Prayer is good for us... and the world - Part 3

This is the third and final post in a series offered to reinforce the first emphasis in Summitview's 2011 Vision, namely, to grow in prayer as a church.

4) Pray for your neighborhood.
Aaron Ritter (my co-pastor) shared this great idea with me recently. He had a burden to know each of his neighbors by name and to pray for them consistently. So he printed out a map of the neighborhood and set out to meet them and put a name next to each address. Now he and his family have a map that they pray through once a week.

Our family isn’t nearly as organized as Mr. Ritter’s, but praying for our neighbors has definitely opened our eyes and softened our hearts to the folks we see every day. Our family is now strategizing about how to serve our neighbors and open up conversations about the Gospel.

There is something immediate and everyday that happens when we pray for the people across the street that doesn’t happen when we pray for lofty and faraway things (which we should pray for as well). We are more likely to unite our sweat with these prayers and see them answered. But this is critical: you will soon find it is not enough to know their names and pray for them – you must know them and that takes time. Busy families might legitimately ask; “When would we have time?” And the answer is, hopefully, sometime in this life (2 Cor. 5:16-21). Start with praying for them. Drop off some cookies. Have them over for dinner. Serve them. Your Spirit-soaked, broken heart will find the time.

5) Pray continually (1 Thes. 5:17).

“I will pray for you.”

Chances are you’ve said it and if you have said it, chances are you didn’t do it. It’s an occupational hazard for the pastor. It began to wear on my conscience and move me to ask some simple questions. Why do I need some formal, set-aside “prayer time” to present these requests to God? Do I believe in some formula that will enable God to get better reception of my prayer signal? As silly as it sounds when I spit it out, I think I do.

Unceasing prayer requires us to pray as life comes. A prayer queue often ends up being a prayer graveyard. We can pray when the need arises. Simply, honestly, right then and there, present your requests to God. He is looking for our dependence not our assistance in His hearing.

There is a positive spiritual momentum that develops with this habit. Our sensitivity to each moment and our desire for God’s interests in every situation begin to increase. It affects our hearts. This is important because the other reason I’m not faithful to pray for situations as they arise is my lack of boldness and concern to simply ask, “Can we pray right now?”

6) Pray with each other.

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. (Matthew 18:19–20)

I learned to pray at 5:45am on a hogsback overlooking Fort Collins in 1996. The crazies I had just jumped in with thought it would be a good idea to pray at this spot every day at 5:45am for 40 days (they read it in a book or something). Looking back, those crazies laid the foundation for my understanding of prayer.

Collective prayer exposes you to the impulses of God’s spirit in a variety of people. Hearing their passion and burdens awakens the heart in a way that private prayer just can’t. I recall a time when a dear friend and I were praying while hiking on the last day of a weekend backpacking trip. He was crying. His cracking voice was begging God to save his friend. It was simple, heartfelt and deeply convicting. Laziness or hesitation on that day would have stolen that life-changing moment.

There are obstacles. It’s always awkward to begin and our self-consciousness can be distracting. That never changes and it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. It simply means you are moving in a direction that is unnatural. Push through and you will find a “liveliness” and focus in praying together that may explain Jesus’ promise in Matthew 18:19-20.

A few thoughts that help keep my “many words” in check (Matthew 6:5-7):

• I need to pay attention to my words. Is this how I normally communicate? Do I say things to buy time to think or to fill the void? Would I speak this way to a friend? It may mean my focus is more on impressing God or others than on honest communication.
  
• Keep my prayers short. Long prayers may cause others to drift and lose focus. 
• “When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart.” – John Bunyan
  If I don’t have anything to pray, wait. I shouldn’t expect more from rushed prayer than from a rushed conversation with a friend. Prayer is not something to “get through” or “check off.” In fact, these approaches may relegate my prayers to nothing more than religion.

The Gospel begins with our utter dependence on God and, actually, it ends with our utter dependence on God. This means that the life of someone who believes this good news should be shot through with simple, dependent prayer. May it be so.

The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise. - Richard Sibbes

Additional Resources
Praying is good for us.... and for the world – Part 1
Praying is good for us.... and for the world – Part 2
Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions
The Weapon of Prayer E.M. Bounds

Prayer is good for us... and the world - Part 2

This is the second post in a series offered to reinforce the first emphasis in Summitview's 2011 Vision, namely, to grow in prayer as a church.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20–21)

Fundamentally, it's our pride that makes (biblical) prayer difficult. Prayer that builds our self-righteousness, seems to come easy and with many words (Luke 18:11-12). But dependent prayer, serious crying out to God, is opposed by an inertia called pride. So prayerlessness or poorly motivated and religious prayer can only change through genuine humility and repentance. Listen to Jesus' brother James:

You do not have, because you do not ask. [3] You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. [4] You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. [5] Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? [6] But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” [7] Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. [8] Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. [9] Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. [10] Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.  (James 4:2-10)

Humility is the first order of business to mature in any area of life. Without humility, practical instruction actually becomes a road to self-exaltation (which is never mature). But humility is the safeguard that allows practical tips to be genuinely useful.

I guess I know my own tendencies and so I will speak for myself. I need to be careful with any list of practical suggestions. My heart is quick to grab them, implement them to the degree that (I determine) entitles me to expect some results or feel good about my effort. Practical tips to grow in prayer (which is fundamentally an expression of dependence on God!) can easily be twisted into an exercise in pride. So, while I believe these things can be helpful, I also believe we should proceed with caution and... humility.

(continuing the list from the last post)

3) Pray with your family.
Praying with your spouse
The idea is pretty simple. You can pray with your fig leaves on in every other context but not with your spouse. It may be one reason praying with your spouse is so difficult – it’s more honest. But that honesty can lead to more frank expression of your real needs to God. The resulting peace will beckon you back to honest prayer in times of anxiety.

Praying with your kids
As a pastor, I pray with a lot of people and, yet, nothing has done more for my soul than consistently praying with my kids. If you are a parent (especially a dad), commit to regular prayer with them and persevere. It will be awkward. They will get distracted. You will be tempted to think it is a waste and you will always try rush through it. Don’t give up. Gritty stick-to-it-ness, not eloquence or ease, wins the day.

Here’s how it reinforces your own prayer: there are little ears listening and you know it. There are certain things that I pray in front of my peers that don’t make sense in front of my kids. (Chances are those things don’t make sense in front of God either.)  This forces me to communicate the simple essence of my plea and strips me of my pagan desire to be heard because of my many words (Matthew 6:7).

Praying with my kids has required me to seriously consider what I should expect in prayer as well. Kids will fearlessly bring every request to God. That’s good and bad. The freedom is good and the idolatry isn’t. There are times my childrens' vulnerability before God moves me to tears and, yet, I am terrified at how quickly God can be relegated to Santa Claus. In that crazy mix, I am motivated to pray biblically (or, say it another way, "according to God's will." - 1 John 5:14)

To that end, our family has been trying to keep four categories in mind as we pray. They have helped us build a "prayer vocabulary" that is more well-rounded and biblical than "God, I pray you would give me a pony." I remember them via the acronym A-C-T-S and my kids (especially when they were pre-reading age) remember them via pictures (you can grab a copy of our prayer guide here). Every time we pray, I'm reminded to lead my kids to pray through these categories:

Adoration (telling Jesus what you love about Him)
Confession (telling Jesus the truth about your sin)
Thanksgiving (thanking Jesus for all He has done for you)
Supplication (asking Jesus for help) with a focus on:

• Personal character and love for Christ (Ephesians 3:14-19, Colossians 1:9-12).
• Needs in the church.
• Neighbors (more on this in the next post).
• Sponsored children and missionaries.
• People groups around the world. We have also used a world map and Operation World to pray through a variety of different people groups. This builds a heart for the world and brings perspective to the abundance our children enjoy.

When they begin to read, laminate the guide and you can begin to write things in each category to order your prayers for the evening (which you need to do with kids).

Parents, do you kids hear you pray? Do they hear you proclaiming God’s greatness back to Him? Do they hear your gratitude for the Cross? Your burden for the world? For their souls? For the souls of your neighbors? For the advance of the Gospel? For the good of the church? They should hear a burden for God’s interests in your prayer. They should see that you really believe that “the horse is made ready for battle, but victory belongs to the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31).  This may impact their relationship with God more than anything else you do. It may just revolutionize your life as well.

Prayer is good for us... and the world - Part 1

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. (James 5:13) Any other response to our troubles is functional atheism. Because the Gospel begins with our utter dependence on God, a church that isn’t praying earnestly is really guilty of hypocrisy. A self-reliant church will, at best, glorify itself and, at worst, it will burn out.

Recognizing our constant drift toward self-reliance, the first emphasis in Summitview’s 2011 Vision is a greater dependence on God as evidenced in our prayer. Specifically, we want to grow in understanding prayer biblically and in praying together. But this emphasis on prayer is not about self-righteous, religious performance. Instead, it flows from our firm belief that God has a mission for the church that is purposely outside of her ability. By design, our cries for God's support are answered in ways that bring us joy (John 16:24) and reveal His greatness to the world (John 14:13 and 15:16). This is the purpose of our redemption:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9, emphasis added)

Our prayer then, in content and in God’s answer, is for our good and the good of the world.

Beyond Intent
Now nearly everyone agrees that prayer is good and, most believe, it should be a greater part of their lives. It’s what sets prayer apart from the other disciplines: inherently we know we need it and, inherently, our self-sufficiency makes it extremely difficult. To go beyond intent to intentional practice requires overcoming the great inertia of our pride.

The posts over the next couple of days are offered, not as a sure-fired prescription for that effort but, as possible means of grace in what Jude calls “building yourselves up in the most holy faith.”

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20–21)

1) Pray “according to God’s will.”
Being a good Father, God listens to all of our prayers and, being a good Father, He doesn’t answer every one (Luke 11:13). Developing a biblical understanding of what is actually according to God’s will (1 John 5:14) is a great aid in prayer. Many people have fatigued in their requests because they asked for things that God has never promised.

• Here is a pretty thorough collection of New Testament passages on prayer.
• A.W. Pink’s book “The Ability of God” is a fantastic resource on the prayers of Paul as well.
• This message from Faithwalkers 2010 includes a section that addresses “praying for what we already have” in His promises.

2) Pray through a list.
There is a certain sense of futility in a big, unorganized mess. Our minds can be so cluttered with possible prayers that it can be overwhelming to even begin.

Start with a list. In the battle for our attention, the best weapons are often a pen and paper. Write down what comes to mind. You will see categories emerge within the list (family, work, neighbors, the city, the church, etc). Group your prayers in these categories and assign certain things from each category to each day of the week. This will give you a “well-rounded” list of things to pray every day. I have found that this kind of list allows me to stay on track and the categories themselves will remind me of time-specific things that I can pray for each day.

You can then take these daily lists and throw them on index cards or create a reoccurring appointment for each day in your electronic calendar (Google Cal, iCal, Outlook, etc) including your list in the “Notes” section of the appointment.

I generally work to refresh this list 3-4 times a year. This keeps me engaged and able to adjust to new needs and responsibilities.

(more to come in the next post)

Prayer: It is either effective or a work for idiots (Spurgeon)

We find a powerful reason for expecting prayer to be effective in the fact that it is an institution of God. In God's Word we are over and over again commanded to pray. God's institutions are not folly. Can I believe that the infinitely wise God has ordained for me an exercise that is ineffective and is no more than child's play? Does He tell me to pray, and yet does prayer have no more of a result than if I whistled to the wind or sang to a grove of trees? If there is no answer to prayer, prayer is a monstrous absurdity, and God is the author of it, which it is a blasphemy to assert. Only a fool will continue to pray when you have once proved to him that prayer has no effect with God and never receives an answer. If it is indeed true that its effects end with the man who prays, prayer is a work for idiots and madmen, not for sane people! - C.H. Spurgeon, "The Power in Prayer"

These inward trials I employ...

After feeling a little 1 Cor. 4:11-13 for the last couple of days, Mr. John Newton jumped out from the past (1779) to remind me of God's providence in everything.

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.


I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
and by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.


Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.


Yea more, with His own hand
He seemed intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.


“Lord why is this,” I trembling cried,
“Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?”
“’Tis in this way,” the Lord replied,
“I answer prayer for grace and faith.”


“These inward trials I employ,
From self and pride to set thee free
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in Me.”

John Newton, “I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow” (1779).

A Convenient Little Prayer List

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (Colossians 1.9–12)

A Prayer for (fill in the blank).

1. First, remember: Don't cease. Persistent prayers exemplify faith (Luke 18:7-8)
2. May (blank) be filled with the knowledge of Your will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
3. May this lead (blank) to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.
4. May (blank) be pleasing to You.
5. May (blank) bear fruit in every good work.
6. And, because this is all happening, may (blank) grow in the knowledge of God.
7. May (blank) be strengthened with all Your power for JOYFUL endurance and patience.
8. May (blank) give you thanks for the salvation that You gave them.

Amen.

These prayers are in accordance with the better promises of the new covenant (Hebrews 7:18 and 8:6). They are prayers that, when answered, will glorify God in the midst of hard times not by getting rid of hard times.

Additional Resources
You Give Them Something to Eat - A sermon (audio) on Luke 9:10-21
Prayer, Preaching and Missions: How Do They Work Together

Prayer, Preaching & Missions: How do they work together? Video feat. John Piper

"You can't understand what prayer is for, until you understand that life is war." -John Piper

Additional Resources

Let the Nations Be Glad (online book, Chapter 1 - .pdf)

Prayer for Our City church prayer outline

Video excerpt from "Let the Nations Be Glad - Part 2" at Advance09