Monday 26 December 2016

Thanks strengthens prayer

For Charles Spurgeon, prayer should always be mixed with thanksgiving.

Spurgeon, called "the Prince of Preachers" in his day, declares that requests to God gather strength and power as they mingle with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord.

"Let us perpetually thank our benefactor for what we have while we make request for something more," he says in Twelve Sermons on Thanksgiving, one of many books flowing from the pen of the great Baptist preacher in London in the late 1800s.

We should even thank God in the midst of trouble just as we pray to have the trouble removed, he writes.

As we struggle with a problem, we should remember God's great goodness to us in the past.  Indeed, we should believe in faith that God is allowing the trouble out of love and for his purposes.

Sounds tough, doesn't it?  But many believers have testified to the power of an attitude of gratitude in their lives.

As we pray, we can recall what God has already done for us and gain confidence in praying for more.

Spurgeon goes even further on thanksgiving, saying that we should offer thanks ahead of time for God's response to our prayers.

He points to George Muller, another great 19th century British believer, who depended on God to supply the needs of his great orphanages through prayer.

Muller put into practice what Jesus said in Mark 11:24: "I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

Of course, Muller spent a lot of time in meditating on scripture and praying and seeking the Holy Spirit to discover the will of God in particularly difficult circumstances.  Once he was convinced what God wanted in the situation, he would pray with thanksgiving, certain that the Lord would give a positive answer.

We should also thank God even when he does not give us what we want.  It may be that a "yes" answer would hurt us more than help us.

Spurgeon adds: "Healthy praise and thanksgiving must be cultivated, because they prevent prayer from becoming overgrown with the mildew of selfishness."

"Praise in a prayer is indicative of a humble, submissive, obedient spirit," he goes on, "and when it is absent we may suspect wilfulness and self-seeking."

When prayer and thanksgiving work together, we become aware of God's peace in our hearts.

Spurgeon quotes the apostle Paul's great words in Philippians 4:6-7:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

Both Paul and Spurgeon lived what they preached.

They are examples to live by.


Monday 19 December 2016

A man like us

The apostle James claims that we can pray just as effectively as the prophet Elijah.

Elijah? The man who helped bring a dead child back to life?  The man who called down God's fire on a water-soaked sacrifice to defeat the prophets of Baal?  The man who brought three years of drought to Israel - and then prayed until a drenching rain came down?

Yes, that Elijah.  We can pray like that.

But there are conditions.  We'll get to them in a moment.

The apostle James was known by the nickname "camel-knees" during his lifetime because he spent so much time in prayer.  So, his views on prayer carry weight - he was an experienced prayer warrior.

I think he chose Elijah to show what can be done if we pray as God wishes us to pray.

As some say, Elijah "prayed big".  He gave himself completely to carrying the message of God to the people of Israel and its rulers, even if it put his own life in danger.

I'm sure he prayed about little things as we all do.  After all, the apostle Paul urges us to pray about everything (Philippians 4:6).

But, the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17-19 describes a series of great events where the prophet fought to turn Israel back to worshiping God.  He battled powerful forces led by King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, a worshiper of the pagan god Baal.  Jezebel tried to kill Elijah.

Like many western nations today, Israel had largely rejected God.  Rather than abandoning his people, God sent Elijah to deliver messages to the authorities.

First, Elijah told Ahab that God would send a three-year drought.  It happened as he foretold.

God provided for Elijah during this long drought through a series of miracles, including a regular supply of food and restoring to life the dead child of the widow who was caring for him.

Then, the Lord sent Elijah to Ahab with a message: Arrange a contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal.  The winner would be the one who successfully set a sacrifice of bulls on fire without man-made aid.  The purpose?  To show which god - the Lord or Baal - was God.

As we know, Elijah triumphed.  His sacrifice - drenched in water several times - was set alight by fire from God while the prophets of Baal failed.

"When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, 'The Lord - he is God! The Lord - he is God!'" (1 Kings 18:39)

Elijah followed that up by praying to the Lord for rain - he did so repeatedly until heavy rains poured down.  The three-year drought was over.

These seem like superhuman deeds - something an ordinary man could not do.

But James says Elijah was a man just like us.  And, indeed, Elijah showed he was human when Jezebel sought to kill him.  He fled into the wilderness and God met him there to give him his final marching orders.

In James 5, the apostle mentions Elijah in the context of prayer.  He makes several points which apply to us as much as to the great prophet.

He suggests there are several keys to powerful prayer:




  • We must pray with faith; 
  • We must be righteous; 
  • We should confess our sins; and
  • We should pray earnestly.
As Christians, we know we have no righteousness of our own - we depend on the righteousness of Jesus.  But we need to confess our sins as the apostle John says in 1 John 1:8-9 to be restored to right standing before God.

We were given a measure of faith by God when we became followers of Christ.  But we need to exercise that faith by praying for the things that God wants, no matter how big.  If we do, we can be sure that God will move in response (1 John 5:14-15).

And finally, we must not give up when we know we are praying God's will.  Elijah prayed earnestly and persisted when he knew what God wanted.

I have to decide whether I am willing to commit myself as Elijah did.

"Where are the Elijahs in the Church of the present day?" asked E.M Bounds in his book Prayer and Praying Men in the 1800s.  "Where are the men of like passions as he, who can pray as he prayed?"

It's a question for me - and for all of us.


Tuesday 13 December 2016

Persevering prayer

Sometimes prayer is like training for a marathon race.

We know that we will have to train hard and often if we are to win through to victory.  It will take time and dedication.

Why?  Shouldn't prayer be easy?  Just us talking to God and him giving us what we want?

Occasionally, it is easy.  But prayer is more than asking for gifts and expecting to receive them.  Prayer is about us and our relationship with the Lord.  It's about getting to know him and what he wants.

We can only know what he wants in a particular situation if we keep praying until we receive an answer.  As we pray, God may change our thinking as well as shed light on the issues we are wrestling with.

Andrew Murray, a great South African pastor and writer in the 1800s, talks about the importance of persevering prayer in his book The Ministry of Intercession: A Plea for More Prayer.

He touches on a couple of Jesus' parables about prayer in Luke 11 and Luke 18, each talking about people pleading long and successfully with unsympathetic listeners for justice or food.

The point Jesus makes is that persistence is effective - even more effective with God because he loves us.

In both cases, Jesus is saying that prayer isn't always smooth - in fact, we must expect difficulties.  Yet the parables make clear that God wants to give us good things.

"The need of urgent prayer cannot be because God must be willing or disposed to bless," writes Murray. "The need lies altogether in ourselves."

Murray adds: "The difficulty is not in God's love or power, but in ourselves and our own incapacity to receive the blessing."

He suggests that, in his love, God "dare not give us what would do us harm if we received it too soon or too easily".

Indeed, people through the ages who have prayed hard and long for something have realized that there are spiritual obstacles to overcome.  As they prayed, they gradually surrendered themselves to God and his will.  And God moved in their situations.

"As God prevails over us, we prevail with God," says Murray.

In fact, he says, the difficulties we face in prayer are a blessing.  Anyone who faces challenges in everyday life learns that these are necessary for personal growth.  The same is true in prayer.

"What is education but a daily developing and disciplining of the mind by new difficulties presented to the pupil to overcome?"

In the same way, our problems in prayer reveal to us our weakness and our need for God's strength and the Holy Spirit in our lives.

We have Jesus as our example in his wrestling in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He yielded himself entirely to the Father's will - and won the greatest victory of history on the cross.


Monday 5 December 2016

Asking questions of God

I'm convinced God loves it when we ask him questions.

Why?  Because it shows we want his guidance and help.  He is a loving father who wants to be invited into his little child's concerns.

I have been asking God what he wants to tell me regularly for several years - ever since reading How to Hear God's Voice by Mark and Patti Virkler.  Long before that, I was throwing questions at God like many believers when I faced problems.

Jan Johnson, author of Enjoying the Presence of God, is always popping questions in her daily life.

One day, she asked God what she needed to know and that night she dreamed about a family member whom she had been trying to help release her anger.  But surprisingly the family member was waving happily to her while skating by.  In her dream, she asked God whether she should stop worrying about her relative.

The next day, she talked about it with her husband and they agreed she should stop trying to "fix" her relative and place her in the hands of God.  That same day she ran into a friend who was letting go and letting God work in a serious family matter.

Johnson admits she cannot prove that the dream and the subsequent conversation with a friend were messages from God.  But equally, she can't say they were not.  One result of her experience was to be available for her relative but to leave the results in God's hands.

"Within our loving conversation with God," she writes, "we lay questions on the table, waiting as long as it takes for impressions, convictions, clarity of thought, peaceful understanding, or helpful words from others.  All that asking, seeking, and knocking has a way of shaping our desires."

It draws us closer to God, too.  And we understand better what he wants us to do.

I have found that as I question God, he opens my mind to things I have not considered.  And that may lead to decisions that are better in God's eyes.

David, a "man after God's own heart", asked questions of God in his years as a hunted man fleeing King Saul and later when he succeeded to the throne of Israel.

Just after David became king, the Philistines sent out an army to capture him.

In 2 Samuel 5, David responds by asking God whether he should attack.  God tells him not to attack the Philistines straight on but to circle behind them near the poplar trees.  Then, when David hears something like the sound of marching feet in the poplar trees, the Lord says he is to attack because God is already preparing the way for victory.

Sometimes, the best questions are those where we come before God asking if there are things in our lives he wants to change.

Asking questions of God takes us out of ourselves.

In effect, we are asking him to lend us his eyes as we consider our concerns.

That has to be good.


Monday 28 November 2016

Awe

It is easy to take God lightly - in prayer as in anything else.

But our God is awesome and sometimes terrifying.

Jesus touches on this in the words "hallowed be your name" in the model prayer he gave his followers.  We believers are to worship him in awe.

John White, Christian author, pastor and psychiatrist, writes that Job learned how great God is in an encounter with the Lord Almighty in the Book of Job in the Bible.  It changed him dramatically.

In his book on prayer - Daring to Draw Near - White recounts the story of Job's suffering and his call to God to justify him as an innocent man.  The Book of Job tells how God permitted Satan to take Job's wealth and his children while sparing the man's life.

Much of the rest of the Book of Job is taken up with Job's wrestling with why God would allow this.  He can't understand why he is suffering and he complains to the Lord.  His friends tell him he needs to repent.

Finally, God speaks "out of the storm" in Job 38.  He begins with the intimidating words: "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you will answer me."

He asks: "Were you there when I laid the earth's foundation?  Tell me if you understand."

God hammers home the point again and again in the following verses.  In effect, he is saying that God knows far more than any man or woman can conceive and his reasons are just.

Then, God says: "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?  Let him who accuses God answer him."

"Would you discredit my justice?" God continues.  "Would you condemn me to justify yourself?"

Job reacts the way I would - completely overcome.

"My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you," he says.  "Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

White says these words indicate Job had gained a new vision of who God is and of his great power and wisdom.

God does not explain to Job why he suffered.  But he does see that Job's view of the Lord has been transformed.  And he even leads Job to intervene on behalf of friends and blesses him with family and material goods.

White urges us to contemplate this great God who loves us and yet is so great that outstanding men in the Bible fell before him in terror and awe.

In prayer, the author says, we should tell God that we know he is holy and that there is no one like him.

"Tell him that you owe him your allegiance, your body, your time.  Tell him that you recognize that his mercy to you is far more than you ever deserve."

Then, he says, we should ask the Holy Spirit to take us further into a deeper understanding of the overwhelming greatness of God.




Monday 21 November 2016

Attack!

Beni Johnson, author of The Happy Intercessor, says prayer warriors are to fight Satan's kingdom in prayer, not hold back in fear and confusion.

She says we are like football players out to score a touchdown by marching down the field with a definite plan.  We each know what we are to do because we have been given the plan by our coaches.

Her point is that we must stay in touch with God and understand his plan.

"A lot of intercessors spend all of their time worrying about what the enemy will do next," she writes, "but their job is to focus on God and to partner with his plans."

She says prayer warriors are to "pray according to God's plans and . . . pray from a place of victory."

We should not be afraid because Christ won the ultimate victory over Satan by his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.

She tells the story of her third grandchild, Haley, who was on the verge of death after being born in an emergency operation because her mother had an infection.  The doctors told the Johnson family that the baby was not responding well.  She had an Apgar test result of 2 which usually means the baby will die.

Johnson remembers sitting in the waiting room and asking God what was going on.  She felt God telling her that this was spiritual warfare and she must simply say "No!"

The whole family prayed and 10 minutes later, a nurse came to tell them that the Apgar reading was up to 7 and the baby would be fine.

The author recommends prayerful reading and meditation on scripture to equip ourselves for spiritual battle.

For example, she turns often to the Psalms for prayer.  She suggested the following approach:

  • Read and ponder and "get Holy Spirit understanding" of the scripture segment;
  • Begin to pray the scripture passage;
  • Stop and listen to God's promptings;
  • As you listen, God will tell you more; and
  • Begin to pray what he is telling you.
As you do this, you "become targeted to the purpose of God," say says.

"Your spirit and your mind have become one with heaven.  You have become on offensive prayer warrior."

Satan is a master at distracting us.  We need to keep our eyes on what God wants.

Tuesday 15 November 2016

Persistent prayer

Jim Glennon tells a wonderful story of God's miracle-working power through persistent and faith-filled prayer in his book Your Healing Is Within You.

He says Graeme, the adopted son of Mark and Dorothy Bailey of South Australia, began developing rounded shoulders as a very young boy.  It became worse as he grew older, approaching his teen-aged years.

They took him to a specialist who told them several vertebrae were collapsing and ultimately his heart would be affected as he grew progressively stooped.  He said the boy's future was hopeless.

But the parents were convinced from their reading of scripture that God could do what seemed impossible.  They believed that if healing did not come immediately, it would come over time.

So they prayed.

"At first nothing seemed to happen," Glennon writes.  "Yet they were not discouraged - they just went on believing."

Gradually, they began to see what seemed to be change.  Then, it became more obvious.

After three years, "their boy had grown completely straight".  His chest and heart were normal and his hump was gone.

He is now married with three children and a job as a mechanic.

I acknowledge that not all stories turn out as well despite our faith.  It is a mystery why some are healed and others are not.

But Jesus does call us to pray persistently, believing that God is good and will work for our good (Luke 18: 1-8).  

Sometimes we receive answers in our lifetime - and sometimes hereafter.  As Hebrews 11 indicates, many great men and women of the Bible died before seeing the Messiah, but they were to see their hopes and prayers answered in the long run.

In her book The Power of Persistent Prayer, Cindy Jacobs says that she is confident her prayers will be answered if they are based on God's will as made clear in scripture.  She points to the apostle John's words in 1 John 5:14-15:

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him."

The great 19th century Christian, George Muller, had a remarkable prayer life, feeding and housing thousands of orphans despite having no money of his own.  Repeatedly, he did not know in the morning whether he would be able to feed the children later in the day but money would come in at just the right moment.  He never issued an appeal for funds but they kept rolling in.

He outlined his approach to discovering the will of God in this way:

  • He began by surrendering himself completely to what God wanted in a particular matter;
  • He sought the will of God through and in connection with the word of God;
  • He took into account "providential circumstances" which pointed to what God wanted;
  • He asked God to reveal his will to Muller; and
  • Having taken these steps, he would decide what he believed to be God's direction.
This teaches me that I must really seek God's will in a particular situation and then pray persistently.



Tuesday 8 November 2016

Battling the enemy

Cindy Jacobs knows that prayer is a mighty weapon against the evil one.

In her book Possessing the Gates of the Enemy, Jacobs tells of waking up at 2 a.m. with the sense that God wanted her to pray.  She and her husband were attending a major U.S. prayer conference in Bradenton, Florida, at the time.

After asking God whether someone was in trouble, she received a mental picture of two friends and their three children as they drove to the conference.

"All of a sudden, in the vision, the van's right front wheel rolled off and the van careened wildly into a horrible accident," she writes.

She spent the rest of the night praying that the wheel bearings would hold until the Jacobs could see their friends after safe arrival, and warn them about the wheel bearings.

Jacobs told them about her vision and urged them to check the van.  Cindy's husband, Mike, and their friend David Barton drove the van to a garage,

The mechanic was amazed because the wheel bearings were shot.  He said there was no way they could drive the car without the wheels coming off.

This is a typical experience in Cindy Jacobs' life.

Jacobs' life as an intercessor started when she would wake up at night regularly and wonder why.  She finally decided God was waking her up to pray.

"As I began to seek his guidance, names would come to me and specific thoughts about what to pray . . .  So I would pray those thoughts that came to me."

At first, she did not have confirmation that her prayers were being answered.  But that changed when she felt led to pray one night for a minister named Todd in her church.  She did not know him well.  She looked at the clock and noticed it was 3:10 a.m.

The following night at a church service Todd stopped her at the church door and told her that he had cancer and had been feeling desperately alone when he prayed during the night.  He said that God let him know that Cindy Jacobs was praying for him right then.  It was 3:10 a.m.

Todd was subsequently healed of cancer.

Why does Cindy Jacobs have such a powerful ministry?

Early on, she told God: "God, use me in the way you see fit.  I will do anything you want me to do; go anywhere, anyhow."

God will use anyone that committed.

Satan, beware!


Monday 31 October 2016

God's heart for lost sheep

Hudson Taylor found his heart breaking for a man who seemed insensitive to God.

Taylor, later to become a great missionary to China, was a medical student in London, dressing the wounds of a man with gangrene in the early 1850s.

"The disease commenced, as usual, insidiously, and the patient had little idea that he was a doomed man, and probably not long to live," Taylor wrote in his autobiography some years later.

Taylor said he became "very anxious" about the man's soul.  The man's family were believers in Christ but they told Taylor that the man was "an avowed atheist, and very antagonistic to anything religious".

Taylor did not talk of this to the man for several days while working to relieve his suffering.  But, finally, he could not contain himself and told him why he was concerned about him.  The man reacted by turning away from him and refusing to talk.

"I could not get the poor man out of my mind," Taylor wrote, "and very often, through each day, I pleaded with God, by his Spirit, to save him ere he took him hence."

Every day, after dressing the man's wounds, he said a few words to him, fearing that he might be hardening the man's opposition to God.  The man would turn away, annoyed.

Finally, one day he said nothing and turned toward the man at the door as he was about to leave.  The man looked surprised that he hadn't spoken about Christ.

Taylor was so moved, he burst into tears and poured out his heart to the man, telling him "how much I wished that he would let me pray with him".  The man said that, if it would relieve Taylor to pray for him, he could go ahead.

A few days later, the man accepted Jesus as his Saviour.  He lived for some time after that but his attitude was completely changed - telling others about God's goodness to him.

When I read that story, I realize how far short I fall in having Taylor's compassion for those who don't know Jesus.  Taylor's compassion was really God's compassion, flowing through him.

In Matthew 9, the gospel writer says: "When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

That is still how God sees those who do not know him and follow him.

May I pray with God's heart for those around me who are harassed and helpless - like sheep without the Lord as their shepherd.

Monday 24 October 2016

Prayer for our city

Francis Frangipane says "to reach our cities, Christ must reach his church".

"He must convict our hearts of the arrogance and pride, the jealousy and selfish ambition that have clouded our vision," says Frangipane in his book The House of the Lord: God's Plan to Liberate Your City from Darkness. "We must be cleansed of these sins so Jesus can unite us against evil."

I believe these words are as true today as they were when Frangipane wrote them 25 years ago.

Frangipane was a pastor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the time he wrote his book.  He took part in a multi-church prayer effort in his city and the rate of violent crime in Cedar Rapids dropped 17 per cent.

It's encouraging to me that some churches in our city and others are working to bring us together as believers to spread the love of God - and the good news of Jesus - to the people around us.  But I believe this outreach needs to spread much more widely, especially in prayer.

It's not easy to drop the barriers between churches.  We may have strong theological or cultural differences which stand in the way.  I realize I'm as stubborn - and as prejudiced - as anyone in these areas.

But, Frangipane and his fellow pastors in Cedar Rapids decided to go beyond these cherished positions and pray together.  They did not abandon their theologies.  Instead, they came together on the solid ground of a shared faith in Jesus as their saviour and Lord.

Frangipane says we Christians are a major obstacle to God bringing love and healing to our cities.

He notes Jesus' words in Luke 13 where he laments that Jerusalem has rejected his attempts to bring people into his kingdom.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God's messengers!  How often have I wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let me."

Then, Christ forecasts the ultimate result - the destruction of the city.  Jerusalem was destroyed less than 40 years later by the Romans.

"The lack of blessing in our cities is not God's fault, nor is it only because of the sins of the world," writes Frangipane.  "A number of national problems are because the church has been caught up in its own agendas and programs.

"We have disdained Christ's call to obedience and prayer."

May the Spirit of God awaken us.


Monday 26 September 2016

Fighting to pray

I believe that prayer matters.  So does Satan.

Satan actively works to stop my praying - and, too often, he succeeds.

I know - as Satan does - that prayer is vital in advancing the kingdom of God.  Jesus prayed throughout his work on earth and called on us to pray because he said prayer is powerful.  We are working with God as we pray.

But everyone who prays knows that we are constantly bombarded with reasons not to pray - thoughts that Satan drops into our minds.

Watchman Nee, a great Chinese Christian who died in a Chinese Communist prison camp several decades ago, was aware of this issue in his own life and discussed it in his book The Prayer Ministry of the Church.

Nee says we must be watchful and persistent in our prayers - we must fight the distractions that Satan uses to turn us away from time with the Lord.

He points to Paul's words in Ephesians 6:18: "And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.  With this in mind, be alert and always keep praying for all the Lord's people."

Paul's comments come at the end of a great passage in Ephesians 6 where he urges us to "put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes".  He outlines the various spiritual weapons at our disposal to combat Satan's wiles, culminating in prayer.

What does it mean to "be alert" as Paul says?  It means being aware that even seemingly harmless things may be used by the evil one to divert us from prayer.

Maybe it is our jobs or even our families.  It could be worthy church activities.  Or, it could be hobbies or pleasant diversions which draw our minds away from prayer.

More damaging, perhaps, is the thought that prayer is ultimately useless.  Even prayer warriors may fall victim to that idea if fervent prayers are not answered as we wish.

Nee says we must begin by placing prayer in a "preeminent position".  We must take on faith the Bible's declarations that prayer matters and is effective in carrying out God's plan on earth.

For many Christians, the demand of church activities can squeeze out the time normally spent in prayer.  If that's the case, Nee says, we should bring these duties before God and ask him to ensure they will not suffer any damage as we pray.

He suggests we ask God to "protect this time of prayer and forbid Satan to intrude for I am using this time to seek your glory."

Nee also calls on us to ask God to help us pray because we may find we don't have the words to pray through the distracting thoughts Satan always uses against us.

As well, he warns against praying empty words - just rhyming off old prayers without sincerity.

"Do not pray without any desire in your heart," he writes.  "All prayers should be governed by heart desire."

We should be specific in our prayers, as specific as we can be.  Satan will try to get us to pray vaguely and generally.

Being alert also means watching what happens after we pray, Nee says.  We can adjust our prayers as we see how God is working.

The apostle Paul saw that spiritual forces - good and bad - are far more powerful than what is in our world.  Whether we realize it or not, we believers are engaged in spiritual warfare.

Satan is trying to take away our most powerful weapon - prayer.  We must fight back.


Monday 19 September 2016

Keep your ears open!

Peter Lord has learned to keep his spiritual ears open to God.

The results are sometimes amazing.

Lord, author of Hearing God, says he has never heard God speak to him audibly.

But he does tell people regularly that "God spoke to me" through "the concrete impressions in my heart and mind".

"I know God was communicating to me because the words I heard came to pass and the outcomes bore fruit that glorified him."

Here's an example:  Lord was pastor of Park Avenue Baptist church in Titusville, Florida when he received a strong impression in early December that God wanted him to construct a building where people could pray.

But there was a major catch: God was saying to him that "as proof that this is my idea and not yours, I will send someone to the church who will give five hundred dollars toward the building".  The Lord added that this would happen before Christmas, just three weeks away.

Lord recorded this impression but did not tell anyone about it because he feared some well-meaning person would feel he should give the money to make this come true.

Two weeks went by and nothing happened.  Lord began to doubt what he had heard.

On December 20, he prayed: "Lord, are you sure you didn't mean by New Year's Day?"

On December 24, a married couple from another city pulled into the church parking lot.  They asked the church secretary if they could see him.

"Pastor, you don't know us, but when we were praying, God spoke to us," they told him. "We don't really understand why we needed to drive here to give this to you, but we're just being obedient."

They handed him a cheque for $500.  And they later contributed an even larger amount.

The prayer chapel was built and has been used for many years for prayer intercession.

This should not be a surprise to believers.  There are a number of stories in the Book of Acts where God speaks to people through visions and other means.  Often this led to major breakthroughs for Christ in the ancient world.

In Acts 10, we read about Cornelius, a Roman centurion, who is told by an angel in a vision to get the apostle Peter to come to him from another city.

While his servants are on the way, God urges a reluctant Peter in a vision to eat what the apostle considered unclean and impure from  Jewish standpoint.  Puzzling over this, he is interrupted by the arrival of Cornelius' servants.

When he complies to their request and Cornelius becomes a believer, Peter realizes that the good news of Jesus Christ is for non-Jews as well as Jews.  That was a major turning point in the spread of Christianity.

Lord calls on us to pay attention to the emotions, desires, and impressions that come to us which lead us to honour God.  If they are what God wants of us as believers, we can be confident God is speaking to us.

This is impetus to keep our ears open.


Monday 12 September 2016

Titans of prayer

I am in awe of titans of prayer like Moses and Father Nash.

Father Nash? Many know of Moses' powerful prayers to God for his people, but most are unaware of Father Nash.

Father Nash - his real name was Daniel Nash - was a country preacher in northern New York state whose persistent and dedicated praying supported the great American evangelist Charles Finney in the 1820s and 1830s.

Despite success in his small church, he was voted out of his job by his congregation and was jobless when he encountered Finney.  Finney recognized an amazing man of prayer when he met him and, from then on, the two worked as a team - aided by a couple of other prayer warriors.

Many of us would consider him strange today.  There are stories of people overhearing him and Abel Clary, another prayer warrior, groaning as they prayed for people behind closed doors in the towns where Finney preached.

They groaned because the Holy Spirit was working on their hearts to the point where they yearned for people to come to the Lord.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Moses groaned, too, as he prayed for the Israelites.  Moses spent a lot of time in a tent set aside for prayer - the "tent of meeting" - where people would go to seek God.

The most wonderful story of Moses' intercession is in Exodus 32-33 where the Israelite leader and prophet pleads with God to not destroy the Israelites for their disobedience.  And God responds by promising to not abandon his people but to take them into the promised land.

Father Nash was like that.

One writer reported that "Finney said that the key which unlocked the heavens in the [Rochester, New York] revival was the prayer of Clary, Father Nash, and other unnamed folk who laid themselves prostrate before God's throne and besought Him for a divine out-pouring".   More than 100,000 people became believers during meetings in that city.

There was strong opposition to Finney and Nash and his co-workers.  On one occasion, opponents - including some church leaders - burned Finney and Nash in effigy.  On other occasions, they threw rocks at the houses where they preached or fired guns nearby or tried to disturb the meetings with noisy demonstrations.

This teaches me that praying for God's kingdom to advance and spread - for people to give their lives to Christ - is vital.

I am reminded of the terrible words in Ezekiel 22:30 where God says he looked for people to "build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none".

That's a challenge to me and to praying people everywhere.


Sunday 28 August 2016

The importance of listening

Someone I know told me that listening is one of the most important skills in prayer.

In fact, she took a course in how to listen well to the people she was praying for.

I have never taken a listening course, but I probably should.  As my wife can attest, much of what I hear flies through my mind without landing.

It's easy to make assumptions about people.  Perhaps you have known the person for years and you make a quick diagnosis of his or her need.  But, embarrassingly, you discover that's not what is on the person's heart.

Jesus did not make those assumptions.  When people came to him, he asked them what they wanted him to pray about, even when the illness was obvious.  He was seeking their commitment to seeking healing.

On the surface, that's what I do when I pray for people who come to me with problems.  But often I don't take the time to probe a little more deeply.

I am learning that listening well involves observing as well as hearing.  Is the individual evasive or direct?  Does it appear that the person is telling the whole story or holding something back?  Could that be important?

Of course, people involved in praying for others should be loving and understanding and never intrusive.  But a sensitive question can reveal more than the surface comment.

Jesus also listened with spiritual ears.  He was filled with the Holy Spirit from the moment he was baptized by John the Baptist and that gave him unusual knowledge about others.

For example, his conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4 led to an amazing discussion about himself as Messiah as a result of his insight into her past.  She came to the well a woman far from God and she left filled with excitement, convinced she had met the Messiah.

This kind of knowledge is often given today in pictures or thoughts to people praying for others, although I cannot claim that myself.  But I know of people who have had that experience.

In one case, a man I know had a picture of ice skates pop into his mind as he was praying for a woman.  He asked her whether the picture had any meaning to her and she reacted by bursting into tears as it brought back a painful childhood memory.  After prayer, she received emotional healing.

John Wimber, author of Power Healing, considered the interview of the person with the prayer need and the diagnosis of a prayer need to be keys to effective prayer.

I am learning that I can't be truly helpful in praying for others without listening actively.


Tuesday 23 August 2016

The command of faith

God has given prayer warriors a great weapon - the command of faith.

But, like any weapon, we need to know when and how to use it.

Wesley Duewel gives us tips in his inspiring book Touch The World Through Prayer.

Duewel's book is all about praying powerfully for the broader world around us.  The command of faith is an important part of effective praying.

A former missionary to India and president of OMS International, Duewel had long experience in prayer and a heart for the billions of people in the world who do not know Jesus.  He died at 99 in March this year.

Duewel notes that Jesus said in Matthew 17:20: "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain,  'Move from here to there' and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you."

Some mountains, writes Duewel, are put there by God to bless us in our growth as believers.  But others come from Satan in his attempts to put us down and prevent us from being effective followers of the Lord.

At some point, he says, we may need to stop praying about an issue and simply use the authority God has given us and tell the mountain to move.

Jesus and the apostles often used the command of faith in healing people and delivering them from demonic oppression.  So did Moses, obeying God's orders in commanding miracles by stretching out his staff.  Other prophets also used the authority gave them to command miracles.

But when is the right time to declare the command of faith?

Duewel says we should not use it just to make life easier for ourselves.  The command of faith is intended to give God glory.

"It is a very deliberate exercise of Christ's own authority and name in a situation where his glory is at stake, where his kingdom is being hindered, or where Christ calls you to demonstrate His power to prove He is the living God."

We don't have to be super-saints to use the command of faith.  But there are conditions:

  • We must be children of God;
  • There must be nothing in our lives that grieves the Holy Spirit; and
  • The command must be in harmony with the will of God.
Once we know it is God's will, we should ask for the filling of the Spirit and remember that we are seated with Jesus in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6), Duewel says.

"Don't look up at your mountain with fear.  Look down on it from your place beside Jesus!"

Then, we are to "go forward and speak boldly to the mountain; command Satan to take his forces and go".

Jesus has given us authority to do what he has called us to do.

It is up to us to act.

Sunday 14 August 2016

A gift to God

What gift can we give to God, the "giver of all good gifts"?

On the surface, it seems ridiculous that we could offer Almighty God anything worthwhile.  He is our creator and he sent his son Jesus to die for us - nothing we give could hope to match what he has already done for us.

Yet the writer of Hebrews suggests that praising God is a valuable gift we can give our Lord.  In Hebrews 13, he writes: "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise - the fruit of lips that confess his name."

A sacrifice to God is a gift.  And praise is a sacrifice.  It is a sacrifice in the Old Testament sense of an offering to God; but, it is also a personal sacrifice in that it requires us to give something of ourselves.

It will cost us something if we do it with all our hearts "continually" as Hebrews says.

In her book Praise Works!, author Rali Macaulay writes: "Although praising God is very important, it is even more important to give him acceptable praise."

In other words, repeating words by rote is not a costly gift of praise.  It's giving something second-best.

Macaulay offers her own guidelines for "acceptable praise".  She calls on us to prepare for our time of praise by:

  • Forgiving anyone who may have offended us (Mark 11:25);
  • Asking God to fill us with his love for others (Luke 10:27);
  • Coming before him with "sincerity of heart and reverence"; and
  • Expecting him to receive our praise - not ignoring it, but responding to it.
We are to "worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23-24).  In essence, that means we should mean what we say as we praise him.

Macaulay urges us to meditate on what the scriptures tell us about God.  As we learn more about him, we will know him better.  And gratefulness will flow out of us.

I have found that to be true in my own life as I have spent time in the Psalms reading the great descriptions of God - his qualities of awesome power and everlasting love.  I have found that meditating on passages in Psalms a great launching pad for praising the Lord.

Macaulay notes that praising God is not a one-way street.  As we give him a gift of praise, he gives back gifts of peace, joy, and hope.

God will never be out-given.


Sunday 7 August 2016

Waiting prayer

You can pray even when you're not praying.

Catherine Marshall calls this "waiting prayer".  What she means is that you can entrust something to God in faith and wait for him to answer - not losing heart or insisting on your way.

In her book Adventures in Prayer, Marshall talks about praying for a wife for her son Peter John when he was a child.

Prayerfully, she considered all the qualities - physical, mental, spiritual - she believed that a lifemate for her son should have.

She prayed about this and wrote these qualities down on pieces of paper, using them as bookmarks in her favourite Bible.  After doing this, she trusted God with finding the right woman for her son, even if he had to "correct any flaws in [the image she had] and bring it to fruition in Peter's life in His own time in His own way".

Over time, he did.  Marshall writes that she found it hard not to anxiously "dig up the seeds" she had planted and bombard God again and again.  But when Peter John finally proposed to the woman who would become his wife, she looked back at her pieces of paper and found that she fit exactly the image she had imagined.

On another occasion, a friend whose marriage was falling apart came to her for counsel.  Marshall saw the problem immediately but felt God tell her not to point it out to her friend.  Over a period of several hours talking and praying, her friend gradually realized what the issue was.

Her friend returned home, took charge of her life, changed her attitude and the marriage was restored.

Marshall notes that waiting on God is a frequent theme in the Bible.

Many outstanding Christians over the centuries have found the truth of Isaiah's famous words in Isaiah 40:31: "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint."

They have learned, as Jesus teaches in John 15, to "abide in the vine" - depend on entirely on God in faith.  As they abide, they are changed - they grow.

Believers who have waited on God through dark times often emerge with "qualities like more patience, more love for the Lord and those around us, more ability to hear his voice, greater willingness to obey," says Marshall.

I think of Joseph in the Old Testament, a dreamer who had a vision of his brothers all bowing down to him.  He was sold into slavery in Egypt, cast into prison by a vengeful woman, and sat there for years without outward hope.  But he clung to God throughout and, in God's timing, he emerged as the second most powerful man in Egypt.

When his astonished brothers came to this powerful man, begging for food in a famine, he revealed himself and told them that they intended evil against him, but God used it for good.

That can be true of us, too, as we wait upon God.


Monday 1 August 2016

Spirit-led prayer

A vision of a vine with dry roots and withered branches radically changed the way the people at Kensington Temple prayed.

In his book Prayer Explosion, Colin Dye says he heard of the vision by a woman in his congregation at a time when the church "had begun to backtrack from our early prayer emphasis".

The church in London, England was growing rapidly but busyness was beginning to replace prayer.

Pastors were skipping the Wednesday prayer gathering to counsel people.  The Bible study which followed the prayer meeting was the main emphasis, so people arrived just before the study.

"The interruptions were just a symptom of how much our prayer life was sliding away; we were losing focus, direction, fervency and power."

Leadership of the prayer meeting was delegated to an elder and pastors focused on other important things.  The prayer gathering dwindled.

Then, Colin Dye heard about the woman's vision and it struck him to the heart.

"It is sometimes easy to disregard the word of God because of the abundance of it," Dye writes.  "But this is dangerous.  If God is speaking to us and we are living in him, the Spirit will witness his truth in our hearts."

The Holy Spirit spoke to Dye through the woman's vision and he knew it was a word intended for Kensington Temple.

"Our roots were dry and we were overextending beyond what we were able to sustain spiritually and organisationally as well.  We had to repent."

The senior leaders in the church responded by once again taking leadership of the prayer meeting.  But they went well beyond that, making prayer permeate everything the church did.

Here are some of their measures:

  • The daily staff meetings began with prayer and Dye called on people to share what the church should pray about that day;
  • He spent the entire afternoon coming before God in prayer over these items, sometimes calling staff members in to shed more light on what was going in their departments and the problems they faced; and
  • The prayer meeting focus changed to "taking the city", inspired by the battle of Jericho in Joshua 6.  The idea was to pray about "the real issues God had given to us".
The prayer gathering was the "spearhead" for everything the church did.

"We felt engaged in a heavenly battle and had a real sense of moving forward in God's plans for us in the city," says Dye. "We allowed the Spirit to lead us in everything."

The prayer meeting no longer covered every aspect of church life.

"Instead, we used the meeting as a spearhead.  Just as soon as we began to break through in prayer, we would move on to the next topic," he says.  "We would push the prayer emphasis out into our smaller groups and our own devotional times."

People began coming to the prayer gathering to get the agenda for prayer to inspire them in their own prayer lives.

"Our prayers became specific, personal, powerful.  The numbers doubled and doubled and doubled again until the spearhead became the most dynamic meeting of the week."

As Dye says, "prayer is relationship and communication is as vital in our relationship with God as it is in any other relationship we may have".

And, without a close relationship with the Lord, we will not see fruit as Jesus tells us in John 15.

Dye's church has had a big impact on the community around it.

That can happen everywhere people are led by the Spirit in prayer and action.




Monday 25 July 2016

How to hear

I have learned that I hear only what I want to hear - I dismiss everything else.

Understanding this truth is vital to learning how to hear God, says Peter Lord, author of Hearing God.

Lord says that, typically, we choose to shut out things we don't want to hear and pay attention to the things that interest us.

For example, he notes that a mother of an infant is programmed to hear every sigh or squirm of her child when sleeping at night.  She will wake up if something sounds wrong. And people living near airports will eventually filter out the sound of planes flying overhead.

Knowing this, we can train ourselves to filter out the things that turn us away from God and focus on the things that draw us closer.

But, Lord says, we must also respond and act on what we hear from God.  If we do, our minds and hearts will begin to hear more from God.

Of course, this presumes that we think hearing from God is important.  Jesus certainly thought so as he said in Mark 4:9: "Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand."

As Lord and others say, we can hear from God in a variety of ways - meditating on God's word, impressions the Holy Spirit drops in our minds, visions, dreams, and comments from others.

But hearing from God requires some effort on our part.  We need to go into training.

"If you begin prayer with the attitude that [hearing God] is an absolute necessity, vital to sustaining fellowship with Jesus, then you can be sure to make progress," writes Lord.

He suggests the acronym FIT - frequency, intensity, time - as a guide.  That means focusing often on what God has to say, taking time to be with God, and acting on what you hear.

Along with the normal things that distract us, Lord writes, we Christians often substitute videos, speakers, and books about God rather than on his words in the Bible and prayer.

Instead, we should spend time with God with a commitment to respond to what he tells us.

"The person who listens to God and responds positively will hear more from the Lord," he says.

At the same time, we must train ourselves to say "no" to the distractions and temptations that seek to dominate our minds when we seek God.

He suggests our response to God should include something practical right away.  If someone who needs help springs to our minds, we should "call, pray, write a letter, visit or do whatever action is appropriate".

As time goes on, we will find our ability to hear God increase.  As we act on what we hear, our lives will change.


Monday 18 July 2016

The last coin

Hudson Taylor knew his dream of evangelizing in China was filled with perils.

Taylor, who later founded the China Inland Mission, knew he would be pushed beyond his own strength and only God could carry him through.

So, he prepared in England by depending on God to meet his needs through prayer.

His aim was not to test God, but to strengthen his own faith.  He was like an Olympic runner who knows he can't win without training hard in advance of the race.

Taylor tells the story in his autobiography written decades after he had finally landed in China in 1854 following a dangerous sea voyage by sailing ship of over five months.

As I mentioned in my last post, Taylor became a believer at the age of 15 following the heartfelt prayers of his mother and sister.  In time, he became fascinated with China and was filled with a desire to go there as a missionary.

But first he decided to study medicine to be of practical use when he arrived there.  He became an apprentice to a Christian doctor, one step before entering medical school.

The doctor was a kindly man, but forgetful.  He started depending on Taylor to remind him when he should be paid.

Taylor had already chosen to give most of the little money he had away to needy people and to God's work in England.  He lived mainly on oatmeal and rice.  He knew he would likely live on very little in China.

He decided his "spiritual muscles" needed strengthening by relying on God to prompt the kindly doctor to remember to pay him.  He would pray and leave this matter in God's hands.

He told himself that, in China, he would have "no claim on anyone for anything - my only claim will be on God".

"How important, therefore," he thought, "to learn before leaving England to move man, through God, by prayer."

But the doctor forgot and Taylor found himself with only a single coin.

The following day, he was spending time sharing the good news in a poor area of London, when he came across a man who told him his wife was dying.  He asked Taylor to come with him to his home and pray for her.

He found the woman lying on a bed with four starving children standing by.  Then, he began wrestling mentally with giving the man and his family his single coin.  He tried to rationalize keeping the money - "such a time of conflict came upon me then as I have never experienced before or since".

The poor man turned to Taylor and begged him to help the family if he could.

Then, Taylor pulled the coin slowly from his pocket and gave it to him.  And he was overwhelmed with the joy of the Lord.

The next morning, he received an envelope in the mail and within was a blank sheet of paper containing a coin worth 400 times what he had given away.  He did not know who had sent it to him.

And the doctor?  Eventually, he remembered he had failed to pay his apprentice.

These answers to prayer - and a series of others in young Taylor's life - were building blocks in his life of faith.  He would remember them vividly in later years as he faced other trials.



Monday 11 July 2016

A parent's heart

There is nothing like a parent crying out to God for a child.

A mother or father praying for their child - and never giving up - finds a ready ear in God.

One of my favourite Bible stories is of Hannah, weeping as she prayed for a son.

Hannah, one of Elkanah's two wives, was deeply upset as she prayed before God at the Tabernacle in Israel.  She had no child and Elkanah's other wife, Peninnah, who had several children, taunted Hannah because she was childless (1 Samuel 1).

It's a heartache that many couples have faced over the centuries.

Crying as she prayed, Hannah whispered to God that she would give her child to him if he ensured she gave birth.  Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk and reprimanded her, but relented when he heard what she was praying.  He supported her prayer.

In time, she gave birth to a son, Samuel.  She stuck by her promise and, after Samuel was weaned, she gave him to Eli as his servant.

Samuel became a great prophet and played a major role in the destiny of Israel.

I was reminded of Hannah's story yesterday as I was reading Hudson Taylor's autobiography.

Taylor was one of the world's great missionaries, founding the China Inland Mission in the 1800s.  He grew up in a devout family, but he had turned away from God by the time he was 15.

Somehow, he had not grasped the truth of the gospel in his heart.  He believed he would have to earn his way to heaven and felt that was impossible.  So, he rejected God and looked for reasons to support his views.

But he had a powerful praying family.  His mother and sister were praying hard for him to become a follower of Jesus.

One day, while his mother was away visiting some friends, he wandered into his father's study and picked up a pamphlet which he hoped would give him some ammunition against Christianity.

At that moment, his mother felt a strong urge to pray at the home she was visiting.  She went to her bedroom and prayed for a long time, pouring out her heart to God for her son.  Then, she felt an inner certainty and peace that God had heard her and her son was safely in his hands.

Meanwhile, Taylor read the pamphlet and was struck to the heart.  His eyes were opened to the fact that Christ had done what he could not do - all he needed to do was believe in Jesus.  He took the step of faith.

When he told his mother on her return, she told him she already knew.  He later picked up a little book that was identical to one of his and found that it was his sister's record of her prayers.  She had dedicated herself to pray for him for months before he gave himself to God.

I remember, too, that Monica, mother of Augustine, prayed for her wayward son for years in 4th century North Africa.  She was a believer, but he was not.  He was living with a woman who gave him a son and he chased after popular philosophies - he was the equivalent of a 4th century New Ager.

But God heard Monica's prayers and Augustine surrendered his life to God.  He became one of the greatest Christian leaders and writers in history.

God wants everyone to enter his family.  And he wants to bless families.

He loves to answer the prayers of mothers and fathers praying for the spiritual welfare of their children.


Monday 4 July 2016

Weak in body - powerful in prayer!

Few things stimulate prayer more than hearing about God's powerful answers to prayer.

I am encouraged and inspired by the story of K.P. Yohannan, Indian-born founder of Gospel for Asia. Prayer has been at the centre of his mission which has reached out to millions of people in India and throughout Asia in the last few decades.

Yohannan is himself an answer to prayer.  No one could have predicted that he would one day be one of the world's outstanding Christian leaders.

He grew up dirt-poor in a little village in the state of Kerala in South India.

He felt a call to God when we was a slight, scrawny, 90-pound, 16-year-old.  His mother had been praying and fasting for years that at least one of her children would dedicate his life to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.  He was the baby of a large family - and it turned out God chose him.

But in his book Revolution in Missions, he says he was a very unlikely missionary.

"I was shy and timid and kept my faith mostly to myself," he writes. "I showed no leadership skills and avoided sports and school functions."

But a visit to his village by an Operation Mobilization team touched his heart and he set out for the mission's headquarters in India.  He was turned down, but the mission agreed to let him attend the annual training conference at Bangalore.

There he was challenged to live a life of "breathtaking, radical discipleship".  That night, he wrestled with God, shaking with fear and weeping at the thought of speaking publicly in the streets.

Suddenly, he felt he was not alone in the room but had an overwhelming sense of being loved.  Then, he gave himself to the Lord's will and asked God to "help me know that you You're with me".

The next morning, he went out in the streets and looked at the children and street vendors with new eyes.  "I loved them all with a supernatural, unconditional love I'd never felt before."

He walked towards the bus station and felt such a love for the people around him that he had to lean against a wall to keep his balance.

"[God's] loving heart was pounding within mine, and I could hardly breathe.  The tension was great.  I paced back and forth restlessly to keep my knees from knocking in fright."

He cried out to God: "Lord, if you want me to do something, say it, and give me courage."

Looking up from his prayer, he saw a huge stone and knew God wanted him to climb it and preach to the crowds in the bus station.  Scrambling up the stone, he says, "I felt a force like 10,000 volts of electricity shooting through my body."

He began singing a simple children's chorus, drawing a crowd.  And then, unprepared to preach, "God took over and filled my mouth with words of his love."

"As the authority and power of God flowed through me, I had superhuman boldness.  Words came out I never knew I had - and with a power clearly from above."

The mission leaders no longer questioned his calling.  He joined a mobile evangelistic team travelling through North India for the next seven years.

Many nights, they slept in roadside ditches because the villages the visited were often hostile. "Our team always created a stir, and at times we even faced stonings and beatings."

That experience moulded his character and his ultimate decision to found a mission of poor local missionaries in Asia who have worked under God's guidance to bring multitudes into the kingdom of God.

The stories he tells of answered prayer read like the Book of Acts.

What an example of a praying man!

Monday 27 June 2016

Small beginnings

It's amazing what God can do when a few men and women pray for the Holy Spirit to move in them and the world around them.

There is, of course, the example of the first Pentecost.

In Acts 1, we read that after Christ ascended to heaven, a few followers of Jesus - men and women - "joined together constantly in prayer".

Then, at Pentecost, the Spirit descended like tongues of fire on each one and they began speaking in different languages, astonishing the people there from many nations.  When Peter spoke, he preached a sermon that struck many to the heart and 3,000 became believers that day.

It's a story that has been repeated many times since that time.

One of the revival stories that I return to often is the account of the outbreak of revival in the late 1850s in the United States.

Elana Lynse tells the story in her book Flames of Revival: Igniting the Hearts of a Nation Through Prayer.

In 1857, the Old Dutch Church in Manhattan, New York hired Jeremiah Lanphier to be a "lay visitor" to reach out to the unchurched people of New York.

Among the things he did was launch a weekly noon-hour prayer meeting in his church.  He printed a little pamphlet explaining what the prayer meeting was about and distributed it.

He said it was open to everyone and people could drop in whenever they wished during that hour and stay for as long as they wished.  They were to pray for whatever was on their minds.

The first day, no one showed up except Lanphier as the prayer meeting began.  Then, five others wandered in half way through the prayer gathering.

With this small beginning, great things happened.

Word spread and Lanphier's prayer meeting grew.  Soon people were meeting daily with up to 100 attending.

News filtered out across the United States where people started meeting in churches, stores, and public halls following Lanphier's pattern.

In early 1858, there were more than 20 prayer gatherings in New York alone.  At one point, someone estimated that more than 6,000 people were praying at meetings in the New York financial district in a one-hour time slot.  Fire and police departments and theatres opened their doors for prayer meetings.

In Chicago, 2,000 people crowded into the Metropolitan Theatre for prayer daily.

The impact on the nation was enormous.  Many became believers in Jesus Christ.

Lynse tells this delightful story: "At one large, crowded prayer meeting, a man was praying when his neighbour gave him a sharp shove with his elbow, grabbed his arm, and said, "Stop praying and tell me how I can become a Christian."

The revival even caught the attention of newspapers across the nation.

All it took was a small spark to set the United States alight.

I sense a growing movement of prayer in the United States and Canada - prayer for our nations, prayer for revival.

I want to be part of it.



Monday 20 June 2016

Chrissy's story

Jim Cymbala says that "trouble is one of God's great servants because it reminds us how much we continually need the Lord."

Cymbala, pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle Church in New York, tells of one of his greatest trials in his inspiring book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire and how persistent, united prayer pulled his oldest daughter Chrissy from the clutches of Satan.

By the time Chrissy rebelled, Cymbala had already been through some tough times which turned him, his family and his church to prayer.

Years before, he had been on the verge of burnout with a tiny congregation of less than 25 and no money when his in-laws invited him to Florida to recover.  While there, he was tearfully pouring out his desperation to God one day when he sensed the Lord telling him to pray and seek him and he would show him what to preach and provide him with all that he, his family and his church needed.

When he returned to Brooklyn, he told the congregation that the Tuesday night prayer meeting would be the "barometer of our church".  As people sought God in prayer, the Lord would move.

"No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend on our times of prayer," he said to his few listeners.

The results were indeed amazing.  People flocked to his church, becoming believers.  Many broken people were healed - some from severe drug problems.

But these blessings drove Satan to attack Cymbala's family through his daughter Chrissy.

When she turned 16, her rebellion began.  She eventually left home and her family often had no idea where she was.  She turned to drugs and lived with a boyfriend.  This went on for well over two years.

Cymbala admits he tried everything - begging, pleading, cajoling and even trying to control her with money.  He recognizes now that he was foolish in doing this.

The toll on Cymbala and his wife Carol was tremendous.

He wept as he drove to church on Sundays, wondering how he could minister to others when his whole heart was preoccupied with Chrissy.

After surgery for a hysterectomy, Carol Cymbala was particularly depressed and told her husband that they would have to leave New York to protect their other two children.  But she agreed to stay.

Even a good friend told Cymbala he should give up on Chrissy.

At this point, Cymbala felt God was telling him to do nothing further except to converse with God - in other words, he was to live what he was preaching on the power of prayer.  So he began to pray with growing faith that God would act.

Finally, at a Tuesday evening prayer gathering at Brooklyn Tabernacle, a woman in the auditorium sent Cymbala a note saying she sensed God wanted them to pray for Chrissy.

He stepped forward to the microphone and asked the congregation to pray for his daughter. People responded by praying all together - fervently - for Chrissy.  Cymbala said "there arose a groaning, a sense of desperate determination" as the people prayed to rescue the young girl from Satan.

That Thursday morning, Cymbala was shaving in the bathroom when his wife rushed in to say that Chrissy had returned home.

He hurried down to the kitchen, finding his daughter on her knees.  She begged his forgiveness and her mother's and God's.  Cymbala pulled her to her feet and they hugged and wept together.

Then, she asked her father: "On Tuesday night, Daddy - who was praying for me?"

She said that on that night God had woken her and showed her she was heading toward an abyss and there was no bottom.  She was frightened.  But "at the same time it was like God wrapped his arms around me and held me tight" and assured her he still loved her.

Chrissy went on to Bible college, married a young pastor and became very active in her own church.

Jesus promised his followers that they would face trouble.  But he also promised them he would be with them always.

Like Cymbala, we can expect trouble.

May we respond the way he ultimately did - by turning to God for help.



Sunday 12 June 2016

Renewed

A great principle of the Christian life - and prayer - is losing yourself before gaining everything in God.

If you are like me, surrendering yourself is hard.

I think of the bitter weeping of Peter after he denied Christ and the sobering conversation he had with his Lord by the Sea of Tiberias after the resurrection.

Peter loved Jesus but when the crunch came, he was afraid for his life.

Yet some weeks later, Peter stood bravely before thousands of Jewish listeners and proclaimed the good news, prepared to give his life for the Lord.

He was a witness of the power of the resurrection, the triumph of the cross.  And he was willing to give everything to tell others about this great truth.

In a sense, Peter was renewed.  He surrendered himself to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Ruth Haley Barton, author of Invitation to Solitude and Silence, says that we need to come to the end of ourselves, sacrificing our self-centredness, in order to be rejuvenated by the presence of God.

So, I ask myself am I willing to give up the praise of others, the pats on the back I get for what I do?  Am I willing to come before God and honestly admit my failures and weaknesses?  Am I prepared to confess that I am helpless - unable to walk in his footsteps - without his power?

John the Baptist said it best when his followers complained that people were following Jesus rather than him after Jesus had been baptized by John in the Jordan river.

John said in John 3:30: "He must become greater; I must become less."

The process of stripping can be hard, Barton writes.  We may become aware that our spiritual problems are not only caused by outside evil, "but also also a result of patterns of sin and brokenness that have hardened in and around our own heart".

Barton says that if we persist in turning to God during this time of stripping away our pride and self-sufficiency, "all of a sudden it becomes very quiet".

"The silence that comes after the chaos is pregnant with the presence of God."

In this silence, she says, "God grants a most powerful experience of his loving presence".

Barton, who went through this experience herself, writes that this becomes "one of the fullest experiences of the spiritual life".

"Finally, I am knowing in the depth of my experience that God is God for me and with me and in me."

For those who have taken this step, the renewal is worth the inner pain.

Monday 6 June 2016

Parables and prayer

Pondering Jesus' parables can lead to a deeper experience of God than reading a theology textbook.

That's the suggestion in Joyce Huggett's book Praying the Parables.

Huggett discovered the power of stories when she and her husband spent time in Pakistan visiting villages and sharing the gospel.

On one occasion, she and village wives squatted on a mud floor while the men sat on chairs around them as Huggett's husband talked about Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."

Rather than give a detailed academic explanation of the verse, Joyce's husband "told story after story of men who had cherished their wives and poured on them the kind of tender, liberating, unconditional, forgiving love with which Jesus loves his church".

Gradually, the women understood, smiling, nodding and giggling, as Huggett's husband said their husbands should love them as Jesus loved the church.

While these women would not have understood a Western-style sermon, "they were delightfully capable of entering theology Jesus-style," Huggett says.

She writes that we can plumb the depths of Jesus' parables in the same way, using them as a springboard for profound experiences of prayer.

Her little book explores several of Jesus' parables and various ways of praying them back to God.

For example, the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:1-9 can tell us a good deal about God and ourselves.  It speaks of a farmer sowing seed on different kinds of ground - a path, stony soil, thorny and weedy ground, and soft, nourishing earth.

What does it say about God?  Well, one way of looking at it is that God is offering the good news to everyone, no matter what is the condition of their hearts.  He is a great and loving Father who wants everyone to enter his family.

How about us?  The condition of our hearts and our readiness to open ourselves to God is vital.

That's just an off-the-top-of-the-head interpretation.  But Huggett goes well beyond that as she describes her own meditations on that one parable.

For example, she has imagined herself into the shoes of those who listened to Jesus in Palestine many centuries ago.  How would farmers and priests have responded to what he said?

What about the visual picture of tender seedlings being choked by weeds?  What does that prompt you to think and pray?

She recommends that we read the parables with a pen and notebook to record our thoughts as we meditate.  We should choose a comfortable and quiet place, recognizing that Jesus is with us.

Huggett has felt deep emotions on occasion as she reflects on the parables.  She finds they often touch her heart and lead her to pray for herself and her relations with God and other people.

Stories are about people and relationships.  God is about people and his relationship with us.

We can understand him better as we ruminate on the parables.

And the parables will drive us to prayer.