What if we viewed prayer as our first course of action rather than a last resort?

God said, ‘I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none,’(Ezekiel 22:30, NIV).

“Well, I guess the only thing left to do is pray about it.”

How many times have we heard those words? How many times have they slipped past our lips? But what if we looked at prayer from a different perspective… God’s perspective? What if we viewed prayer as our first course of action rather than a last resort?


Prayer is not a means to gain control over any situation in your life, but to relinquish control so that God can do what God needs to do.

The Bible tells us in Isaiah 29:16, “You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘He did not make me?’ Can the pot say of the potter, ‘He knows nothing’?”

God is the Master Potter, and He certainly doesn’t need you or me to tell Him how to shape and mold the people that we are praying for. Oh, we’d like to. That’s for sure.

But God’s ultimate goal is for each lump of clay to be fashioned according to His design and for His purposes, not ours. “We are the clay, you are the potter,” Isaiah writes, “we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8). I am. You are. Whoever you are praying for today is.

God shapes and molds. You pray and intercede.

James warns about the danger of praying with wrong motives (James 4:3). Check your desire to control at the door of the prayer closet and don’t let it in.

God is not hoarding His blessings, waiting for us to say the right words to pry those blessings out of His stingy hand. He longs to lavish us with His goodness! (Ephesians 1:7-8) And yet He often waits for us to ask. I am not saying I understand it. Prayer is simply how He chose to engineer the flow of His power and activity from the spiritual realm into the physical realm. Prayer is the conduit through which God’s power is released and His will is brought to earth as it is in heaven.

It is not that God cannot act without the prayers of His people. He can do anything He pleases (Psalm 115:3). However, He has established prayer as the gate through which His blessings flow. James reminds us: “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2).

Ezekiel gives us a glimpse into the heart of God regarding prayer. Israel had sinned in every possible way, and her people were doomed for destruction. God said, “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none” (Ezekiel 22:30). God looked for someone to pray, to intercede, to stand in the gap for Israel, but there was no one.