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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.