Personal Prayer Power Blog

My husband Gordon and I were eating at a cafeteria style Chinese restaurant.  I opened my fortune cookie and here’s what it said, “Faith is personal, but never private.” It sounded much more profound than I could figure out there over the fried rice, so I stuck it in my purse and brought the tiny slip of paper home. 

I got to wondering if personal and private have two different meanings.  I looked them up in the dictionary and private has more of a meaning of secrecy or not for public view or use.  Personal means pertaining to a particular person, such as their individual qualities or possessions. 

I named my video series Personal Prayer Power in the sense of being the time an individual spends developing their own unique relationship with God.  Each individual nurtures or neglects this for themselves.  It’s done in private, when no one else is around so in a sense it’s both personal and private prayer.  

And yet I can’t say that it’s effects are completely personal or private.  In our alone time we often pray for other people, even whole nations.  Jesus says, “No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed.  Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light.  For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”  (Luke 8:16,17)  

So personal faith and personal prayer really aren’t private after all, just like this fortune says.  They affect our relationships with the others in our world.