God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
It is in fact cold comfort to say to a heart-broken person whose only child has been killed or whose husband has been fearfully injured, “This is not God’s doing or God's will; we live in a disordered world in which evil has been let loose; we must expect these things where sin reigns; but keep trusting God.” How infinitely more comforting, more biblical and more glorifying to God it is to say with Amos in defiant faith: 'If disaster falls has not the Lord been at work' (Amos 3:6).
Could it be that many of our problems with prayer and much of our weakness in prayer come from the fact that we are not all on active duty, and yet we still try to use the transmitter? We have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and tried to turn it into a civilian intercom to call the servants for another cushion in the den… We see repeatedly in Scripture (Mt. 9:38; Lk. 21:34-36; Rom. 15:30-31; Eph. 6:12, 17-19; Col. 4:3; 2 Thes. 3:1) that prayer is a walkie-talkie for warfare, not a domestic intercom for increasing our conveniences.
