Standin' in the Need of Prayer

There is an old song that goes like this:

Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, oh Lord standin' in the need of prayer


We seem to have lost the heart of that old song.  Typically, if you ask someone at church if there is anything you can pray about for them, you will usually get one of two responses:

1) "Yes, please pray for my friend/son/co-worker."  The response is always about someone else.

2) "No, nothing in particular."

Is there anything wrong with praying for others?  No.  But I think there is something else going on here in both responses.  We are deflecting our own need of the Lord.  We recently set up a Prayer Station at a local park.  A woman walked by expressing her excitement about what we were doing.  We asked if we could pray for her and she responded by saying that she was the last person in the park in need of prayer.

One danger in this is our own failure to recognize just how much we need the Lord.  But the other problem is that we never express this to one another.  We end up creating the current culture in churches where people keep their struggles to themselves.  Why?  Because nobody else shares their need, so people are left feeling as if they are the only ones in need of the Lord.  But, of course, who wants to be the first to be so open with others?

If prayer is to become vital within a church, I believe each person must become open about their own need of the Lord.  But, this will also require a drastic change in how we do things.  When someone shares their prayer need, we must NEVER then recoil in horror at what the shared.  We must not treat them differently because we know a fault in them.  We must be generous in our continuing love and support of them.  And WE MUST NEVER take the liberty to share what they said with anyone else.  The prayer life of a church can be destroyed by those who share the personal struggles of others in an attempt to gather more prayer support.  I'm sure we've all heard it - "I'm only sharing this so that you can pray, but ____________ told me they are struggling with ______________."  Don't you dare!  If someone confided in you for prayer, you keep it to yourself.  If you really want to share it with others for the sake of prayer, then ask that person if it is OK to share it.  I have seen too many examples of prayer being crushed because it was overtaken by gossip.

Be honest with yourself.  Your Christian life is not perfect, is it?  So, when someone says, "How can I pray for you?"  Tell them an area where you need to grow.  You don't have to share your ugliest secret.  But you do have a need for prayer in some way.  Recognizing how much you need prayer will help you be more compassionate when someone shares their struggle with you.  And if you don't want what you shared to be shared with others, don't even think about sharing with others what someone else told you in confidence.

If our quest into prayer is to have any traction, these are issues we must address from the beginning.

A Church of Prayer

In the sermon I gave yesterday, "A Fork in the Road," I invited my church family to join me in a bit if a quest. A quest to see what God might do among us.  A quest to become a church defined by prayer.  While this does not make a church a church of prayer alone, a regular time of prayer is at the heart of this quest.  Sadly, most churches have abandoned weekly prayer meetings as a thing of the past, and no longer relevant.

For many, prayer meetings are boring.  Have a mid-week potluck and get a huge crowd.  Have a mid-week Bible study and get a decent crowd.  Have a mid-week outreach and get a few.  have a prayer meeting and you risk getting nobody to come out.  of course, we try all sorts of ways to change this.  Add more worship.  Have a longer message.  Have people pray shorter prayers.  But still, we at best resort to an hour of praying for neighbors', friends, co-workers, and endless people in varying degrees of aches and pains.  In the end, none of the prayers really directly impact those gathered for prayer.  This doesn't mean the needs should not be prayed for, but it does create an emotional distance.  Praying shorter prayers will not change that.

Another problem is that we view prayer meetings as a time when you wait for others to finish praying until it is your turn.  That is not what corporate prayer is about.  No wonder people get so bored!  In corporate prayer, I am to be actively listening to what the other people are praying and adding my agreement before the throne of God.  No matter who is praying out loud, we are all to be praying together.

This quest our church is about to begin is a quest to recapture what a weekly prayer meeting ought to be.  To see what god might do.  I have become fully convinced that this is the missing piece to most churches.  Churches can have solid Biblical preaching and still seem to have no life.  Churches can have great programs in place and still have no life.  Churches can be active in evangelism and still have no life.  But in my personal experience and what I am finding in example after example is that if a church has a vital prayer meeting, that church exhibits life.  And all those others things become an extension of the prayer life of the church.

So, the quest begins.  I will stop by here to share what the quest looks like and what God is doing.  I pray that each of us as individuals and all of our churches would be built on prayer.  And at the center of that, may the lost art of the weekly prayer meeting be found!

Do We?

In 1 Thessalonians 3:10, Paul writes, "as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith."  That convicts me.  The words "most earnestly" in the Greek are huper perissos.  Literally, that means, "beyond more than necessary."  So, if I can break it down this way: he could have prayed, he could have prayed more than necessary, but he takes it one step further to pray beyond more than necessary.  What was he praying for?  To see them again and minister to them.  Not to downplay it, but is that it?  Seriously, it's not like it is something overly vital.  Yet he is committing himself to pray beyond more than necessary for it.  Do we pray like that for anything?  If anything, I hear more people asking, "How much do I have to pray?"  We look for the minimum.  To add a fourth level of prayer, maybe our lives add the first level of barely praying.

Do we pray for revival?  Do we pray for the salvation of the lost?  Do we pray for the spiritual growth of the believers at our churches?  Do we ever pray more than necessary for any of those things?  Have we ever come anywhere close to praying beyond more than necessary for any of them?  To add even more to it, he clarifies by saying, "night and day."  He is basically consumed with praying over this.  We rattle off a few requests and feel proud of ourselves for praying.  Paul was so burdened that he didn't just pray.  He didn't just pray more than necessary.  He prayed beyond more than necessary.  Do we have hearts that so beat with the heart of God that we are moved to pray with that kind of intensity for anything?  

Daily Prayer?

Over the years, I have had people refute my conviction that Christians should make a habit of spending time in prayer on a daily basis.  They argue that the Bible never commands us to do that, so they conclude that I am merely being legalistic.  I decided to put the theory to the test.  If I am right, so be it.  If I am wrong, I will stop urging people to spend time in prayer daily.  To put the theory to the test, I decided to do a study through the entire New Testament to see what it has to say about prayer, especially with regards to the frequency with which a believer ought to be approaching prayer.  While I am at it, I decided it would be a good time to look at the New Testament references about prayer to see how prayer is defined - what should we pray about, etc.

My study is only in its infancy, but I have made some surprising findings so far in going through Acts and Romans.  In the book of Acts, 19 of the 28 chapters make mention to prayer.  In the first 16 chapters, only two chapters do not mention prayer - chapters 5 and 15.  It is interesting to note that these two chapters contain some of the lowest moments in Acts: the death of two believers who lied about what they earned from a property sale, a sharp debate among the leaders at Jerusalem over whether Gentiles should be circumcised, and the sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas regarding Mark's place in their travels.  The book of Romans, being a detailed explanation of the Gospel, does not highlight prayer but it does mention prayer 7 times in 16 chapters.

In these two books, we find words used to describe the frequency of prayer in individuals or a group of believers.  In Acts 10:2, Cornelius is described as a man who prayed to God continually.  The Greek word is diapantos, which means "constantly, through all, always."  Romans 11:10 uses the word to mean "forever."  It is also used in Hebrews 9:6 to describe the daily ritual duties of the Jewish priests in the Temple.

Three times and once in Romans, we find the Greek word proskartereo.  It is used in Acts 6:4 of the apostles stating their need to be devoted to prayer and the ministry of the Word.  We find the same word used a little differently in Acts 1:12-14; Acts 2:42 and in Romans 12:12.  In these three passages, the word is used as a Present Active Participle.  Essentially, this means it refers to a non-stop, ongoing habitual action with no thought of the action stopping.  My Greek professor told us to translate it as a verbal noun, in other words, an activity that defines a person.  "One characterized by" doing a certain activity.  The definition of the word is "adhere to, persist in, continue in, attach oneself to, busy oneself with, be busily engaged in, give unremitting care to."  So, these verses refer to a habitual, non-stop, ongoing persisting in prayer to the point where it is a defining activity.

So, back to the original question: should Christians spend time in prayer everyday?  Actually, I would suggest that, at least based on Acts and Romans so far, daily prayer doesn't quite get to the heart of the prayer lives of the early believers.  The descriptions of them were of non-stop, habitual persisting in prayer to the point that prayer defined who they were personally and corporately.

The study will continue through the rest of the New Testament.  But for now the question stands: how frequently do you have to do something to make it an activity that defines who you are?  While it is not a slam dunk argument for daily prayer, I would suggest it leans more in that direction than it does suggest prayer can be a random, occasional practice.        

Prayer in Acts

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