We Need To Pray tagged: ,

We Need To Pray

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David Jeremiah wrote that nothing happens unless we pray. Matthew Henry wrote that when God desires to do a thing, he first gets His people praying. Prayer is supernatural, and Church is a supernatural organism. While we exist in the world in our own social contexts, we are never of this world. Of all the ideas we have for growing our churches, none is a more powerful or effective idea than prayer. Trinity Baptist in Lake Charles, LA, recently had a wonderful revival. They saw 250 people saved and over 100 others commit their lives to Christ in a revival meeting that lasted less than a week. When asked how it happened, Pastor Steve James attributed it to the 40 days of prayer prior. The state evangelism director said it was because they prepared and used a vocational evangelist. I believe in vocational evangelists but am also reminded of Luis Palau’s teaching about Moses and the burning bush when he said, “If God is in the bush, any old bush will do.” God isn’t in the bush because of plans. He’s in the bush when we pray.

I’ve seen God do incredible things when I’ve been desperate in prayer. I’ve pastored for 13 years in two churches. I’ve been involved in 10 major evangelistic efforts in those years; revivals in my church, community revivals, outreach events, etc. They have all born some fruit, but the only ones that have been successes were those that were bathed in prayer. In my first pastorate I found myself fruitless, discouraged, and face down in prayer after only 6 months of trying all my pastoral ideas. I joined two other pastors praying for revival in our churches. A fourth church held a meeting. God manifested His power and in that small town of 3,000 when over 300 were born again in a week. My own church doubled in size. Two years later I found myself frustrated and prayerless in a new church. This time the church had a heart for prayer. We learned all we could about prayer then fasted and prayed for 40 days in preparation for an evangelistic meeting. The evangelist came to our church of 75 in our town of 3,000. He left a month later after over 300 people had been saved. Every church in the area was fanned into flames. I’m still identified as the pastor of “that church.”

Prayer has been the single common denominator, because the power of God is our single greatest need. From Zinzendorf to the great prayer revival begun by Jeremiah Lanphier’s call to prayer among the businessmen of Manhattan… from the first Great Awakening to the Hebrides revival that began in 1949…persistent, fervent prayer has been the common denominator. God manifests Himself in the lives of those who believe, and prayer is perhaps the greatest expression of the faith that God uses.

Persistent prayer only happens during crisis. George Meuller wrote, “The great fault of the children of God is, they do not continue in prayer: they do not go on praying; they do not persevere. If they desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it.” Missionaries in the Shantung province of China prayed for three years before revival broke out there in 1933. Bertha Smith and C. L. Culpepper reveal that during those years of prayer, God broke the sinful hearts of the missionaries so they could be used by God to preach the gospel with power. Fervency in prayer is never seen until a point of desperation is reached. 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land,” is preceded by 2 Chronicles 7:13, “When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people.” Maybe what we need is more pain.

The pastor must lead in prayer. The apostles refused to compromise both preaching and prayer (Acts 6). We will never successfully lead a church through preaching alone. We must be fervent, humble, desperate pray-ers. Our church has it going on as far as ministries, but for the past year we’ve been leaking. Finally the leak became painful enough and I began to pray, and to ask others to join me in prayer. Not only did the leak stop, but growth began again. We have baptized more people in the last three months and seen more people join our church than in the previous year combined.

We need more failure to pray. The flat growth pattern of the church has produced a plethora of ideas and efforts. They aren’t working. We continue to argue our positions, when we need to assume the position of prayer en masse. We didn’t really pray after 9/11, or after Katrina and Rita. Our unwillingness to pray until God came through was evidence that we desperately needed to pray. We hoped those tragedies would awaken our nation to its need for God. We preached, and hoped, and then lost hope when there were so few changes in the spiritual climate of our churches and society. What will it take for us to stay on our faces in prayer? “God do whatever it takes.”