Chapter 2
2 Exchange Petition for Praise..................................................
As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted,
the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas
and Saul for the work whereunto I have called
them.
—Acts 13:
Often it seems the only kind of prayer we are familiar with is
the petition prayer. We're always petitioning (or asking) God to
do something, and of course that's scriptural. But in the Scripture
quoted above, those Christians were not petitioning God to do
anything. They "ministered to the Lord, and fasted...."
Most of our church services are designed so we come
together and minister to one another. We sing, but in very few
songs do we minister to the Lord. Instead, we minister to one
another. We have special singing, but still we're not ministering
to the Lord; we're ministering to one another.
When we pray, our praying is primarily a petition. We're
petitioning the Lord to move in our midst, to manifest Himself
among us, to meet our needs. When the minister speaks, he's not
ministering to the Lord; he's ministering to the congregation.
And when the service is over, if we have a time of waiting on
God, usually these prayers are still petitions.
We know God is concerned about us and wants to meet our
needs. Jesus said our heavenly Father knows what we need, and
we should ask Him to supply these needs. But, too much of the
time we're like the little boy who said, "My name's Jimmy, and
I'll take all you'll gimme!"
We need times of waiting on God and ministering to the
Lord; times when we're not asking for anything—not petitioning
—but ministering to Him. Perhaps we are already taking time for
this in our individual prayer lives, but we need this kind of
prayer as a group or a church. God can move in this kind of