Today I deviated from my normal routine of preaching a message from a sermon series and decided to bring a pastoral word to our church. After celebrating “May The Fourth Be With You” today I thought that it would be appropriate to talk about one of the spiritual parallels to “the force”. Today I talked about the power of a praying church. And not just a praying church but a church that prevails in prayer! I don’t know about you but when I was a kid I didn’t just want to play sports for the sake of exercise or fun. I wanted to win! I wanted to play as hard as I could so that I could experience the breakthrough of winning. The one area that I consistently didn’t win in was running. I tried cross country and I tried track and I was never any good at either of them. Why? Because I didn’t have the stamina to stick with it and get better! It was always easier to just stop or give up or make some excuse as to why I couldn’t finish the race. Every once in a while I finished the race and did okay but the idea of getting better and pushing through until I saw results was always a struggle for me. Prayer in a lot of ways is just like that. How many times do we start with a passion and see it fizzle out before too long? How many times do we give up before we get to the finish line of answered prayer? I know I have before! I gave up because of doubt, tiredness and an overwhelming feeling of giving up!

After the service today I had several people thank me for the message and ask me why I felt that prayer is so important for us to move forward. As they were asking me this I immediately thought of the picture of a table with a wonky leg. Many of you will remember sitting at a table with a wonky leg and every time you lean any part of your body on the table the whole table starts to shift. The result is that we only put up with that wonky leg for so long before that table ends up in the garbage at worst or at someone’s cottage at best. The key with a table is that even if you have three legs that are strong and one that is not, it already becomes an unstable table and not able to carry the load or weight that it was designed to carry. When I look at Impact Church I feel like we have three strong legs but the fourth one is hindering our ability to carry the weight of God’s call on our church to the full extent! This is why it was appropriate to do this message on “May The Fourth Be With You” day! We have to look at that fourth leg and make it strong! We have to run the race of prayer and finish it! We have to prevail even when everything inside of is telling us to give up!

Many times in our spiritual journey God gives us pictures or practical things to remind us of something that we need to do or not forget about. When our mission’s team was in Haiti, Lisa Menard strategically got the whole church to pray for the team every time we heard the term “Olympics”. It was an incredible idea and an amazing way of remembering to pray for our “Impact Haiti” team. Now every time you are at home, at a restaurant or at a cottage and you are sitting at a table that has the wonky leg effect remember to it’s time to go to another level in your personal prayer time and in our church-wide prayer times! It’s time to touch Heaven and change Earth!