Why We Don't Pray

We meet to pray every Wednesday night at GFC and usually take 10 minutes before prayer to reorient our minds toward God. To do this last night I asked our adults two questions. I found folks’ answers very encouraging! Admittedly, I did not get every response jotted down, but here is a sampling of what we came up with:

1. What lies do we believe that keep us from praying?

• God will not listen to me
• God is not able to help
• I need to work things out myself; I am more trustworthy than God
• God is not going to do good
• I am not good enough for God to listen to me
• My matters are unimportant
• I have already prayed about this a hundred times
• I will not pray the right thing
• Prayer will not change anything since God is sovereign

Then we sought to answer these lies with the Truth of the Word.

2. What things are true about God that should deeply encourage us to pray to Him?

• He is the Creator and Sustainer of everything
• He forgives our iniquities
• He takes pleasure in His people
• His mercies are new every morning
• He hears those who ask of Him
• He listens to the humble who pray
• He does more than we can ask
• If He gave us Christ how will He not give us all things?
• His kingdom is not of this world
• He sympathizes with our weakness
• He maintains the cause of the afflicted
• He draws close the brokenhearted
• Christ intercedes for us, sitting, resurrected at the Fathers right hand
• He is our pleasure, stronghold, joy and path of life
• His Spirit intercedes for us in prayer
• He hears us

If we fail to pray it is because we have thought much too little of Christ and much too much of ourselves. God rescue us from proud independence!

Woman in a Basket

So there was this woman sitting in a basket with a leaden lid. Then this angel popped open the lid, pointed at her and said, “Her name is Wickedness.” Just when you thought it could not get any stranger, two stork-winged women grabbed the basket (lid closed!) and flew off to Babylon.
Such was one of Zechariah’s visions and in its context what a remarkable image it is of what God has done for us in Christ – He has taken our sins away. Our sins themselves, along with all our guilt for them have been “flown away.” Forever.
Last night we pondered that truth for a few minutes at our meeting to pray. I asked folks to think of their sins, then we took a few minutes to state to each other the following: “Jesus died to take away my __________...” and they would fill in their sin (pride, gossip, immoralities, anger, unbelief, etc). I even encouraged them to ponder some of those sin “grocery lists” you find in places like Romans 1 to properly identify their sin.
As one after another spoke I got happier and happier! It was, to press the analogy, like we were all dumping our wickedness in the basket that was soon to be flown away. I reminded our folks that this was not a rehearsal of failure, but a rejoicing in substitutionary atonement! Jesus died for real sins that we commit. But He died! The wrath of God against these wicked deeds was paid in full.
It sure is easy to pray to a Saviour like that.

Praying for More Than a Few Minutes

What makes a church like ours set aside a beautiful Saturday morning to seek God in five hours of prayer?

When Grace Fellowship Church began we were one dependent lot. We had no money, no building, no people, and no guarantee of success. Yet, reading of two personalities from the past had recently impacted me.

First, I read a description of the Week of Prayer held every year at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London under Spurgeon’s ministry. The author held up that week as one of the sweetest, most spiritually refreshing seasons of the calendar year. The week would begin with the elders leading in prayers of repentance “often in tears” and culminate in aspirations of great hope in the progress of the Gospel.

I also read how George Mueller started an orphanage, yes, to help the orphans, but more importantly, to launch an impossible ministry that would prove the sovereign God hears and answers prayer. If you read his autobiography you will laugh with joy at all the ways God did exactly that.

So, at GFC we started with a mid-week meeting to pray before we ever met for worship on Sundays. And after Sunday meetings began we kept it. Within a year or two we added a week of prayer in the New Year. Several years after that we started holding a second week or a day of prayer in September (the second new year!).

And all we do at these meetings is pray. Oh, we have little booklets to direct us and remind us of what we should be praying about, but there is no teaching, nor is there that bane of all lively prayer meetings – the 40 minutes of “prayer requests.” (It has always floored me that we can be so easily duped into talking about what we are going to pray rather than just praying!)

So, this Saturday will come, our fall day of prayer, and I will have feelings in the morning like, “Yawn, here we go again.” And, “Five hours on a Saturday sure is long!” Then I will put on my pastor game-face, show up at 7AM and by noon be thinking, “Does it have to end?”

You pray for us, won’t you? That the Lord will “come down” this Saturday and meet with His people. He has never missed an opportunity so far.

How to Give Religion Christian Burial

"Jesus Christ was always a busy man with his work, but never too busy to pray. The divinest of business filled his heart and filled his hands, consumed his time, exhausted his nerves. But with him even God’s work must not crowd out God’s praying. Saving people from sin or suffering must not, even with Christ, be substituted for praying, nor abate [decrease] in the least the time or the intensity of these holiest of seasons. He filled the day with working for God; He employed the night with praying to God. The day-working made the night-praying a necessity. The night-praying sanctified and made successful the day-working. Too busy to pray gives religion Christian burial, it is true, but kills it nevertheless."

- E.M. Bounds, The Complete Works of Bounds on Prayer, 259.

Week of Prayer

We are gearing up for Week of prayer at Grace Fellowship Church – one of the highlights of our church year. The whole idea was modeled after Spurgeon and the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The first week of January was generally set aside for prayer with special meetings on each day. Spurgeon viewed it as a time of humbling and reports from those who attended speak of remarkable seasons of confession, intercession and praise.
We began our annual Week of Prayer in January, like Spurgeon, to start the New Year with our eyes set on Christ. But these times were so rich and such a blessing to us that after a couple of years we added a second week in September – the unofficial start of “everything.”
I will be preaching Sunday night on the prayer life of Jesus. We are taking the model prayer He gave the Twelve as the foundation for this Week of Prayer. But the impetus to that model prayer was His model prayer life – Lord, teach us to pray… with the emphasis on the “us.”
So, pray for us next week – the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

[A full schedule of meetings and times can be found here. Just click on the meeting on the calendar and you will find all the information you need!]

Vacuous Prayers

I was recently at a meeting (you weren’t there!) where someone led in prayer. They had prepared a prayer (no sin in itself) and this only added to the problem. It was one of those “prayers” with content addressed more to us listeners than the Listener. Plus, it was chock full of requests that, to be honest, were of no interest to God.

That may sound harsh, to say that God took “no interest” in the things asked for... but I base that assertion on the prayers recorded in the Bible. Have you ever taken time to read the prayers of Scripture? It is a glorious exercise and will teach you more about prayer than any book or seminar.

For instance, in my devotional time this morning I was reading Colossians. Consider this prayer:

“1:9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

To break this prayer into two simple statements, Paul tells the Colossians, “I am praying that your knowledge of God will increase exponentially so that your sanctification will deepen correspondingly.”

Now that is something to pray for one another!

In fact, a growing knowledge of God (an intimate, relational depth in knowing Him) is prayed for throughout the Bible. Which leads me to this simple conclusion. The next time you pray publicly, why not pray for yourself and the people around you that you will know God through Christ more deeply, and that such knowledge will intensify your zeal to live like Him in this world?

Modeled prayers, when appropriately appropriated, are sure to be answered!

In Preparation for Prayer Meeting

Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare
Come, my soul, thy suit prepare: Jesus loves to answer prayer;
He Himself has bid thee pray, therefore will not tell thee nay.
Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.

With my burden I begin: Lord, remove this load of sin;
Let Thy blood, for sinners spilt, set my conscience free from guilt.
Lord, I come to Thee for rest, take possession of my breast;
There Thy blood-bought right maintain, and without a rival reign.

As the image in the glass answers the beholder’s face;
Thus unto my heart appear, print Thine own resemblance there.
While I am a pilgrim here, let Thy love my spirit cheer;
As my Guide, my Guard, my Friend, lead me to my journey’s end.

Words: John Newton, Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779).

Spurgeon on Your Church's Meeting for Prayer

It is no statement of mine, suggested by unreasonable zeal, but it is the result of long-continued observation when I assert that the condition of a Church may be very accurately gauged by its Prayer Meetings. If the spirit of prayer is not with the people, the minister may preach like an angel, but he cannot expect success. If there is not the spirit of prayer in a Church there may be wealth, there may be talent, there may be a measure of effort, there may be an extensive machinery, but the Lord is not there. It is a sure evidence of the Presence of God that men pray as the rising of the thermometer is an evidence of the increase of the temperature.

As the Nilometer measures the rising of the water in the Nile, and so foretells the amount of harvest in Egypt, so is the Prayer Meeting a “Graceometer,” and from it we may judge of the amount of Divine working among a people. If God is near a Church it must pray. And if He is not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be slothfulness in prayer. God’s people, by their saying one to another, “Let us go speedily to pray,” manifest that they have a sense of their needs—they feel that they need much, much that Nature cannot yield them—they feel their need of Divine Grace, their need of quickening, their need of God’s help if sinners are to be converted. They feel their need of His help if even those who are saved are to be steadfast—their need of the Holy Spirit that they may grow in Grace and glorify God. He who never prays surely does not know his own needs and how can he be taught of the Lord at all? God’s people are a people sensible of their needs and therefore the absence of a sense of poverty is a sad token.

Moreover, the love which God’s people have for prayer shows their desire after heavenly things. Those who frequently meet together for importunate, wrestling prayer, practically show that they desire to see the Lord’s Kingdom come. They are not so taken up with their own business that they cannot afford time to think of God’s business. They are not so occupied with the world’s pleasures that they take no pleasure in the things of God. Believers in a right state of heart value the prosperity of the Church and, seeing that it can only be promoted by God’s own hand, they cry mightily unto the Lord of Hosts to stretch out His hand of mercy and to be favorable to His Church and cause.

Church members who never pray for the good of the Church have no love for it. If they do not plead for sinners they have no love for the Savior and how can they be truly converted persons? Such as habitually forsake the assembling of themselves together for prayer may well suspect the genuine character of their piety. I am not, of course, alluding to those who are debarred by circumstances, but I allude to those who, from frivolous excuses, absent themselves from the praying assemblies. How dwells the love of God in them? Are they not dead branches of the vine? May they not expect to be taken away before long? Earnest meetings for prayer, indeed, not only prove our sense of need and our desire for spiritual blessings, but they manifest most our faith in the living God, and our belief that He hears prayer, for men will not continue in supplication if they do not believe that God hears them. Sensible men would soon cease their prayers if they were not convinced that there is an ear which hears their petitions. Who would persevere in a vain exercise?

Our united prayers prove that we know that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. We know that the Lord is able to work according to our desires and that He is willing to be entreated of us. I have never known a thirsty man by a well who would not use the bucket which was there ready to hand unless, indeed, he was of the opinion that the well was dry. I have never known a man who wanted wealth and had a good trade, who would not exercise his trade. And so I have never known a man who believed prayer to be really effectual and felt his great needs who did not engage in prayer.

It is an ill token to any community of Christians when prayer is at a low ebb, for it is clear evidence that they do not know their own needs, they are not anxious about spiritual things and neither do they believe that God will enrich them in answer to their petitions. Beloved, may we never, as a Church, deserve censure for neglecting prayer! Our meetings for prayer have excited general astonishment by their number, but they are not all they might be. I shall put it to the conscience of each one to say whether you are as prayerful as you should be. Did you ever hear of a Church member who had not attended a Prayer Meeting for a month? Do you know of Church members who never assemble with the Brethren so much as once in a quarter of a year? Do you know of any who have not been to a Prayer Meeting in this place for the last six months? Do you know such?

I will not say I know any such. I will do no more than hint that such people may exist. But if you know them will you give them my Christian love and say that nothing depresses the pastor’s spirit like the absence of Church members from the public assemblies of prayer, and that if anything could make him strong in the Lord, and give him courage to go forward in the Lord’s work, it would be if all of you were to make the prayer meeting your special delight? I shall be satisfied when I see our prayer meetings as crowded as the services for preaching. And it strikes me if ever we are fully baptized into God’s Spirit, we shall arrive at that point. A vastly larger amount of prayer ought to be among us than at present and if the Lord visits us graciously He will set us praying without ceasing.