I was in a hurry the other day. You know the kind of trip, you've got a list in your head and you're already halfway back to the car before you've even walked through the door. That was me at a corner store here in Texas.
And I passed an older woman, had to be in her eighties, standing near the register just a little too still.
Something made me stop. I almost didn't. I had somewhere to be, same as you probably do right now. But I stopped and asked her if she was alright.
She wasn't.
I'm not going to tell you everything she shared with me, because it wasn't mine to tell. But I ended up standing in that store a lot longer than I planned to. Longer than my schedule had room for. Not longer than God had already carved out for that moment though, because some moments aren't on your calendar. They're on His.
And what I told her that day, I haven't been able to shake since.
You were never standing outside
Here's the thing about her, she wasn't lost. She wasn't confused about who Jesus is. She's known Him longer than I've been alive. But standing there in that store, she looked like someone who felt like she needed permission to bother God with what she was carrying.
I think a lot of us feel that way right now. Not because our faith is small, but because the news is loud, and loud things have a way of making you feel like you're standing outside somewhere, waiting to be let in.
There's a moment in Matthew's gospel, right when Jesus died on the cross, that most people read past too fast. There was a curtain in the temple, thick and heavy, separating ordinary people from the presence of God. You didn't walk through it. Only one man did, once a year, and even he had to be careful how he did it.
Matthew tells us what happened the second Jesus took His last breath.
"At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." — Matthew 27:51 (NIV)
Notice the direction. Top to bottom. Not a man reaching up from the ground trying to tear it down. God, from His side, reaching down and tearing it open Himself.
That's not a small detail. That's the whole message in one sentence. God didn't wait for us to fight our way in. He tore the door open Himself.
So when you feel like you're standing outside, wondering if it's even okay to bring God something as ordinary as your fear about the news, hear me on this. You were never standing outside. The war didn't close that door. The economy didn't close it. Nothing happening in Washington closed it either. It's been open since the moment He took His last breath and gave you your first one back.
Prayer isn't a spare tire
She said something to me I think a lot of us have said to ourselves lately. "I've been praying, but I don't know if it's doing anything."
I get that. But I don't think most of us were ever taught what prayer actually is.
We treat it like something we reach for once everything else has failed. Like a spare tire you keep in the trunk and forget about until you're stranded. That's not what prayer is in scripture. Paul tells the church at Thessalonica something short and almost impossible to obey on the surface.
"Pray continually." — 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (NIV)
Not pray when you remember. Not pray once things get bad enough. Pray continually. Prayer was never supposed to be something you catch up on later, the way you catch up on sleep. It's closer to breathing. You don't store up air on Monday so you don't have to breathe on Thursday. You need it now, and you need it again in a few seconds, and that's not a burden. That's just what being alive looks like.
Jesus said something almost identical. Luke tells us He taught His disciples that they should always pray and never give up (Luke 18:1, NIV).
Always pray. Don't give up. Those two things are connected, because the people who give up are almost always the people who stopped praying first.
There's a story that carries this better than any explanation I could give you. A disciple named Peter was in prison, chained, guards at every door, scheduled to be executed the next morning. His friends outside had no leverage. No lawyer. No appeal. Nothing they could do.
So what did they do? Acts tells us the church was praying earnestly to God on his behalf (Acts 12:5, NIV).
They didn't have access to Peter. They had access to God. Turned out that was enough. An angel woke Peter up, the chains fell off his wrists, and he walked out of a prison that should have held him.
That's not a Bible story that only worked back then. That's what prayer does. It reaches places you cannot reach.
What prayer doesn't promise
I want to be honest with you here, because I'm not in the business of handing you a prayer that promises to fix everything.
The night before He was crucified, Jesus prayed so hard that Luke, who was a doctor, tells us His sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44, NIV). That's not poetry. That's a real physical response to real anguish.
Here's what I want you to notice. His prayer that night didn't stop the cross. It didn't cancel what was coming. But it did something else. It got Him ready to walk into it. When the soldiers showed up a few minutes later, He wasn't caught off guard and He wasn't running. He was ready.
That might be the most important thing I can tell you today. Your prayers about the war, about your bills, about whatever is coming down the pike in November, might not change tomorrow's headline. I can't promise you they will. But they'll do what they did for Jesus in that garden. They'll get you ready to walk into whatever tomorrow actually holds.
Sending the singers out first
There's one more thing I told that woman before I had to go, and it might be the most practical part of this whole thing.
She told me she didn't know what else to do besides worry. So I told her about a king named Jehoshaphat.
He was facing an army he had no way of beating. No numbers. No strategy. By every earthly measure, he was about to lose. So he did something that doesn't make sense until you understand what it actually is.
He appointed men to sing to the Lord and praise Him for the splendor of His holiness as they marched out ahead of the army. — 2 Chronicles 20:21 (NIV)
Read that again. He sent singers out ahead of the soldiers. Not behind them for safety. Ahead of them. First.
While they were singing, while they were praising God for who He is before they'd seen a single sign of victory, God caused their enemies to turn on each other. The battle was already won before Jehoshaphat's army swung a single weapon.
I'm not telling you that if you sing a hymn tonight the war overseas ends tomorrow. That's not what I'm saying, and I won't stand here and promise you something scripture doesn't promise. What I'm telling you is that worship was never meant to be the thing you do after the victory. Sometimes it's the thing God uses to get you to the victory.
Your assignment is simpler than you think
You don't have to fix the war. You don't have to understand the economy. You don't have to figure out who to trust in Washington or on the news. That was never your assignment, and carrying it like it is will wear you out in a way God never intended.
Your assignment is a lot simpler, and it's one you already know how to do because you've been doing it your whole life. Stand. Pray. Trust the God who tore the curtain, who heard the church praying for Peter, who met Jesus in that garden and gave Him strength to walk out of it. That same God is standing with you right now, whatever this season is asking of you.
You have not lost what has always kept you.
That woman in the store looked a little different by the time I finally had to say goodbye. Not because anything outside of her had changed. Her worries were probably still there when she got home. But something on the inside had settled.
I believe the same thing can settle in you right now, wherever you're listening from. Whatever tomorrow holds, He's already there. He's not asking you to figure it all out. He's just asking you to keep talking to Him, the way you always have.