Happy New Prayer!

It’s the second day of February and this morning I posed this e-question to one friend (who I haven’t spoken to for a while but wanted to catch up with), ‘is it too late to wish you a Happy New Year?’

Well, is it?

I guess not and of course, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s too late or not. The important thing is to know whether the happiness for the new year that we wished upon those to whom we offered the sentiment, is borne out, or not.

February for them, as for us, will be different to January, and September to June. Different daily and monthly challenges determine how happy our respective years will be.

January is a month of cold weather, dark evenings, credit card bills, school examinations. February, the same.

So who knows what this year has already brought for some – or what the rest of it - will bring for others? Which raises the question, is it futile to wish someone a Happy New year, to hope for it even?

Just prior to Christmas, the local paper did a short interview with me about mission and the work I am involved with. I said something that I often say to people, along the lines of ‘when you start praying for people, you start loving them.’ When the article was written, the word ‘praying’ was replaced with the word ‘hoping’ which for me, missed the point completely, though I understood why it was done.

Reminds me of that old Dusty Springfield song, ‘wishing, and hoping, and thinking and praying…’

What’s the difference between the words?

Well, for Christians there is a difference, of course, between merely wishing for something that has no real impact, and praying for its success.

The great thing about prayer is that we can cause an effect, we can make an impact in the lives of those to whom we may have (maybe casually) wished a Happy New year to at the turn of the year.

We can bring about the intended outcome to the greeting if we believe in prayer.

We can’t foresee what is to come in the lives of those we pray for, but God can, and He hears our prayers.

But how intentional are we of turning our wishing and hoping into thinking and praying?

One thing I did over two days in the New Year period was to pray through my mobile phone contacts. That’s a good way of cross sectioning our contacts, friends, work colleagues, neighbours and so on. I prayed for some really random people and really enjoyed it.

I am expectant of God’s impact on their lives this year because I know He is faithful.

Intentional prayer. Let’s get on to it.