Becoming a Futures Broker

“By faith Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did…

By faith Enoch was taken to heaven without dying…

By faith Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood…

By faith Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land…

By faith Sarah was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old.”

Hebrews 11

This week as I was reading chapter 19 of Mark Batterson’s book, “Draw the Circle,” I couldn’t help but think of these verses in Hebrews. A chapter known as The Hall of Faith. Later in the chapter the writer says this: “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it.”

The chapter in Mark’s book is entitled, “Memorial Offerings” and Mark writes that our prayers don’t die when we do. God answers them forever. When I read that I realized that I don’t think I’ve ever prayed for someone or something without the expectation that it would happen in my lifetime. It just never occurred to me. I pray with anticipation, not in the arrogant way I used to, but in an eager way. Looking and waiting for God to move.

Which now occurs to me, after reading this, that my prayer mindset has put a time frame on my prayers and has set me up for disappointment and doubt. I know that God’s answers to prayers are “yes,” “no,” and “not yet,” but the “not yet” was still expected within my life span. Which, I now recognize, is so unfair and so confining to God. He lives and works outside of time and yet I have spent my life locking my prayers in time.

I’ve not been an Abraham or Enoch or Sarah. I’ve not lived in faith like they did, receiving little or no outcomes to my prayers and my occasional obedience. Instead I have lived in disappointment and shrinking faith.

Needless to say, this has shaken up my prayer life. I’m recognizing that my prayers, shockingly, are not the kingpin of God’s immediate answers. So the pressure that I have placed upon myself in my prayers is lifting because if Mark and the writer of Hebrews are correct, then God will be at work, using my prayers far after I’m gone.

So, my prayers are now, well, I’m turning them into investments. Investments in the people and things that I am praying for. Which reminds me of another verse. I Chronicles 4:10 - Jabez’s prayer. “Oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory.”

Oh, God, bless my prayers and expand them far beyond my life in order that your perfect will be done. In your time, heal Eva and Harlow. In your time, bring my friends to know you personally. In your time, make more room at Heartland for those who need a Savior. In your time, provide babies to those who are desperate, love to those who are longing, and restoration to those who are broken. 

I don’t want to be a here-and-now kind of prayer girl anymore! It’s time I consciously invest in the future. To become, for lack of a better term, a Futures Broker.