Pray Your Commute

by Tim Isbell

My mid-career years in the electronics industry were focused on getting projects done. Coworkers knew I was a Christian, but faith was not yet well integrated with my career. Eventually, I realized that when my industrial career ended it would matter more how I had represented Jesus at work than whether my projects succeeded. So, I decided to trust Jesus with the business outcomes and turn my focus to people. 

The pivotal step was a change that occurred during my commute to work. I replaced the morning news and sports talk radio with prayer. After all, if I shared my commute with someone, I’d get to know them quite well. So why not invite Jesus to occupy the passenger seat?

I developed a stack of 3x5 prayer cards, each with scripture to guide a piece of that prayer. On a typical morning, I used 2-4 cards. The daytimer was open on the passenger seat (it was a little notebook in those days!), and I glanced at the scriptures at stoplights. I “prayed scripture” for each meeting on the agenda, the work projects, the people in those meetings, and their lives outside of work. In hindsight, the Lord used these daily prayer times to grew my interest in the people he’d put around me. And the projects? They went remarkably well - as good as, or better than, ever.

The result: the Lord opened many doors for spiritual conversations with coworkers as we talked about personal, marriage, family, financial, and career development issues. For some, these were the start of their journey to Christian faith.

My starting point was the scriptures on this list, hand-printed on 3x5 note cards: