Ye Are Idle

“But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord.”-Exodus 5:17

The scripture says: “whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”  The world cannot esteem the things of God, because they are contrary one to the other.  This is the case when it comes to praying.  At best the world views it as personal development, and often as idle time.  However, like farming, when the seeds of prayer are sown in the fertile ground of faith it will bear much fruit.  It may take some time, but it will pay off. 

In the above text, Moses comes to Pharaoh at the word of the Lord to tell him to let God’s people go that they may go and worship.  Pharaoh responds: “Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord.”  Then he tells them to get back to work.  Pharaoh is like the world in this instance.  When the people want to go out and worship the Lord his response is that they must not be busy enough.  If they have enough time to go and worship, then they should have enough time to go and work.  Prayer being an element of worship, an essential component of worship.  Of all that is attacked by the world as idleness and slothfulness it is the place of prayer.  Yet nothing could be further from the truth.  Prayer has a profound utility to it, just not in the way that the world honors.  The world exalts the man that sits down, hashes out a plan, rally’s the labor, the capital, and then executes that plan.  It bears their name and most often they rejoice in the glory of it all.  From entrepreneurs to military generals, this kind of work is esteemed.  Yet the labor of prayer is not this way; it is founded in a place of yielding.  It is not that you concoct a brilliant strategy but wait before the Lord for direction.  It is not that you rally labor and capital to your cause but rely on the moving of the Spirit of God to: open doors, send volunteers, and provide the means.  It is not that you follow through with your strength and might but give yourself over to His might that he may work through you, giving glory to God.  The early church wasn’t strategizing and organizing in the upper room, they were praying.  Praying and waiting on the power from above.  Some took them for idle drunkards, but little did they know that the work was underway and had been underway since the foundation of the world.  They were simply fulfilling their part in the plan of God.  What seems like idleness to the carnal world is essential in the work of God.  The investor that sets a certain sum in a sure stock knows that in time his money will compound.  What seems like idleness to the untrained, is in fact compounding into a generous sum.  So, it is in the place of prayer.

We must invest our all in the place of prayer, because only through prayer can we beat back the forces of darkness.  The battle ground we are tasked to fight cannot be won through capital and strategy.  We are fighting for the eternal soul of man.  We are preaching to raise the dead from sin.  We are laboring to liberate the captive from the clutches of Satan.  It’s spiritual warfare that must be fought with spiritual weapons.  So let us find ourselves praying.