Strengthen Your Core

Strengthen Your Core

You, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our LORD Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. Jude 1:20-21, ESV

IT’S A COMMON SIGHT AT THE GYM: guys who show up in the spring to prep themselves for beach season. They go for the heavy weights and strain to build up their arms, shoulders, and chests, since those are the muscles that impress. The problem is that focusing on visible power without first building up the core—those hidden muscles that support everything else and hold it all in balance—can result in strain and injury. Going straight for bulk results in bodies that can’t handle the weight of their own gains.

That’s true in the spirit, too. Many people seek a life of powerful prayer because they want power. That’s understandable. We love to see “results,” and sometimes that’s all we focus on. But when our prayers only seek visible and impressive outcomes—when we go for miracles and divine interventions in our circumstances—we risk gains we can’t sustain. We pray for power without first having the character and wisdom needed to know which answers to pray for. We end up with low levels of spiritual maturity that can’t handle the weight of our calling.

That’s why, in both the gym and our prayer lives, it’s wise to target the core first—to build up our innermost being. Then we can proceed with wisdom, discernment, and character from which powerful prayers flow. It’s why Paul prayed for inner strength in order to be able to handle Christ within (Ephesians 3:16-17). It’s also why some people rise to high positions but then crash and burn because of character failures. If we really want spiritual influence, and if we really want to connect with the heart of the Father on important matters in this world, we’ll need to be strengthened in the character, faith, wisdom, and purity of our inner selves. One of the best ways to grow in effective prayers for others is to pray for ourselves, that we would grow in spiritual strength. The world needs people who pray such prayers. Their faith knows how to lift up the weight of its problems to God.

Christian character grows in the secret place of prayer.