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.

Adoring God

Israel's King David, a man of action who built a powerful kingdom, said at one time that all he wanted to do in life was to "gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple".

His statement in Psalm 27:4 underlines the importance of just spending time with God in quiet contemplation.

Dick Eastman, author of The Hour that Changes the World, calls this "waiting prayer" - the "silent surrendering of the soul to God".

The idea here is for us as praying people to come before God without a personal agenda but simply to enjoy him and the fact he is with us.

"Waiting is a time of silent love," writes Eastman.  "Praise cries boldly: 'God, I see these excellent qualities in your nature.'  Waiting says softly, 'God, I love you.'"

Richard Foster calls this "the prayer of rest" in his book Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home.  

Paradoxically, resting or waiting in adoration before God takes effort.  Like many pray-ers, my mind is full of requests - some of them urgent - when I pray. 

But Foster and other writers say I must consciously settle down and remove all distractions while I rest before God in loving contemplation.

The benefits are a growing intimacy with our Lord.

O. Hallesby, a Norwegian who wrote a wonderful book on prayer decades ago, uses a personal story to illustrate this approach to God.

His young son knew he was not to disturb his father while he worked in his study.  One day, he entered the study tentatively - looking somewhat guilty - and pleaded: "Papa, dear, I will sit still all the time if you will only let me be here with you."

"Being alone with God is the central issue of waiting," says Eastman.  "Genuine prayer is not merely asking for things; it is a relationship."

Eastman recommends spending time in the prayer of waiting or rest before plunging into our requests.  In fact, we are not even to look for God's answers to our needs while we wait silently before him.

The writer of Psalm 46 states this simply in verse 10: "Be still and know that I am God."

Job's understanding of God was transformed when the Lord confronted him on his complaints about the catastrophes that struck him and his family. God revealed himself and his power to Job.

Job answered a series of profound questions from God with these words in Job 42:5:

"I had only heard about you before but now I have seen you with my own eyes."

Getting to know God better will change us, too.

Is God good?

Is God good?  Silly question, isn’t it?

And yet we believers often pray as if we doubt that he cares.

That’s especially true if things are going badly in our lives.  Perhaps we’re suffering a serious illness or a spouse has left us and God doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers the way we wish.

Still, the apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8:28 that God works everything for the good of those who love the Lord.

Is that true?  What about the child who is killed by a drunken driver?  Shouldn’t God have prevented that?

Well, Paul didn’t say that lightly.  He was familiar with suffering and death.  He was left for dead after a stoning and was whipped to an inch of his life.  He was imprisoned several times.

Amazingly, Paul said in Philippians 4:11 that “I have learned to be content with whatever I have”.  I confess that I have grumbled about my lot periodically over the years.

I believe our prayers depend a great deal on how we view God.  If we believe he doesn’t care at all, we may never pray.

Why did Paul pray with such power and hope?

He tells us in Philippians 3:12-14 that he is running the race of faith to “receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us”.

His eyes are on Jesus and his future with God in heaven.

“For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better,” says Paul in Philippians 1:21.  Dying meant he would be with Jesus, his loving Lord.

In his book Power in Praise, Merlin Carothers tells the story of a young man named Charles who became a radiant Christian but fell victim to cancer just six months later.  Healing prayer led to remission.  A few months later he died suddenly from brain cancer.

A pastor friend was on the plane to speak at Charles’ funeral and shared with people on the way where he was going and why.  He told them about Charles’ powerful faith and two of his listeners became believers.  Another two accepted Christ after the service.

His young wife radiated Christ at the funeral and remarked to the pastor that “death is swallowed up in victory” - quoting the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:54.

I’m not saying that pain and suffering is easy to bear.  It isn’t.  I hate pain.

But pain and disappointment in life should not change our view of God.  He loves us and cares for us and has a wonderful future for us with him in eternity.

He is a good God.

Warrior spirit

Believers are in the midst of a no-holds-barred war, armed with an overpowering but invisible weapon - the Spirit of God.

Through prayer, we can call upon the Spirit to defeat the dark powers that surround us.  But, so often, we feel we are alone and vulnerable.

So, speaking personally, it is easy for me to get discouraged.  It is tempting to just go with the flow and avoid the spiritual combat.

I see the prophet Elijah as an example of a true warrior spirit.  He fought his king and many of his fellow Israelites who had given themselves over to satanic idol-worship.  He did it through boldly standing publicly by the Lord and constantly listening to God and obeying.

It is comforting to know that Elijah, too, sometimes felt alone and exhausted.  He even fled Queen Jezebel even though God had delivered an amazing victory over the idol-worshiping priests.  He complained to God and asked the Lord to end his life, but he never wavered in his faith.

His story in 1 Kings 17-19 reveals a man who was ready to do whatever God asked him to do.  And he was a man who held to the truth no matter how dangerous the situation.

God honoured his trust and prayers by demonstrating his power in imposing a three-year-drought on the country as a judgement against King Ahab’s idol-worship and persecution of those believing in God.  And three years later he provided rain again at Elijah’s request.

The Lord also worked other miracles as a result of Elijah’s prayers - providing food to a widow who helped Elijah through the drought; raising the widow’s son from the dead; and the great victory over the idol-worshiping prophets on Mount Carmel.

So, how should we approach the battle against Satan and his evil work in our world?

Wesley Duewel, author of Mighty Prevailing Prayer, says:

• We must accept we are warriors for Christ: God expects us to demolish Satan’s arguments and invade his territory with spiritual weapons - God’s word and prayer;
• We are to stand against the Devil - not retreat:  The apostle Paul outlines in Ephesians 6 the spiritual weapons we are to use against the evil one.  We are promised that Satan will retreat when we invoke Jesus; 
• We should pray from a position of victory:  Jesus has won the victory over Satan and we are to enforce his victory through proclaiming God’s word and through prayer in the world we live in; and
• We are to plan and take the offensive: We are to target Satan where he is active in our lives, in the lives of our families and our neighbourhoods, and in our broader world with faith and prayer.

To do that, we must first overcome fear.  And we can do that only if we are willing to take the risk of faith in God and what he wants in our lives.

I am only taking some baby steps in this area.  

But I am sure warrior spirits like Elijah had to begin somewhere.

Arguing with God

Arguing with God seems wrong - it seems disrespectful.

But Abraham did it.  And Moses.  And other great men and women of the Bible.

In fact, God wants us to plead our case before him. 

“Presenting your case and detailing your arguments not only pleases God,” says Wesley Duewel, “it helps you understand the need more completely, moves your compassion, strengthens your determination, and arms you with greater holy hunger.”

But there is a catch: We must come before God with clean hearts and seeking his glory and his will.  The Holy Spirit and the Word of God can show us what God wants.

James Goll in his book The Lost Art of Intercession says that “as intercessors of the Lamb, we serve as assistant advocates of the kingdom (of God), charged with defending the King’s people and prosecuting the King’s enemies in the spirit realm”.

In other words, we come before God the Father to argue our case through Jesus who is always interceding for us.

Abraham came before God to ask for mercy on Sodom and Gomorrah and the Lord agreed to do so if there were 10 righteous people in these dark places. Unfortunately, there were not; but the incident shows that God listened and was prepared to act if the right conditions were met.

Moses told God he did not want the children of Israel to go any further unless God was with them.  He argued on the grounds of God’s glory.  And the Lord acquiesced to Moses’ request.

In his book Mighty Prevailing Prayer, Duewel suggests we should prepare our case carefully, listing several different steps:

• Plead the honour and glory of God: God’s name “is at stake in most needs”;
• Plead God’s relationship to you: You have the right to plead because he is your redeemer and you are his child;
• Plead God’s attributes: For example, ask God to act because of his righteousness and mercy and love;
• Plead the sorrows and needs of the people: Nehemiah and Daniel intervened on behalf of their suffering people, asking God to act on their behalf;
• Plead past answers to prayers: Remind God of what he has done in the past in your circumstances or for your nation and that the task is unfinished;
• Plead the Word and the promises of God: Quote to God his promises in the Bible; and
• Plead the blood of Jesus: We have no merit of our own - but we come before the Father on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice for us.

This helps focus my mind as I pray for others.

But, more important, it helps bring me in line with what God wants to do in the lives of the people I am praying for.