Day 24: Praying Away The Obstacles

I can make you a promise. Since you’ve made a commitment to become a Great Commission Christian, you will be confronted with obstacles. From a spiritual perspective, Satan doesn’t want you to be evangelistic. In fact, I believe that evangelistic Christians are one of Satan’s greatest fears. Great Commission Christians are on a mission to populate heaven and depopulate hell.

From a human perspective, life gets in the way. Messed up priorities cause us to spend less time with our family, neglect reading the Bible, stop attending church regularly, and of course stop sharing our faith.

Let’s take Day 24 as a day to pray away these obstacles. And let’s also pray that God will remind us to pray away these obstacles on a regular basis.

BUSYNESS

Do you know anyone who would say they’re not busy? I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone say that life is slow and they have plenty of time. To the contrary, the busy life is the normal life today. And that really is sad.

Let me tell you the story of a Christian friend of mine. Ben insisted he had no margin in his life. Yes, he knew he should take time to share the gospel with others. Because he is a friend, I rather boldly asked him to look at his smartphone to see how much time he had spent on it in the recent past.

He went to Screen Time and was shocked to see these weekly averages:

Social media: 5 hours 32 minutes

Games: 2 hours 41 minutes

I asked him if he looked at social media on his laptop, and he responded sheepishly, “Yes, probably thirty minutes a day.” That’s another two hours and thirty minutes per week. Do you get the picture? Ben was spending eight hours a week on social media and almost three hours a week on games.

Ben turned red when I asked him if he watched television or a streaming service. He nodded affirmatively and muttered, “Yeah, a couple hours a day.”

Here is Ben’s annual time log for these three areas of his life:

Social media: 416 hours

Games: 139 hours

Television/streaming: 730 hours

Ben had 1,285 hours of margin per year from just these three areas! How much unrealized margin do you have? Though I’m not suggesting you should do away with social media or entertainment, you can certainly carve out some margin for more important aspects of your life.

Pray that you will learn God’s priorities for time in your life. There is probably a lot of room for sharing the gospel.

TYRANNY OF THE URGENT

Praying away the obstacles is related to the issue of busyness. It recognizes that urgent issues will inevitably arise in our lives.

With my organization, Church Answers, I was speaking in Bradenton, Florida, for two days. Toward the end of the second day, I received a call from my youngest son, Jess.

“Dad,” he said seriously, “Mom just fell and broke several bones.” Nellie Jo was in Franklin, Tennessee, 740 miles from Bradenton.

Of course, I booked a flight and left the conference immediately. I was fortunate that my eldest son, Sam, was with me and could finish the speaking engagement for me. For the next two weeks, I focused on my wife during her surgery and recovery.

Urgent matters happen. They are realities of life.

Here are a couple of observations about the tyranny of the urgent. First, I hope you already have margin built into your life so you can deal with these immediate moments of need. Second, urgent matters don’t have to stop evangelism. Indeed, it’s possible in the midst of a crisis that you will find opportunities to be a Great Commission Christian.

Pray for wisdom when urgent matters arise. Look for gospel opportunities in them.

FEAR

I admit I haven’t confirmed the number, but different sources I checked said that “Do not fear” is in the Bible 365 times. That’s one admonition and encouragement for every day of the year.

God knows we have to deal with fear. It is a normal emotional reaction to many challenges in life. As an introvert, I fear going to social events where I am expected to carry on small talk with people I hardly know. As a child, I can remember fearing that something would happen to my parents.

Fear could very well be a reaction you have to sharing the gospel with someone. The first time I told someone about Christ as a young adult, I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest! Then, the unexpected words came from my mouth in fear: “You don’t want to go to hell, do you?” Oh dear.

By the way, God still used that moment of fear to bring my friend Jim to salvation in Christ. He calmly responded, “No, I don’t. Can you tell me how to go to heaven?”

There you go.

Pray that God will either remove the fear or use it as you seek to become a more obedient Great Commission Christian.

DISCOURAGEMENT

Discouragement in life is as common as busyness and fear. We all have moments when we struggle with life events. When I started Church Answers, most people encouraged me. They thought it would be a great ministry. But I was surprised at the people, albeit only a few, who gave me reasons why I shouldn’t start the ministry.

Unfortunately, for a week or so, I listened to the discouraging voices in my head. For that brief period, my emotions changed from enthusiasm to fear. Fortunately, I began to focus more on God’s vision for Church Answers and the fear went away.

Sometimes you will be afraid at the thought of telling someone about Jesus. On other occasions you will be discouraged because of other life issues. That discouragement could prove to be a distraction from your commitment to be a Great Commission Christian.

Pray that God will protect you from letting discouragement distract you from Great Commission obedience.

EXCUSES

I wish I could say I have a good excuse when I’m negligent about sharing my faith. The issue for me is that I just don’t do it.

We can try to use excuses: We’re too busy. We don’t know what to say. We don’t have any unbelievers in our lives. We don’t know how to deal with objections. We don’t want to offend people. We don’t want people to see us as crazy or weird.

Perhaps you’ve used one or more of those excuses. Or perhaps you are more like I am. You really don’t have an excuse. You simply fail to be obedient at times.

I do remember several years ago thinking that my main challenge in being a Great Commission Christian was finding the time to witness. In other words, my excuse was that I was too busy. Then I started praying that God would give me opportunities to share the gospel in the midst of my busyness. Since that prayer, I have been blessed by one opportunity after another.

Ask God to work in the midst of your excuses. You will be amazed to see how he answers that prayer.