While on the treadmill for my daily run this morning, I watched the sermon video “Put in the Fire to Awaken Prayer” by Pastor John from December 28, 2008. While there were many things he said that stuck in my brain, these paragraphs made the biggest impact on me:
But what is it that God wants to see change in his people? Verse 9: “I will test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them.” That’s all he mentions. Nothing about their sex lives. Nothing about their money lives. Nothing about their power struggles. He just says: “When they come through the fire, they will pray to me, and I will answer.”
God puts his people through the fire to awaken earnest prayer. This was the unexpected jolt from Zechariah at the end of the year. Please don’t be among the number—I am pleading with you—who take the school of suffering, designed to teach us to pray, and make it the reason you have given up on prayer. Do you see what I am saying? Some enter the fiery school of prayer and instead of learning to call on God, learn the opposite. Zechariah 13:9 is in the Bible as God’s sweet promise to help you profit from his school.
He lures us with the promise: “I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”