Praying Backwards: Transform Your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus' Name

by Bryan Chapell

Some time ago I needed to make a difficult financial announcement to the seminary I serve, and I was stewing about it during my early-morning jog in a neighborhood park. Deep in thought, I came to the top of a hill just as flying geese were approaching a nearby lake from the other side of the rise in preparation for their splash landing. The result was that for a split second I found myself face-to-face with a rapidly approaching goose. I ducked to my right, but he dodged to his left so that we were still facing collision. I froze, anticipating the crash of our noggins, but then, in one of those sequences that seems as though it is recorded in slow motion in our brains, I watched as he tweaked his tail and lifted a leg so that his body twisted and he veered past my shoulder with an outstretched wing almost grazing the top of my head. Once I realized that I had been spared, I could not help being a little philosophical. Oh, great, I thought, wouldn’t that have been a way to go out. I can imagine the headlines: “Seminary President Taken to Heaven on the Wings of a Goose.” Yet, though it may seem a bit silly, in a strange way being saved by that little flick of a goose’s tail gave me a great deal of peace that day. The Lord gave me an opportunity to think of his protection in every moment of my life on a day that I was worried about dear friends, the place I serve, and many months of pressure to come. I began to consider the arrangements God had to make for that split-second ...