When I was about 10 years old, my father, who was in the navy at the time, took me to the docks to do some fishing. A large ship was tied up there. The weather that day was particularly calm, and the ship floated on slack ropes. My father surprised me by walking over, putting his feet on the edge of the dock, his hands on the side of the ship, and pushing. He pushed steadily for a long time. I thought he was crazy – he was trying to move a ship! But to my amazement, the ship began to move! I thought my dad was Superman in disguise! He squatted down and said, “I don’t know how it works, but somehow my energy is stored up in that ship until there is enough to move it. If I had quit before there was enough energy to move it, even seconds too early, it wouldn’t have moved, and all my pushing would have been wasted. And guess what? If you had helped me, it would have moved twice as fast.”
As you seek to make prayer essential in your church, you will be like my dad pushing that ship. The more people you persuade to push with you, the sooner it will move. Don’t give up before the results start to come. You never know when they’re just about to happen. Keep praying. Get others to pray with you. You’ll be amazed at how God moves.
Dee Duke is the senior pastor at Jefferson Baptist Church in Jefferson, Oregon. Since 1989 when prayer became the focal point of the church’s ministry, Jefferson Baptist has grown from 200 to 1,300 worshipers — in a rural community of 1,700 people!
