In Joshua 10, Josh prays, “Sun, stand still….”
2 sentences later we learn that “the sun stopped in the middle of the sky.
Joshua asked God to stop the earth from rotating and – for whatever reason – God agreed.
I never pray for anything even close to stopping the sun. I’ve never prayed for God to interrupt the cosmos for something I was doing.
3 reasons we don’t pray like this:
1.
The events that fill our time aren’t important enough for us to consider asking God for crazy stuff. Think about it, Joshua was traveling the country with a massive army defeating every thing in his site in an effort to spread the fame of the Lord. His mission was life and death. His leadership would provide life or death for many others. Also, God’s street cred was directly tied to Joshua’s success. Joshua was all in. When you’re totally invested, you’re more likely to pray wacko prayers like these.
2.
In our world of reason and logic and plans and programs and strategies, we leave little room for God to stop the Sun. In fact, it’d totally throw off our plans if that happened.
3.
I think we have a hard time believing that God will do that stuff. Sometimes – for all practical purposes – we Christians might as well be agnostic. We live and pray and act and talk like God is real, but we also live and pray and act and talk like it’s highly unlikely that God would intervene in our lives in God-sized ways.
