Praying is the Most Practical Thing You Can Do

The irony of life in lockdown is that it’s precisely when the needs are at their greatest that we feel the least able to help.

The needs nationally are obvious and overwhelming. Yet those of us who aren’t key workers, medics or politicians feel powerless to help. We’re stuck at home, cleaning and baking while Rome burns. (Or at least, having our characters on The Sims clean and bake while Rome burns.) The solutions are out of our hands. All we can do is keep washing ours.

And the needs in your personal circle may feel just as overwhelming, and just as impossible to meet: exhausted parents you’re not able to watch the kids for, grieving friends you’re not allowed to hug, lonely people you can’t welcome into your home. Your heart goes out to your struggling friends, but you have to stay in.   

For those of us who pride ourselves on being one of life’s “do-ers”, this crisis has been a humbling experience. We’ve been sent to the bench to watch the match, when what we really want to get back on the pitch. We feel so… useless. It’s incredibly humbling.

5 Things to Pray in a Global Crisis

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Let the Bible help you pray positively and powerfully during unsettling times.

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And yet in God’s economy, humble people are the most useful people to him. Because it’s humble people who are in the position to do the most practical, most powerful thing possible right now: pray.

We might be confined to our houses—“but God’s word is not chained” (2 Timothy 2 v 9).

We might have had our freedoms curtailed—but our Father “will do all that [he] pleases” (Isaiah 46 v 10).

Our little worlds might have stopped turning—but the Son is still “sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1 v 3). 

In God’s economy, humble people are the most useful people

Throughout Scripture, God promises to work in response to the prayers of his people. And it’s driven by this conviction that TGBC are publishing Five Things to Pray in a Global Crisis. Like the other books in the 5 Things to Pray series, it works through 21 different prayer themes, taking a passage of Scripture and turning that into five short prayer prompts for each person or area of concern.

This little guide will help you to pray for your own heart, asking God to help you in the midst of your fear, loneliness, uncertainty and frustration. 

It will help you to pray for loved ones—whether they’re sick or vulnerable, under your roof or far away.  

It will help you to pray for those on the front line of fighting this virus: our government, healthcare system and key workers. 

And it will help you to pray for your church family and your community during this unique season, as we ask God to do what only he can—to work through this crisis to grow his kingdom and bring glory to the Lord Jesus.

Can you imagine what God might do in your church, your community and your nation, if you spent the next three weeks earnestly asking him to be at work? And then consider that he is the one “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work in us” (Ephesians 3 v 21)!

You’re not powerless to help in the face of this pandemic. Well actually, you are. That’s part of the point. But you have the ear of the One who is not, and you’re invited to come to him in prayer.

Let the Bible help you pray positively and powerfully during the COVID-19 pandemic. Buy a copy of Five Things to Pray in a Global Crisis here.