Saints, 16 Dec 10
Prayer is essential.
How do you view prayer? How important is prayer to you? How important is prayer to your family? To your church? Well, to answer that question, answer another question…how much do you pray? If we truly believe that prayer is essential, we will pray. I want to go deeper here. The more aware we are of eternal reality, the more we must pray. If we truly see the real spiritual battle all around us, we will pray. We will pray because we know that we know that we cannot do anything about this battle on our own—the heavenly Father can do something. Prayer is essential. Please read these words by E. M. Bounds from his book, The Weapon of Prayer,
“It must never be forgotten that Almighty God rules this world. He is not an absentee God. His hand is ever on the throttle of human affairs. He is everywhere present in the concerns of time. “His eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men.” He rules the world just as he rules the church by prayer. This lesson needs to be emphasized and stressed in the ears of men of modern times and brought to bear with cumulative force on the consciences of this generation whose eyes have no vision for eternal things, whose ears are deaf toward God.
Nothing is more important to God than prayer in dealing with mankind. But it is likewise all-important for man to pray. Failure to pray is failure along the whole line of life. It is failure of duty, service, and spiritual progress. God must help man by prayer. He who does not pray, therefore, robs himself of God’s help and places God where he cannot help man. Man must pray to God if love for God is to exist. Faith and hope, and patience and all the strong, beautiful, vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life. The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom, and fruitage in prayer.” From chapter one, God Says Prayer is Essential.
What does this kind of prayer look like?
I can share with you I never cried over another person’s salvation until God got a hold of me in prayer. I have to believe that God gave me more of His heart for people, during that time. I’m not saying that we all have to go around crying all the time. Even so, we should be going around driven, compelled, even aching to reach others for Christ, because that is the heart we have in Christ. Let’s not smother these flames any longer! Burn, church. Burn white-hot, like you were designed to burn. Yes, may every non-believer see the church and know Jesus is God and He is real and He is the way, the truth and the life. May they know that they need Him and need to turn away from all else to pursue Him! Brothers and sisters let us ask God for His burning compassion for people—may love for Jesus and His love for people in us drive our lives!
Chris Tomlin sings in his song, All to Us,
Let the glory of Your name
Be the passion of the Church
Let the righteousness of God
Be a holy flame that burns
This is exactly how prayer is essential, but essential for what? I submit to you that we will not have passion for people, or compelling drive to love people, or an aching over souls without prayer. We will not have a burning desire to see God’s name glorified in our lives, our churches, our cities, and our nation without prayer. We might have dutiful religious activity with little fruit, but this is not what God destined the church for. Brothers and sisters, the church is God’s method to reach a world for Christ in victory. May we completely yield to God in this purpose on our knees.
We all know that Jesus said repeatedly, “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” He is not referring to His name as a magic word, like “Hocus Pocus.” No, Jesus is saying that we lose our self in Him. We lose our agenda, our purposes. He fills us with His desire--His purposes. I think this is what Paul referred to in Galatians 2:20,
Galatians 2:20 (NASB)
20 "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
20 "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
So, I challenge you brothers and sisters, come to God in undistracted, focused times of prayer. Pour your heart out to Him. Ask Him to lead your prayer through the Holy Spirit. Pray through God’s Word. Ask God to give you the same spirit of intercession that Jesus has as He is praying on our behalf at the right hand of God the Father.
Let us declare with our lives that prayer is essential.
May God daily teach us to pray. May God compel us to pray for the church and for the world.
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