The Question of Prayer
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
(Eph.6:18)
Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith … pray continually.
(I Thess.3:10 & 5:17)
The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.
(I Pet.4:7)
Nowhere in our life of Christian discipleship are we so exposed as in our life of prayer. It is possible (though I hesitate to speak in such terms) that nowhere are we less like the Christ we follow than in our experience of prayer, or rather, our lack of… Many Christians confess to finding prayer a difficult and frankly unfulfilling experience. This is as true in our personal devotional life as it is in our corporate one. We easily feel guilty when discussing ‘prayer’. We are so acutely aware of the credibility gap between what we say we believe, and what we actually do. There are glorious exceptions, but our experience of prayer is generally that it is unanswered, and makes no discernible difference. Whilst we can justify it (sometimes God says ‘No’, sometimes ‘Wait’, sometimes ‘Yes’ – so God always answers prayer!), it feels like we’re playing games when we do. In our better moments we know we are simply papering over a desperately inadequate experience that leaves an aching void no theological pedantry can fill. We read of older saints getting up off their knees, knowing their prayers are heard and confident they would be answered – and there is little in our own experience that equates with that.
But imagine a Church where our prayer life was courageous, rich, and answered. Where prayer was genuinely the foundation of all we did… I’m old school enough to believe that the prayer meeting is the engine house of the Church. Many of our frustrations, and the questions we try to answer by endlessly tampering with our various ministries would be better resolved through a wholesale return to prayer. Perhaps our (and those we are seeking to reach with the Gospel) perceived lack of encounter with God isn’t so much about questions of style, or training, or even resources so much as it is about whether or not we gather to pray, and what happens when we do. Perhaps our lack of effectiveness in evangelism isn’t so much to do with a lack of training, or the fact that we aren’t running the latest ‘trendy’ seeker-course, as it is to do with the fact that we don’t win the battle for souls on our knees.
It isn’t uncommon at MIE for 1-2% (i.e. 6 or less) of our congregation to turn up to a prayer meeting. Sometimes, not even that many. It isn’t uncommon for prayer meetings to not run because no-one shows up. I suggest there is a simple spiritual law at work here – a people who don’t pray together, don’t meet God when they worship together or when they do mission together. By contrast, in Scripture and throughout Church history all the evidence suggests that corporate prayer is inseparable from the Church’s spiritual advance and blessing.
One such example is furnished by the last revival on English soil, just up the road in Lowestoft in 1921. ‘Every Sunday morning, from 6.30-9.30 a.m. there was a prayer meeting. It was held in a net loft above a wash-house close to the sea … Ages ranged from 16 years to 60 years, and the spirit of prayer was tremendous. One man who was there told of how these folks grasped the horns of the alter…’. It’s entirely possible that we have little idea, and still less experience, of what a phrase like that means. Contrary to what we might think is reasonable to expect, we read of incredible movements of prayer in Church history. Words like ’overwhelmed’, ‘earnest’, ‘strong’, ‘bold’, and phrases like ‘taking hold of God’ are often used - not language we are used to hearing in association with prayer meetings. We read of prayer meetings lasting through the night, or in some instances, for several days. Such seasons are inevitably linked to, and often precede, significant moves of God.
‘Prayer’, as Charles Spurgeon said, ‘is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence’. Alas, the converse is also true: prayerlessness is the cause of all spiritual weakness, and ineffectiveness. To fail here is to fail everywhere.
Questions
Can you share your experience of prayer honestly? Are you satisfied with your life of prayer? Assuming not, can you – with equal honesty – share why you don’t pray as you’d like to? How can your Fellowship Group help you here?
Why do you think Prayer Meetings are often so boring?
Read Heb.4:14-5:10
What is the connection between Jesus’ being our High Priest (4:14), His ascension (4:14), His holiness (4:15) and our being able to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence (4:16)?
What is the ‘time of need’ this passage envisages us being in (4:16)?
Why is it so important to realise that Jesus did not take the honour of being our High Priest on Himself (5:4-5)?
Given Jesus’ deep commitment to prayer (5:7), how would you respond to a disciple of Jesus for whom prayer just isn’t that big a deal?
In Jesus’ experience of effective prayer ‘He was heard because of His reverent submission’ (5:7). Do you think our experience of being ‘heard’ depends on our likewise being humbly submitted to the Father? What did that mean for Jesus… what does it mean for us?
What do you think it means to speak of Jesus ‘learning obedience’ (5:8) … and being ‘made perfect’ (5:9)? How do we reconcile this to our belief in the Deity of Christ? How is such obedience learned through suffering? How does this connect to Jesus’ life of prayer? Does this have anything to say to our experiences of suffering?
Does it matter to you that Jesus was ‘designated by God to be High Priest in the order of Melchizedek (5:10)? What difference would it make if He hadn’t been? Why do you think Hebrews devotes an entire Chapter to exploring this (see Ch.7)?
Memory Passage:
With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
II Thess.1:11-12
For further reflection:
We often think of prayer as a something that should be quite a natural thing for Christians to do. Our spiritual forbears would have considered such an attitude naïve. They speak of prayer as the most difficult thing a disciple of Jesus has to learn to do. That in itself should give us pause for thought. What has changed in our thinking about prayer that puts us so radically out of step with centuries of Christian experience?
Rather than depressing us, such an observation can re-kindle hope. Is it possible that a genuine life of prayer is something I could enjoy? So many have given up hope. But what if we have actually been barking up the proverbially wrong tree. That could explain a lot. It could also open for us the chance for a new direction of travel. Recognising for example that different kinds of prayer belong in different contexts can bring a good deal of clarity. How I pray at home (Matt.6:6-7); is different from how I pray for people when in my Fellowship Group; is different from how I pray when I’m leading the Church in prayer in a prayer meeting. Leading Intercessions in a service is not the same as prayerful meditation on a passage of Scripture. Prayer is a much richer and varied landscape than we are accustomed to thinking, or experiencing.
My own conviction is that we simply must learn to pray … as a Church. What we enjoy elsewhere in the ministry and mission of MIE will be merely the outworking of what is achieved in our prayer meetings. Failure here is failure everywhere. My longing is that those who lead any aspect of our worship or mission have first lead us in prayer. My desire is that we would see prayer as so integral and non-negotiable that we would do nothing as a Church until we knew we had secured God’s blessing on it through our prayer.