The significance of praying together

Imagine your country being threatened with invasion by foreign powers:  Would your president or prime minister call a national prayer meeting to plead with God?

Probably not.  Even Christian leaders these days are unlikely to make group prayer to God a priority.

But King Jehoshaphat of Judah did exactly that when faced with an invading force of Moabites, Ammonites and Meunites. 

I believe we can learn from the steps Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah took when confronted by this powerful threat.

Jehoshaphat believed in God and turned to him first before taking any action.

In 2 Chronicles 20, we read that Jehoshaphat proclaimed a national fast and called a prayer meeting.

"The people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord; indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him."

Clearly, the fear of invasion galvanized the people.  At the same time, they obviously believed that God could do something.

Do we believers consult God before we take action?  Do we seek our commander's orders before going into battle in our everyday lives?  Do we join together in the face of adversity?

Jehoshaphat opened the prayer meeting by laying out the problem clearly before the Lord and declared his confidence that God "will hear us and save us".  He was placing his entire trust in God.

His prayer concluded with these words: "We have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us.  We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you."

Do we as believers try to do everything on our own strength?  Or do we, like the apostle Paul, admit that we are weak and depend on the strength of God (2 Corinthians 12:10)? God works best when we allow him to lead us and work through us.

After Jehoshaphat's prayer, Jehaziel, a Levite, is moved by the Holy Spirit to deliver a message to his king and the people of Judah.  He tells them that God has informed him that they are not to fear the enemy because "the battle is not yours, but God's".  He even says the Lord declares they will not even have to fight their enemies - the Lord will take care of them.

For me, this is one of the great blessings of group prayer.  As we pray together, God moves in our hearts and solutions to problems emerge simply as we pray.  One person's prayer sparks a response in another individual's and suddenly we see an answer emerging.  It is the Holy Spirit at work.

As a result of the prayer meeting, the people of Judah go out to meet their enemies, praising the Lord.  They do not have to raise a finger in anger - God causes the enemies to fight among themselves.  They win a victory without striking a blow.

We North Americans are so used to using our minds and our hands in practical ways that we have forgotten the value of coming together in prayer.

But the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

If that is true - and I believe it is - we should pray first before acting.  What we see around us is not the most important thing - what is happening behind the scenes in the heavenly realms is far more important.

We don't need a war to spur us to pray.  Satan is behind evil and is always active.

We need to pray together - united - all the time.

Prayer and outreach

Some years ago, a friend told me that he had no time for prayer - he was busy reaching out to others with the good news of Jesus Christ.

John Bisagno and Peter Golin believe that prayer is essential in effective evangelism.

"Prayer is not just an optional part of evangelism, but must be an essential part of every aspect of our evangelistic efforts," says Golin, a British Columbia medical doctor, in his book Living the Gospel.

"Is there any connection between prayer and evangelism?" asks Bisagno in his book The Power of Positive Praying.  "A ten-day prayer meeting in the Upper Room nailed that at Pentecost."

Bisagno was talking about the prayer gathering of the followers of Christ after his ascension to heaven and the outpouring of the Spirit upon them at Pentecost when they preached to crowds and 3,000 of them became believers.

Bisagno has personal experience to back up his view that prayer is a vital part of outreach to people who do not know Jesus.

Before preaching at evangelistic crusades, he tried to spend one or two hours in prayer every afternoon before the evening event.  He saw a direct relationship between the amount of time he spent in prayer and the number of people who accepted Christ in the evening.

Before his first crusade in Belfast, Ireland, 80 people prayed all night and 360 people gave their lives to the Lord the following day.  Similar prayer sessions at other great rallies led to similar results.

Billy Graham, the greatest evangelist of the 20th century, has said that prayer before his crusades was key to the large numbers of people who poured down to the stadium floor to receive Jesus.

Why is that?  Because we do not save people - God does. 

The Spirit of God works in the hearts of people to bring them to himself.  And we are co-labourers with the Lord as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:9.  It is our task to be instruments of God's love and to talk about Jesus as the Lord provides opportunities through prayer.

Golin says prayer should surround every aspect of our relationship with others.  Here are some of his suggestions for daily prayer:

• Pray that we will love Jesus more and have increased compassion for others;
• Pray for opportunities to talk about Jesus every day;
• Pray that the Lord will open the hearts of non-believing friends to Christ;
• Pray that we will understand, learn and present the gospel clearly;
• Pray that we will put aside our pride and be vulnerable as a witness of our faith to others;
• Ask the Lord to give us humility, gentleness, patience, honesty and respect as we share our faith in Christ;
• Ask that God will take our eyes off ourselves and direct them to him as we share the gospel; and
• Ask for courage to turn the conversation to the Lord.

I realize I can't do anything without God. 

But God will work in every situation as I pray.

Stay alert

 Keep alert and watchful in prayer, says Watchman Nee.

Nee, a great Chinese Christian who died in a Communist Chinese prison camp, says Satan attacks prayer more than anything else in the Christian life - trying to distract believers from this great work on behalf of God's kingdom.

In A Balanced Life, Nee outlines Satan's tactics in fighting prayer and suggests how we can thwart his efforts. 

He bases his comments on the apostle Paul's words in Ephesians 6:18: "Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion.  Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere."

He touches on five areas where we need to be watchful and active:

• The time of prayer: Satan tries to discourage us from prayer, dropping into our minds a desire to sleep or put off prayer for whatever reason.  We must respond by guarding a regular time of prayer.  In fact, we must pray that God will protect that prayer time;
• Use of our prayer time:  Often our thoughts "begin to wander and become confused" during our prayer times or we become drowsy.  So, before we pray, we should ask God to enable us to pray without being hindered or sleepy, and to help us pray with "spirit and concentration";
• The wording of our prayers:  Satan is quite happy when we pray in a scattergun fashion, failing to hit the mark on the issue we are praying about.  Nee says we should keep our focus on what we are really asking God to do and not get distracted by other things;
• Thorough prayer: Sometimes, prayer warriors too easily take one shot at the prayer problem when they should cover all eventualities.  An effective praying person "will use all kinds of prayers to surround as with a net the thing he prays for so that the adversary can do nothing"; and
• Follow-up prayer: Satan will try to undermine our prayers for others by changing his methods.  We need to be watchful, noting any change in the person we are praying for or in the problem we are praying about.  If we notice a change, we should adjust our prayers to deal with that change.

Nee's words carry authority because he practiced what he preached.

Satan may have thought he silenced this great Christian in a Chinese prison in the 1950s.

Instead, Nee's words about his Saviour and the Christian life have spread throughout the world.

May we pray with the same passion and precision and power.

Praying the Lord's Prayer

Elmer Towns says our prayer lives can be transformed once we start using the Lord's Prayer as the springboard for our conversations with God.

Towns, author of Praying the Lord's Prayer for Spiritual Breakthrough, prays the model prayer provided by Jesus throughout the day, beginning the moment he opens his eyes in the morning.  He uses the prayer as a guide for his personal worship of the Lord, in confession, in prayer for his needs and the needs of others.

"I wrote this book to change your life," says Towns.

It was Dr. Yonggi Cho, pastor of the world's largest church in Seoul, Korea, who first gave Towns the idea in 1978.  Towns had asked Cho, whose church features prayer, how to be more effective in prayer.

Cho replied that he prayed the Lord's Prayer several times a day.

"When I say the Lord's Prayer touches every type of petition, I mean you will worship, ask for guidance, yield to God, ask for petitions, ask for forgiveness, seek victory over sin and end up in spiritual warfare in which you ask for protection from the evil one," Cho says in his forward to Towns' book.

While Cho uses the prayer as a guide, he does not stop there.  He continues in intense prayer for a couple of hours a day, interceding for many things.

Many of us learned the Lord's Prayer when we were very young.  The prayer, given by Jesus as a model to his followers in Matthew 6:9-13, has been a staple of the Christian church for many centuries.

It is so familiar that it is tempting to rhyme it off by rote without thinking.

However, Towns treats it differently.  He lets his mind dwell on each aspect of the prayer.  And he applies it to his daily activities and the people he will meet.

For instance, the words "our Father" prompt him to think about God who loves him like a father loves his child.  The word "our" reminds him that Jesus is with him as an intercessor as he approaches God.

The opening phrases in the prayer lend themselves to worshiping God and giving him glory.  Sometimes, Towns will react by singing in gratitude to the Lord.

The opening of the Lord's Prayer helps us "begin by focusing on God and his agenda," he says.

Towns takes just a minute to pray the Lord's Prayer when he's climbing out of bed in the morning.  That's enough time to think about each phrase as he prays.

He uses the prayer as template during the time he sets aside for his daily devotions.  And he prays the prayer at other times when he has a moment or two during the day.

"You can pray the Lord's Prayer as you drive the expressway or as you ride to or from work on an elevated train," he says.  And he adds that it's better to spend a minute with God in prayer than dreaming of a period of hours in prayer and doing nothing.

"Do not give a speech to God.  Do not just read words from a book.  Tell God what each of the seven petitions (aspects of the Lord's Prayer) means to you, and what you want him to do for you."

Towns says we will find real benefits to praying in this way:

• We will glorify God and be rewarded with his presence in our worship;
• We will live with godly principles, bringing his principles into our lives;
• We will receive God's guidance in our situation as we pray for his will to be done;
• We will receive more answers as we pray correctly with all our heart;
• We will feel clean as we ask for his forgiveness for our misdeeds;
• We will obtain victory as we ask God to keep us from situations that would destroy us; and
• We will receive protection as we pray "deliver us from the evil one".

This strikes me as a good way to keep my mind dialled into God and how he wants me to pray.