The congregation in Georgia that produced
Fireproof, and then
Courageous have my utmost respect.
Even the trailers make me tear up, but maybe it is fueled by having seen each of them four times. Maybe five.
This month they released a new movie,
War Room. The intention is to give flesh and blood to prayer. Although it refers to the passage in Matthew about the privacy of petition, the film bequeaths us the
chance to be a witness to prayer.
"But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly." Matthew 6
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true, War Room is a trove of a billion words. It does not simply tell us, but shows us the fervor and grit, the whisper and the
noise of prayer. Prayer is the drop of the barometer before a storm, the expectancy of dramatic change. There is an older woman who dances in her prayers, a dubious wife who prays through her scepticism, children praying in a cloud of trust, a fallen man prostrate in gut wrenching shame.
In Fireproof, the main character is Caleb who goes from a volatile husband to one who begs for his marriage. War Room shows the wife, Elizabeth, turning to God for guidance,
for hope, for a way less stupid than the endless fighting she and her husband are embroiled in.
Prayer was a very narrow part of my life for the first thirty years. I did all the talking, and the script was precious, yet brief. More recently I have opened up the conversation, and discovered that God has wondrous things to say.
