Pray first! Then, act!

James Banks and his wife Cari were desperate - their teenaged daughter had run away from home.

Their daughter Katie began rebelling years before, influenced by people without faith.  Finally, she left home to be with her friends.

Banks and his wife searched for their daughter everywhere in their city, believing she was on the street in their crime-ridden town.  For weeks, they followed up tips which led nowhere, notified the police who sent out descriptions of their daughter, and were just a step behind when there were a couple of legitimate sightings.

"Exhausted, we finally began to realize that we needed to quiet ourselves and check in with God first," writes Banks in his book The Lost Art of Praying Together.

"As we took more time just to pray and wait on God, our leads began to get better," says Banks.

On Father's Day, they decided to take a day away from the search, visit their son and pray with him for Katie, and spend the evening relaxing together.  They received a call from a waitress at a diner where the family had often eaten.  She had seen Katie and a few minutes later they were reunited.

"With a lot of love and hard work, Katie was soon on the road to recovery at home.  And Cari and I discovered the difference praying together can make for those we love most of all."

"Our time in the crucible taught us a life lesson," Banks says.  "Prayer must precede action."

He says we must "learn how to walk at God's pace if we desire to truly hear God and discern his best for our lives".  This means acting on what God gives us and going no further - sometimes very tough to do.

He refers to Nehemiah, the exiled Jew who led a group of exiles back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city destroyed decades before by the Babylonians.  He found hostile Arabs and others in the area, threatening the work which had been approved by the Persian king Artaxerxes.

Nehemiah's first action was to organize a prayer gathering.  And it was what he did after every threat until the city walls were rebuilt.

For Nehemiah, the road to rebuilding Jerusalem involved praying, waiting on God, and acting, Banks says.

For me, this is a timely reminder that I must slow down and pray before rushing into action.  What God tells me is more important than my own plans.

 

Bitter or blessed?

Are you bitter or blessed?

How you see yourself shapes your life.  It also moulds your prayer life.

Alan D. Wright, author and pastor of Reynolda Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, gave a telling example of the different ways of looking at life in a sermon he gave on God's grace a year ago.

He recalled that, as a young pastor, he counseled two people - a man and a woman - with an almost opposite outlook on life on the same day.  The two people came from much the same social and economic background.

Cindy, the woman, lived with a depressed husband and had two children who were not believers.  She had come to talk to him about a church matter, but when Wright asked her how she was herself she amazed him with her response.

She said her husband could be a handful but he was a good man.  As for her children, she was believing God for them.

Then, she gave him a big smile as she often did and added: "The bottom line is that I'm so blessed."  When she thought about what God had done in her life, she couldn't help but be grateful.

Wright had known her for seven years and he knew she wasn't denying her troubles.  She was simply looking at God's grace in her life.

Later the same day, he listened to a man named Butch who had a lovely wife and three cute kids.  Butch poured out his problems until Wright thought: "The more he talks about negative things, the worse he is getting."

So, he said to Butch: "It might be hard but maybe we could shift and start thinking about a little bit  about what you could thank God for.  Sometimes it helps your heart."

Butch was silent and then said he could not think of one thing.  And then he erupted in curses and told Wright he did not know what it was like living his life.

"Maybe some day something horrible will happen to you and then you'll know how lousy life can be," he said.

Bitterness can choke prayer as well as poison life.  Many people stop praying when they go through difficulties and God is seemingly silent.  They dwell on their disappointments and lose the joy of the Lord.

The antidote is simple: Praise God for who he is and what he has done in our lives. This is a lesson I am constantly re-learning.

And there is always the need to pray for those we are angry with.  Jesus called on God to forgive those who were crucifying him.

When I think of praying for people I am upset with, I find an internal resistance within me.  I want to nurse my righteous anger.

But, then I remember what many have pointed out before - God forgave me.  So, how can I not forgive others?

I feel that God is constantly telling me in various ways: "Be thankful.  Enjoy what I have given you.  Know that I am working everything out for your good."


 

"You become like what you worship"

Every day you see people worshiping someone else - a pop singing star, a great athlete, perhaps even a politician.

We Christians say we worship God.  But do we really?

Stormie Omartian, author of The Prayer that Changes Everything, said in a YouTube clip: "You become like what you worship."

That can be an encouraging - and a convicting - statement.  I say convicting because  I confess I sometimes worship football and other things more fervently than I do the Lord.

But it is also encouraging.  Omartian said that as we praise and worship God as a way of life, we become like him.

Her point is that praising God changes us inside and makes us more like Jesus.  And there is nothing more important in this life and in eternity than God.

She noted that one translation of Psalm 22:3 is that God is enthroned on our praises.  That is, he makes his presence felt as we praise him.

"Every time you praise God, something changes within you or your circumstances," she said.  "It is impossible to touch the presence of God and not be changed."

Her statement reminded me of a story I read years ago in Created to Praise, by Derek Prime.  He told the story of missionary Archibald Glover, his wife, their two small children, and another missionary woman fleeing Chinese rebels in 1900 as they targeted foreigners.

After several narrow escapes, Mrs. Glover was so worn out she collapsed and said she couldn't go on.  Her husband felt she was dying.

The other missionary woman knelt beside Mrs. Glover and poured out praise to God and many passages of scripture about God's promises and his faithfulness.

"From an apparently dying condition, she suddenly revived and sat up with a restored vigour which amazed me," Glover wrote.  God had made his presence felt as they praised him.

Omartian says that we are to praise God in hard times - perhaps particularly in hard times.  It takes our eyes off ourselves and fixes them on Jesus.

"God is all about changing us because he wants us to become more like him," Omartian said.  "We become more like him every time we worship him."

Many people do not praise God because they do not know what he is like.  So Omartian urges us to praise him for his goodness and power and other qualities as outlined in scripture.  The more we praise him for these things, the more we see his goodness and power "manifested" in our lives, she says.

She used the picture of a funnel to describe how God pours his love into us.  The top part of the funnel is large, containing a lot of liquid - the lower part is narrow.  When we praise him, God pours out his love into us until we are unable to contain any more.

That's why Omartian calls praise "the prayer that changes everything".  We are transformed as we worship the Lord.

The strength of two

On the surface, it's obvious: When two pull together, they can do more than they can alone.

But, too often, we neglect the great value of sharing our problems with others and asking them to pray about these issues with us.

As many of you know, Jesus speaks of the power of two or three people praying together in Matthew 18:19-20.  He says where two or three people gather together and agree in Jesus' name, God will act.  Jesus is with us in a special way when we get together with others to pray.

My wife and I have periodically had prayer partners over the years and found them to be spiritually deepening times.

My first experience was with a church friend more than 20 years ago.  We were quite different in our careers but we had one similarity - we were both introverts.  As well, we both had a desire to grow in our relationship with God.

We met once a month for two years until my wife and I moved to the opposite end of the city.  During that time we got to know one another much better and we talked openly about our family and career needs.  And we prayed about them.

I have periodically had other prayer partners since and so has my wife.

There are several benefits from praying together with another person. Here are some that come to my mind:

•  Pulling together in prayer lightens the load on my shoulders of a particular prayer burden.  It is encouraging to share something and know that the other person understands you and is joining his or her voice to your prayers;
• Jesus is always the third person in any prayer partnership.  Jesus is my advocate and is presenting my prayer needs to the Father;
• I can rejoice with my prayer partner about answers to prayer.  It is good to be able to celebrate with someone else God's goodness.  It is faith strengthening; and
• My partner can gently hold me to account for any commitment - spiritual, social, or emotional - that I make.  A good prayer partner can ask me about the things I have promised to do without being aggravating or offensive.

I confess this last one is one where I have felt less easy, not wanting to provoke a friend or be held to account.  And yet it is important.

There are many ways to conduct your prayer partnership.  You can meet once a week, once a month or whatever time period suits you both.  Or, you can talk on the phone briefly once a week, praying together over the phone.

I believe it is always good to mix in praise to God and thanks for his goodness in any prayer session.  The more he is front and centre, the more we see his hand in our lives.

If you've never tried it, I urge you to seek someone and suggest you meet once to pray together.  As someone has said, you can discover whether you want to go forward after this first "date".  I'll bet you will.

The blessings of praying together

Don't miss the blessing of praying with others!

In essence, that's the message of James Banks, author of The Lost Art of Praying Together.

I can say from personal experience that I often leave a prayer gathering with others feeling uplifted.

As I have noted before, Jesus said that where two or three of us are gathered together in his name, he is there.  Even more, he says that if we agree on a matter in prayer, God will carry it out (Matthew 18:19-20).


There is something about praying together with one mind that seems to draw us  close to God.  I know that God is always with us - but I feel as if Jesus is with us praying as we pray.


In his book, Banks lists some of the blessings of praying together.

He tells the story of Jeremiah Lanphier, a layman, who started a mid-day prayer gathering for Manhattan businessmen in New York in 1857.  Only six men turned out for the first prayer meeting.

Then, the prayer gathering grew and had to find a larger hall.  Other churches began praying together as they noticed the blessings flowing from Lanphier's meeting.

Within six months, 10,000 businessmen were gathering daily for prayer in New York. From New York, the prayer movement spread across the United States and within two years, a million converts were added to American churches.

God's power is released as we pray together.

Another blessing is unity.  When we pray for others with an open heart, we can't hold grudges.  As we pray, God moves within us to bring us to one mind.

"Our unity in prayer demonstrates the glory of God at work in our lives in a beautiful way," writes Banks.

He goes on to say that "prayer is nothing less than love on its knees".  He notes how the apostle Paul repeatedly told his readers how much he prayed for them in love.  When we pray together, we are loving each other and pouring out God's love for those in need.

"Even when churches are having difficulty getting along with each other," he says, "humble, heartfelt prayer can accomplish miracles and draw us together in love."

Another blessing is growing faith as we unite in prayer.  We learn from others as we pray.  Mature believers give us great examples to follow.  Banks mentions one person who poured out praise and thanks to God in such a way that it left a permanent impression on his life.

John Franklin, author of And The Place Was Shaken, says that most of Jesus' comments on prayer in the New Testament are in the plural in the original Greek, meaning that he was talking about people praying together.

The case for praying together is compelling.  When we pray together with humble hearts, God blesses us.