Lack of prayer in the life of a believer is a great sin, indeed, as we have seen. So, what, typically, rises up in our flesh as our first response to the conviction of any great sin? ‘I must strive to do better! I must work at getting victory over it. I must pull myself up by my bootstraps and do this thing.’ But is that the correct response? No, it is not.
The Psalmist says, “Cease striving and know that I am God!” The same psalmist who said this said in the very same psalm: ‘God is our refuge and strength, a VERY PRESENT HELP IN TROUBLE.’ As a Christian who understands the malignancy of sin, I believe I am in no deeper trouble than when I have sinned against my holy Father. Listen, if I am spending five minutes in prayer a day, I’m in trouble!
Is there something, then, I must do when I find myself in any kind of trouble? Yes! I must run to my Father. I must abide in Him. You say, ‘But it is I who must do the praying, right?” Yes. But our efforts are futile unless we first learn how to abide in Christ by a simple faith. This alone is the key to victorious living. To understand this fully, we must understand this battle that is raging inside every believer between the flesh and the Spirit.
I’ll give you two examples of what I’m trying to say. First, we must understand the story of Sarah and Hagar that Paul uses to illustrate for us the life of the flesh versus the life of the Spirit in Galatians 4. The question is, ‘Who are the true sons of Abraham?” That’s what the Galatians needed to understand because the Judaizers were trying to tell the church at Galatia that the law and circumcision had to be added to Christianity in order for it to be of God. Paul’s argument was, ‘No, it is the sons who believe, the sons who have the same faith as Abraham, who are truly his sons. They are the ones who will receive the promises of the covenant made to him and his seed.” By the way, the Judaizers, so active in the early church, are just as active today in the church and Paul would say, “No, you don’t need to add Tradition or Papal dogmas, indulgences and confession, etc.” The whole story of Sarah and Hagar is a picture of what happens when we try to do things in our own flesh rather than to obey God and have faith that He will accomplish His purpose in us.
Just like Hagar started persecuting Sarah, the Hagar religion will always persecute the Sarah religion. The flesh will always try to rise up against the Spirit and try to convince us that there must be something more we must do to be right with God. We can live according to the flesh and do things according to the law out of a cold, adherence to rules, rituals and regulations or we can live according to the Spirit which is true life, hot, passionate zeal, delight and joy in worship. We can only worship Him truly in spirit and truth. Now, if we understand that everything we do is worship as a Christian, we will either do things in the flesh or in the Spirit.
My second illustration is a simple one. When I was a very small child, whenever I was in trouble, perhaps I fell and skinned my knee, at the first glimpse of blood I fearfully ran immediately to mother or father. If mommy or daddy were not in sight, I screamed bloody murder for them. No one else could stand in their place.
I didn’t stop and whip out my first aid kit or my list of first-aid rules and say, “Wait, I can fix this! All I have to do is so and so.”
I was watching ‘Cops’ awhile back, (I know, right? I’m the only one I know who can start crying while watching ‘Cops’) and this father was driving around recklessly with his two very small children in the car. He had, apparently, ‘kidnapped’ them from their mother. I guess he didn’t have custody of them. The whole situation still makes me so sad. Oh, how sin destroys lives!
The cops (and there was a really compassionate woman cop involved) yanked this guy out of the car and threw him on the ground, the kids were screaming for him, and then the woman asks him if he is okay. Once inside the house with the kids and the mom, you could see this little, adorable brother and sister – she was probably 3 or 3 ½ and he was probably 2. Wide-eyed, they’re sitting on a couch while the cop is talking to the mom. The little girl is trying to be so brave and the little boy is petrified. He sits there with his little lip quivering the whole time trying to blink back tears (as I am trying to do once again), and when his mom puts out her arms, he just completely loses it and jumps into her arms and holds on so tightly for dear life. Confused and terrified, the arms of love are the only safe refuge he knows for sure.
THIS is what our Father wants from us. We are to respond in situations as we would as children, with childlike faith. Complete trust that all will be well as long as we are safe in our Father’s arms.
Why do we trust Him? Because we know Him through His Word and spending time alone with Him in prayer. We are saved by faith, but we must learn to live moment by moment by that same type of faith.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
How Sick Am I?
What is the cause of prayerlessness? To answer that question we must, first, be able to answer the question, ‘What is the ultimate cause of all sin?’ All sin is unbelief. It is the age-old cause of all sin as seen first in the Fall of man. When I don’t believe the promises of God, refuse to take Him at His Word but, instead, buy some lie of Satan wherein he offers something that would better suit my fancy, the result is sin against God.
This is where we get down to a proper understanding of exactly what we have been called to as Christians when we embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Called to repent of our sin and to believe on Christ, we responded by turning from our sin and establishing in our hearts that desire to follow Him no matter what the cost. That cost would automatically call for a life of self-denial. Jesus told us that we are to ‘deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow Him.’
How are we to do that? What are we to deny? As I said, Jesus said we are to ‘deny ourselves.’ We are to deny the flesh that still wars inside every believer. Paul, in Romans 8, talks about this war between the flesh and the Spirit which is waging inside every true child of God. Where does the flesh most love to be? The flesh loves to be right in the center of the world. Now, that presents a problem for the Christian. In 1 John we are told not to love the world or the things in the world because the world is passing away and all its lusts. All that is in the world is temporal; we now are to live for what is eternal. We know that we are to be people who are ‘in’ the world but not of the ‘world’. As children of God we are most comfortable in His kingdom, not the world.
What does this have to do with prayer? Prayer is laying hold of heaven. All that is in the world and of the world is what we can see with our physical eyes. The Christian walks by faith, not by sight. The righteous man lives by faith. Faith can only be exercised with the EYES of faith; it is being able to see things that are eternal and believe that they are what Christ says they are in His Word.
The Christian, in his daily battle with the flesh, the world and with Satan must put his faith in the promises of God and treasure those promises more than the sin that he so loves in his flesh. Faith is only lived out as it holds onto God’s promises.
I asked the reader to ask himself a question at the beginning of this study: ‘Do you believe that you live more in the flesh or in the Spirit?’ Here is one way to find an honest answer to that question: A life lived according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit is the origin of the prayerlessness of which we so often complain. Uh, oh, there’s a speed bump in the road!
The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. We’re racing along through life, and we think that we’re okay because that’s what many in this world of ‘post-modern Christianity’ are telling us. We’re busy with this and busy with that, and can’t stop all this busyness for any number of reasons. All of a sudden we hit one of these stumbling blocks and we can either get angry that it is there and find some way to walk around it, or we can go over it very carefully gaining insight as to why it is there. It is there intentionally to slow you down, to show you something. Once we have seen it, we can deal with it. The person who walks around it has not clearly seen the truth of Jeremiah 17:9.
Hopefully, we have all admitted that we don’t pray as we should. Right away we must realize humbly that we don’t live according to the Spirit as much as we think we do. We ARE more fleshly than ever we would have classified ourselves.
When a person is sick and wants to be healed, it becomes a primary matter of importance to him that the true cause of the sickness be discovered. This is always the first step to recovery. We can’t just mask the disease by dealing with the symptoms instead of the cause, or healing will be out of the question. That is why it is vitally important to secure a correct insight into the cause of the sad condition of deadness and failure to pray. Prayer in the inner chamber of our hearts should be the most blessed place for us that we cannot wait to get there and long to stay there. This is why we need to fully understand what is at the root of this sin.
Oh, the depth of our sin! How can we come to understand it? God must show us our human depravity, the sin-stained blackness of our hearts before Him. Only the Light of God can expose what is in the heart of man.
This is where we get down to a proper understanding of exactly what we have been called to as Christians when we embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Called to repent of our sin and to believe on Christ, we responded by turning from our sin and establishing in our hearts that desire to follow Him no matter what the cost. That cost would automatically call for a life of self-denial. Jesus told us that we are to ‘deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow Him.’
How are we to do that? What are we to deny? As I said, Jesus said we are to ‘deny ourselves.’ We are to deny the flesh that still wars inside every believer. Paul, in Romans 8, talks about this war between the flesh and the Spirit which is waging inside every true child of God. Where does the flesh most love to be? The flesh loves to be right in the center of the world. Now, that presents a problem for the Christian. In 1 John we are told not to love the world or the things in the world because the world is passing away and all its lusts. All that is in the world is temporal; we now are to live for what is eternal. We know that we are to be people who are ‘in’ the world but not of the ‘world’. As children of God we are most comfortable in His kingdom, not the world.
What does this have to do with prayer? Prayer is laying hold of heaven. All that is in the world and of the world is what we can see with our physical eyes. The Christian walks by faith, not by sight. The righteous man lives by faith. Faith can only be exercised with the EYES of faith; it is being able to see things that are eternal and believe that they are what Christ says they are in His Word.
The Christian, in his daily battle with the flesh, the world and with Satan must put his faith in the promises of God and treasure those promises more than the sin that he so loves in his flesh. Faith is only lived out as it holds onto God’s promises.
I asked the reader to ask himself a question at the beginning of this study: ‘Do you believe that you live more in the flesh or in the Spirit?’ Here is one way to find an honest answer to that question: A life lived according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit is the origin of the prayerlessness of which we so often complain. Uh, oh, there’s a speed bump in the road!
The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. We’re racing along through life, and we think that we’re okay because that’s what many in this world of ‘post-modern Christianity’ are telling us. We’re busy with this and busy with that, and can’t stop all this busyness for any number of reasons. All of a sudden we hit one of these stumbling blocks and we can either get angry that it is there and find some way to walk around it, or we can go over it very carefully gaining insight as to why it is there. It is there intentionally to slow you down, to show you something. Once we have seen it, we can deal with it. The person who walks around it has not clearly seen the truth of Jeremiah 17:9.
Hopefully, we have all admitted that we don’t pray as we should. Right away we must realize humbly that we don’t live according to the Spirit as much as we think we do. We ARE more fleshly than ever we would have classified ourselves.
When a person is sick and wants to be healed, it becomes a primary matter of importance to him that the true cause of the sickness be discovered. This is always the first step to recovery. We can’t just mask the disease by dealing with the symptoms instead of the cause, or healing will be out of the question. That is why it is vitally important to secure a correct insight into the cause of the sad condition of deadness and failure to pray. Prayer in the inner chamber of our hearts should be the most blessed place for us that we cannot wait to get there and long to stay there. This is why we need to fully understand what is at the root of this sin.
Oh, the depth of our sin! How can we come to understand it? God must show us our human depravity, the sin-stained blackness of our hearts before Him. Only the Light of God can expose what is in the heart of man.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Pastor: Please Teach me to Pray!
Why is prayerlessness such a great sin? That is the question we want to consider today.
The Almighty Creator God of this universe has invited us to come to Him, to have communion and fellowship with Him, the ultimate blessing a human being could experience. What an incredible privilege is this opportunity of prayer.
Our response? We give Him five minutes a day. Some days we can’t even be bothered to do that. We’re much too busy, we think. If truth be known, most Christians wouldn’t know how to spend half an hour with God in prayer.
Even those who go to Him out of a sense of duty or rigid discipline do so without joy in their hearts. They don’t go to Him as though He is everything to them. Why? Because we believe the world revolves around us. It shows up in every facet of how we “do religion” today. We start with a man-centered Gospel telling us that we need to love ourselves more and have a better self-esteem. We are told that we need to learn to forgive ourselves. We want to focus on us and have the focus on us; we have little time for things that focus on another, let alone God. So even if we do ‘pray,’ it is to take our many petitions to God for every little hang nail we have. We’ve just adopted the world’s religion and slapped the title of Christianity on it and wonder why we have no joy in doing all the things the Bible says we should delight in.
Why are we so busy anyways? First of all, Satan loves to keep us busy so that we do not have time to stop and focus on God and on the true meaning of life. It’s ultimately why we hate silence and have to have the squawk box on 24/7 when we are home alone. We love to keep busy, too, because that somehow means we’re important. We love to tell people, “I have to do this and this and this today. I don’t know how I’ll get it all done. This person needs me and that person needs me, and I have a hard time telling anyone, ‘No’! My, aren’t I such an important person?”
But what happens when, in the midst of all our business, a friend drops by to visit? Do we push them out the door and say, “I’m sorry, really I am, but I’m much too busy for you today”? They say, “Well, I just really wanted to spend some time with you.” Do we reply, “Sorry, don’t you know how important I am?” No! We wouldn’t dream of doing that because this person needs us, and, after all, we so need to be needed because then we’re important. It feeds our egos to be needed! Funny how we can find time for a creature who can be of service to us, but we can go day after day without spending even one hour with God.
We must ask ourselves why we have time for the things that really interest us, but admittedly often have no time to practice fellowship with God and delight ourselves in Him. This is such a dishonor to the one we call our God. As a pastor I know once said, “There should be a blood bath taking place in our souls right about now.” With deep shame we should be crying out: “Woe is me! For I am undone! O God, be merciful to me and forgive me this awful sin of prayerlessness; this hideous sin against You.”
The second reason prayerlessness is such a great sin is because it is proof, for the most part, that our lives are still under the power of the flesh. Prayerlessness shows us the true state of our heart. The doctor can listen to a person’s heart and know whether that person has heart problems. Remember the show, “Lost in Space?” Remember when the robot would say, “Danger, danger Will Robinson?” Prayerlessness should send off sirens to our hearts that there is danger; something is not right in our spiritual lives. In fact, the life of God in the soul is deadly sick and weak.
Men sit around and devise ways to bring large amounts of people into the church because it does not seem as though the ‘church’ today has much power or influence. They assume they must be doing something wrong. Is that the case? Why is the church so weak? We must ask the deeper question: Where does the power in the life of a believer come from? If we spent time in the Word of God and got to know it as we should, we would know that attached to faithful prayer is the sure promise of the Spirit and the power from on high.
We must ultimately start with the leadership in the church. The pastor(s) in the church cannot lead a congregation higher than he is himself. It is his business to train believers up to a life of prayer. If he is not doing that, we must ask ourselves why that is. What I have found to be true is that those Christians who do spend a great deal of time in the Word of God and in prayer find it very difficult today to find a solid church, especially when they live in a small community. I don’t want to be taught by a man who spends far less time in the Word than I do. Is that being arrogant? I don’t believe it is. Why would I want to submit to someone who obviously takes a very low view of the Scripture and of God, Himself? Is it possible that many pastors today do not understand the art of conversing with God and receiving from the Holy Spirit every day the grace he needs for himself and for his work?
I am convinced that there are multitudes of Christians who know next to nothing of the blessedness of prayer fellowship with God, but there are also many who know something of it and long to be further taught to understand and implement this awesome privilege each child of God has been given.
I, for one, have had this great struggle throughout my walk with God regarding prayer. For years after my daughter died I wrestled on and off again with the assurance of my salvation (a whole other subject for another day!), but each time I would stop and examine myself to be sure I was truly in the faith the Spirit would always bring me back to this great sin. I had times when I spent great amounts of time in prayer, but usually when things were going wrong in my life.
I, too, just thought this was a severe weakness, not a real sin, so I would shrug it off and think there must be something else wrong. (Yeah, my heart is desperately wicked above all else…). After about five years of this, I seriously started seeking His face to teach me to pray. (Okay, I admit that I am one of those who has to be hit over and over again on the head with a brick!!!) But I GOT IT!!! Better late than never.
I’m so far from where I should be at this time in my life, but I do see a change in my heart and God’s power working through my prayer life like it never has before. I have been devouring great books on prayer over the last couple of years, and it turns out that I had a lot of hang-ups about prayer that I didn’t fully realize. It’s been good. However, I can look back to a time in my life when the last thing that would have interested me is this subject of prayer. It just didn’t seem all that important to me. I hate hearing myself say that, but it is true. This is yet another proof to me that I am growing and that He is putting His desires in my heart and making them mine, too. And I’ve had the best teacher…the one who asks Jesus to teach him how to pray will never be disappointed.
Am I where I want to be? I’m absolutely nowhere near where I want to be. I find I’m still so negligent. Am I praying more, with more sincerity and passion than I ever have? Absolutely.
I have never truly heard an in-depth teaching on the Christian’s prayer life worth anything. Maybe it was because I didn’t have ears to hear at the time, but I don’t believe that it is something the average pastor in the average church is spending a great deal of time teaching. I have sought great teaching out on the internet, in books, etc. and it has opened up a whole new world to me that I didn’t know existed. Maybe people in congregations come from so many different backgrounds that pastors do not want to tramp on the toes of those who think they have a ‘prayer language’. I would hope not because that would be pure compromise and such a tragedy. I’ll deal with the subject of ‘prayer languages’ at some point, but not today. I don’t understand why there is not more teaching out there on this great subject. Every new believer should at least be made aware of what has been made available to him by God in prayer. Maybe there are those who believe it is not something that needs to be taught, that people will somehow grow naturally into a life of prayer by following examples within the church. The disciples had the greatest example of prayer, yet they still asked Him to teach them how to pray.
I have heard numerous pastors complain because the prayer service is severely lacking in attendance. News flash: people don’t know how to pray automatically. People talk a lot about prayer, “They say, ‘I’ll pray for you pastor.” But that doesn’t mean they are praying. In fact, it should scare every pastor out there that there is a possibility their congregation does not know how to pray.
So prayerlessness is such a dreadful sin because it is a slap in the face to our most holy God, it is the cause of a deficient spiritual life, the church suffers because of a lack of prayer, and, then, we will never be able to reach people with the Gospel without prayer.
Prayer clothes us with power from on high. We will never be able to preach the Gospel to men with power until we know this fellowship with God in prayer. It is impossible to walk with God, to obtain His blessing or leading, or to do His work joyously and fruitfully apart from close, unbroken fellowship with Him. He, alone, is the living fountain of spiritual life and power.
If someone came to you and asked you to be very instrumental in the work of some monumental project, how would you feel? Overwhelmed, I would imagine. Especially if you knew that it was not in your power to do so; in other words, you had no capability to do this work without the resources that were needed. What if you knew that the person who had asked you to do it had all the power and resources in himself to do it, but was asking you to be a part of his work? What if he said, “Anything you need, just ask and it will be made available to you.” Wouldn’t you ask for those things you needed? How stupid it would be to just sit there and try to do it yourself, and then wonder why things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to. What do you think this person would say to you when he came and found that you never asked for any resources?
Think of the magnitude of the Kingdom that God is asking us to partner with Him in building. Oh, that the thought and work of the kingdom might drive us to the acknowledgement of the sin of prayerlessness! I pray that this burden will be laid so heavily upon us that we will not be able to rest until we learn what it means to have fellowship with God.
The next time we will look at the causes of prayerlessness.
The Almighty Creator God of this universe has invited us to come to Him, to have communion and fellowship with Him, the ultimate blessing a human being could experience. What an incredible privilege is this opportunity of prayer.
Our response? We give Him five minutes a day. Some days we can’t even be bothered to do that. We’re much too busy, we think. If truth be known, most Christians wouldn’t know how to spend half an hour with God in prayer.
Even those who go to Him out of a sense of duty or rigid discipline do so without joy in their hearts. They don’t go to Him as though He is everything to them. Why? Because we believe the world revolves around us. It shows up in every facet of how we “do religion” today. We start with a man-centered Gospel telling us that we need to love ourselves more and have a better self-esteem. We are told that we need to learn to forgive ourselves. We want to focus on us and have the focus on us; we have little time for things that focus on another, let alone God. So even if we do ‘pray,’ it is to take our many petitions to God for every little hang nail we have. We’ve just adopted the world’s religion and slapped the title of Christianity on it and wonder why we have no joy in doing all the things the Bible says we should delight in.
Why are we so busy anyways? First of all, Satan loves to keep us busy so that we do not have time to stop and focus on God and on the true meaning of life. It’s ultimately why we hate silence and have to have the squawk box on 24/7 when we are home alone. We love to keep busy, too, because that somehow means we’re important. We love to tell people, “I have to do this and this and this today. I don’t know how I’ll get it all done. This person needs me and that person needs me, and I have a hard time telling anyone, ‘No’! My, aren’t I such an important person?”
But what happens when, in the midst of all our business, a friend drops by to visit? Do we push them out the door and say, “I’m sorry, really I am, but I’m much too busy for you today”? They say, “Well, I just really wanted to spend some time with you.” Do we reply, “Sorry, don’t you know how important I am?” No! We wouldn’t dream of doing that because this person needs us, and, after all, we so need to be needed because then we’re important. It feeds our egos to be needed! Funny how we can find time for a creature who can be of service to us, but we can go day after day without spending even one hour with God.
We must ask ourselves why we have time for the things that really interest us, but admittedly often have no time to practice fellowship with God and delight ourselves in Him. This is such a dishonor to the one we call our God. As a pastor I know once said, “There should be a blood bath taking place in our souls right about now.” With deep shame we should be crying out: “Woe is me! For I am undone! O God, be merciful to me and forgive me this awful sin of prayerlessness; this hideous sin against You.”
The second reason prayerlessness is such a great sin is because it is proof, for the most part, that our lives are still under the power of the flesh. Prayerlessness shows us the true state of our heart. The doctor can listen to a person’s heart and know whether that person has heart problems. Remember the show, “Lost in Space?” Remember when the robot would say, “Danger, danger Will Robinson?” Prayerlessness should send off sirens to our hearts that there is danger; something is not right in our spiritual lives. In fact, the life of God in the soul is deadly sick and weak.
Men sit around and devise ways to bring large amounts of people into the church because it does not seem as though the ‘church’ today has much power or influence. They assume they must be doing something wrong. Is that the case? Why is the church so weak? We must ask the deeper question: Where does the power in the life of a believer come from? If we spent time in the Word of God and got to know it as we should, we would know that attached to faithful prayer is the sure promise of the Spirit and the power from on high.
We must ultimately start with the leadership in the church. The pastor(s) in the church cannot lead a congregation higher than he is himself. It is his business to train believers up to a life of prayer. If he is not doing that, we must ask ourselves why that is. What I have found to be true is that those Christians who do spend a great deal of time in the Word of God and in prayer find it very difficult today to find a solid church, especially when they live in a small community. I don’t want to be taught by a man who spends far less time in the Word than I do. Is that being arrogant? I don’t believe it is. Why would I want to submit to someone who obviously takes a very low view of the Scripture and of God, Himself? Is it possible that many pastors today do not understand the art of conversing with God and receiving from the Holy Spirit every day the grace he needs for himself and for his work?
I am convinced that there are multitudes of Christians who know next to nothing of the blessedness of prayer fellowship with God, but there are also many who know something of it and long to be further taught to understand and implement this awesome privilege each child of God has been given.
I, for one, have had this great struggle throughout my walk with God regarding prayer. For years after my daughter died I wrestled on and off again with the assurance of my salvation (a whole other subject for another day!), but each time I would stop and examine myself to be sure I was truly in the faith the Spirit would always bring me back to this great sin. I had times when I spent great amounts of time in prayer, but usually when things were going wrong in my life.
I, too, just thought this was a severe weakness, not a real sin, so I would shrug it off and think there must be something else wrong. (Yeah, my heart is desperately wicked above all else…). After about five years of this, I seriously started seeking His face to teach me to pray. (Okay, I admit that I am one of those who has to be hit over and over again on the head with a brick!!!) But I GOT IT!!! Better late than never.
I’m so far from where I should be at this time in my life, but I do see a change in my heart and God’s power working through my prayer life like it never has before. I have been devouring great books on prayer over the last couple of years, and it turns out that I had a lot of hang-ups about prayer that I didn’t fully realize. It’s been good. However, I can look back to a time in my life when the last thing that would have interested me is this subject of prayer. It just didn’t seem all that important to me. I hate hearing myself say that, but it is true. This is yet another proof to me that I am growing and that He is putting His desires in my heart and making them mine, too. And I’ve had the best teacher…the one who asks Jesus to teach him how to pray will never be disappointed.
Am I where I want to be? I’m absolutely nowhere near where I want to be. I find I’m still so negligent. Am I praying more, with more sincerity and passion than I ever have? Absolutely.
I have never truly heard an in-depth teaching on the Christian’s prayer life worth anything. Maybe it was because I didn’t have ears to hear at the time, but I don’t believe that it is something the average pastor in the average church is spending a great deal of time teaching. I have sought great teaching out on the internet, in books, etc. and it has opened up a whole new world to me that I didn’t know existed. Maybe people in congregations come from so many different backgrounds that pastors do not want to tramp on the toes of those who think they have a ‘prayer language’. I would hope not because that would be pure compromise and such a tragedy. I’ll deal with the subject of ‘prayer languages’ at some point, but not today. I don’t understand why there is not more teaching out there on this great subject. Every new believer should at least be made aware of what has been made available to him by God in prayer. Maybe there are those who believe it is not something that needs to be taught, that people will somehow grow naturally into a life of prayer by following examples within the church. The disciples had the greatest example of prayer, yet they still asked Him to teach them how to pray.
I have heard numerous pastors complain because the prayer service is severely lacking in attendance. News flash: people don’t know how to pray automatically. People talk a lot about prayer, “They say, ‘I’ll pray for you pastor.” But that doesn’t mean they are praying. In fact, it should scare every pastor out there that there is a possibility their congregation does not know how to pray.
So prayerlessness is such a dreadful sin because it is a slap in the face to our most holy God, it is the cause of a deficient spiritual life, the church suffers because of a lack of prayer, and, then, we will never be able to reach people with the Gospel without prayer.
Prayer clothes us with power from on high. We will never be able to preach the Gospel to men with power until we know this fellowship with God in prayer. It is impossible to walk with God, to obtain His blessing or leading, or to do His work joyously and fruitfully apart from close, unbroken fellowship with Him. He, alone, is the living fountain of spiritual life and power.
If someone came to you and asked you to be very instrumental in the work of some monumental project, how would you feel? Overwhelmed, I would imagine. Especially if you knew that it was not in your power to do so; in other words, you had no capability to do this work without the resources that were needed. What if you knew that the person who had asked you to do it had all the power and resources in himself to do it, but was asking you to be a part of his work? What if he said, “Anything you need, just ask and it will be made available to you.” Wouldn’t you ask for those things you needed? How stupid it would be to just sit there and try to do it yourself, and then wonder why things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to. What do you think this person would say to you when he came and found that you never asked for any resources?
Think of the magnitude of the Kingdom that God is asking us to partner with Him in building. Oh, that the thought and work of the kingdom might drive us to the acknowledgement of the sin of prayerlessness! I pray that this burden will be laid so heavily upon us that we will not be able to rest until we learn what it means to have fellowship with God.
The next time we will look at the causes of prayerlessness.
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