Prayer and Transformation

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Gwen Collier and I wrote today's piece, Prayer and Transformation. In 1982, Pastor Christian Fuhrer began Monday prayer meetings at Leipzig's St. Nicholas Church. For years, a handful gathered to ask God for peace amid global violence and the oppressive East German regime. Though communist authorities watched churches closely, they were unconcerned until attendance swelled and spilled over to mass meetings outside the church gates. On October 9, 1989, 70,000 demonstrators met and peacefully protested. 6,000 East German police stood ready to respond to any provocation. The crowd remained peaceful, however, and historians consider this day a watershed moment.

A month later, the Berlin Wall fell. The massive transformation all started with a prayer meeting. As we turn to God and begin relying on his wisdom and strength, things often begin to shift and reshape. Like Israel, when we cry out to the Lord in our trouble, we discover the God who alone is capable of profoundly transforming even our most dire predicaments and answering our most vexing questions. God stills the storm to a whisper and turns the desert into pools of water. The one to whom we pray brings hope out of despair and beauty out of ruin. But it's God who, in his time, not ours, enacts transformation. Prayer is how we participate in the transforming work he's doing.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Psalm 107, verses 23 to 36. Some went out on the sea in ships. They were merchants on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the Lord, his wonderful deeds in the deep, for he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths. In their peril their courage melted away. They reeled and staggered like drunkards.

They were at their wits' end. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper.

The waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people and praise him in the counsel of the elders. He turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into the thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there. He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs.

There he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle. Let's pray. God, we need your transforming work.

Please change what only you can change. Give us a place where the hungry can live, where we can all live in joy. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.