victories could we have seen had we only been faithful to pray?
They say ignorance is bliss. In some respects that might be true. We might be pretty unhappy if we knew all we lacked because we failed to ask. On the other hand. maybe if God could help us know all that we've missed through prayerlessness we might be more prayerful. Then again, He already told us "you do not have because you do not ask." I suspect that should be enough said.