Moving from Duty to Priority
You
can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray
until you have prayed. --John Bunyan
First
of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers,
petitions and thanksgivings, be
made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order
that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This
is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the
truth (1 Tim. 2:1-4; emphasis
added).
Notice the phrase “first
of all.” It is doubtful that
Paul is making a superficial point like "always have the prayer part first
when you have a church service." Rather, he is getting at the primary
importance of prayer in the mission of the church. David Bryant echoes this
point with conviction:
Prayer is not
the only thing we do, but it is the first
thing we must do if anything else worthwhile is to follow. It leads to
strategic involvement.… By its nature, prayer feeds a new work of God before
that effort becomes visible, as a baby is fed in the womb for months before
it is pushed out.
In a powerful
statement, Sanders says, “Paul did not regard prayer as supplemental, but fundamental-not
something to be added to his work, but the very matrix out of which his work was
born. He was a man of action because
he was a man of prayer.”
Perhaps we have underestimated the role of prayer both in
ministry and in our own personal spiritual growth. The ironic thing is that we
often feel we are too busy to pray.
This attitude reflects what we deem useful and important.
If we are too busy to pray, then we must believe that prayer does not impact
the world as much as our frenzied activity. I suppose we would have time to pray
if we thought it was a primary ingredient in shaping of lives. Thus, I am
suggesting that it is not a denial of the importance of prayer that hurts us,
but the lack of a practical prioritized
emphasis that prayer receives in the average Christian’s life. Are those
in positions of leadership in the church stressing and modeling a proper
emphasis on prayer? Often the last
place we look to explain problems in our service to others is prayer. In Walking in Victory Dennis McCallum addresses this problem:
A ministry weak in
prayer will tend to be overly strong on human effort. What we cannot accomplish
via the power of God, we will try to supply
through our own power. As we lose faith in the effectiveness of the
prayer, we will succumb to the temptation to use force and compulsion on people
in an effort to bend them to our will.
Of course, when this occurs, rather than promoting loyal discipleship to Jesus Christ in
the church we end up creating mindless activism and “group-think.” People
become more loyal to personalities and structures than to the Lord. They fear
the disapproval of those personalities, and therefore rarely think “outside
the box.” Alister McGrath is concerned about what he calls the “curse of the
evangelical personality cult.” He writes:
Trust in God can easily become muddled with
trusting someone who claims to speak, with authority on his behalf. There seems
to be something in fallen and sinful human nature that wants to trust people who
speak with confidence and boldness. Their firm, disciplined and confident voice
seems to matter more than the credibility of what is being said.
What is even more subtle in the gradual erosion of our
prayer life is the fact that it is often due to the attention we give not to wasteful, but noble, goals:
Naturally, in striving for a time to pray, there
will be arguments concerning our mission, duty, and responsibility. Some people
will consider such devotion to prayer as neglecting our mission, forsaking our
duty, and impairing our responsibility… The enemy will use such matters as
duty and mission to create his best arguments for stopping our prayer.
A survey of the life of Christ and Paul reveals the high
priority they gave to prayer and modeling how to pray. Mark mentions a common
occurrence in Jesus’ life: "And in the early morning, while it was still
dark, He arose and went out and departed to a lonely place, and was praying
there" (Mark 1:35). Luke
tracks the prayer life of Jesus as well. He notes Jesus’ persistence in prayer
before choosing the twelve as His disciples:
"And it was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray,
and He spent the whole night in prayer to God " (Luke 6:12).
Paul taught, as well as modeled the importance of
persevering prayer, as these passages illustrate:
Rejoice
always; pray without ceasing; in everything
give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thess.
5:16-18).
With all
prayer and petition pray at all
times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints (Eph. 6:18).
For this reason also, since the day we heard of
it, we have not ceased to pray for you (Col. 1:9)
We night
and day keep praying most earnestly that we may see your face, and may
complete what is lacking in your faith (1 Thess. 3:10).
I thank God, whom I serve with a clear
conscience the way my forefathers did, as I constantly
remember you in my prayers night and day
(2 Tim. 1:3).
What amazing statements! How clear the priority of prayer
is showing! For Paul it is clear that Christian work extended well beyond the
time when he was with people talking to them about God. He also constantly talked to God about them.
Probably more time was spent on the latter, since most of his disciples
were in other cities. It’s natural to think that our talking to others
about God weighs more heavily. But what is natural is often not spiritual.
Watchman Nee comments about the attention given to prayer relative to other
things:
Prayer is a kind of service. It ought to be placed in a preeminent
position. Satan always maneuvers to put other things concerning the Lord
before prayer and to place prayer at the very last. However much people are
reminded of the importance of prayer, not many really appreciate it. People
are usually enthusiastic in attending meetings for ministry, Bible study, and
so forth. But when it comes to the prayer meeting, the attendance is
surprisingly minimal…
Faced with a pile of problems, we may say with our lips that only
prayer can solve them, yet we talk more than pray, worry more than pray, and
scheme more than pray. In sum, we put everything before prayer; other things
are placed in prominent positions while prayer is relegated to last place; it
is the only thing which is not so important.
How we need the Lord to enlighten our eyes that we may comprehend
afresh the importance of prayer and know anew its value. Furthermore, we must
recognize that had Satan not deceived us we would not be neglecting prayer so
much. We should therefore watch and discover therein all the various wiles of
Satan. We will not allow him to delude us any more in relaxing in prayer.
This rings true in my experience. We react to the urgent,
we put off the important.
WHY PRAYER IS
SO IMPORTANT
Prayer integrates the major areas of the Christian life. It
is the place where truth is apprehended and appropriated, power for service is
found, hardness of heart is exposed, and direction for ministry begins.
It is amazing how many issues are simultaneously addressed when we talk
about prayer. The subject of prayer, although usually thought of as one
of many Christian tasks, actually touches everything we do, and stands as
part of the answer to all the major problems facing the church today. In other
words, prayer must not be marginalized to the sphere of the
"devotional." This notion reflects the fragmentation of our times,
where a radical split exists between the objective and the subjective, between
reason and faith.
PRAYER AND THE
ISSUES OF THE DAY
Prayer engages the important
issues the American church faces. Today, many thinkers are claiming that the problem of human subjectivity renders any grasp of ultimate
truth impossible. As Christians who accept the divine authority of the Bible, we
know the subjectivity barrier is vastly overstated. However, unless we are going
to rest our claim on superior rationality, I'll suggest that prayerful mediation
of the word of God, done honestly, substantially
aids the Christian in transcending pure subjectivity. In other words, we
have more than the word of God and our minds-- we have access to God's
illumination of his word through prayer. Even though we cannot attain pure
objectivity, we can have our bias
and subjectivity exposed.
Many today are
yearning for spiritual experience.
This desire is good and should not be discouraged. David, for example,
"panted" for God in Psalm 42, yet he was not simply seeking a
“spiritual buzz.” His prayer
wrestles against feelings and deceptions to achieve some measure of resolution
with God’s love and truth. However,
developing a consistent prayer life is much harder than being served a platter
of experience by a group. Many are seeking a shortcut to, or perhaps a
counterfeit of biblical spiritual
experience. Pursuing a more biblical approach to prayer would yield the kind of
spiritual experience we need, even if it doesn’t always deliver short-term
excitement.
Several areas where prayer has traditionally had a very
important role are being absorbed into the domain of psychology. To suggest
prayer as a part of a cure to emotional problems is seen by some as completely
uneducated and naive. For example, consider the problem of those who have a
rigid desire for control.
This problem is not merely sociological. It is also a spiritual problem.
In prayer we are confronted with
someone whom we are not able to put in a box. We are
not able to anticipate all that he is going to do. God surprises us and
challenges our rigidity. He has the upper hand, and the controller needs God to
show this to him personally.
Counselors also observe people who lack
an “inner locus of
control.” These are
people that are led by circumstances, whims and opportunities for
stimulation, money, or human approval. In other words they are controlled by
factors on the outside--they are
simply reactive in their lifestyle.
Few, if any, internalized principles or convictions guide them. We need
to teach one another how to build a relationship with God. What sometimes
happens is that the local church becomes a locus of control when people have not
internalized the truth.
Teaching people how to pray is a key way to help them with
paralyzing guilt problems.
Imparting an understanding of God's grace is more than a sociological
thing. It is more than simply being sensitive.
People need to work through
guilt feelings before
God, not just the counselor or community. While it is good that we forgive and love a guilt-plagued
individual, that person needs to know God's love and appropriate his grace
firsthand by learning to pray more effectively.
PRAYER IN THE OVERALL CONTEXT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
In order to have a balanced and deeper understanding of
prayer, we need to look at it in the overall context of the Christian life. We
can generalize Christian spirituality into the following four aspects:
doctrinal-Bible knowledge, the
mental transformation; social-loving
others, people orientation; ethical-dealing
with our sins, building character; and experiential-our
love relationship with God, guidance and empowering of the Spirit.
Prayer touches all four of these areas.
We pray to understand God's truth, and
we understand the truth so we can pray better.
Prayer not based on biblical doctrine would be ineffective, since God
answers prayer that is according to His will (1 Jn.5:14). Through prayer we seek
God's wisdom as he illuminates the Scriptures.
Prayer also involves the ethical
dimension. During prayer God will
at times point out a moral deficiency in our lives (Ps. 139:23,24). When we have
known unrepentant sin in our lives, our spiritual lives begin to grind to a halt
(1 Pet. 3:7; 1 Jn. 2:9-11). Increasingly, self-knowledge should result as we
cooperate with God. However, God
does not merely expose our sin through
prayer, he also enables us to put on the new self. As our moral strength and vision increase, we will know more
clearly what to pray for,
as well as possess the fortitude to persevere. Therefore, we pray for
character change, and character change improves our prayer life.
Since much of prayer is asking God to work in the lives of
others, it involves the social
dimension. A self-focus, therefore, hinders
prayer because to engage in intercession, we must have a passion or burden for
people. At the same time, without prayer, this passion will wane.
Genuine, sacrificial ministry will burn out a person who does not pray
regularly for the strength to endure. Praying
with others also enhances the social
dimension.
The experiential
aspect of spirituality can be sensed in both corporate and personal prayer, but
is not felt to the same degree at all times. Spiritual experience is not
necessarily emotionally powerful or ecstatic.
Sometimes it is downright painful. Experiencing the Spirit’s conviction
of sin or His personal discipline are both temporarily sorrowful (Heb.12:11). Paul speaks of times where he experiences the
comfort of God in the midst of affliction,
not instead of affliction (2 Cor. 1:3,4). He also describes himself at times as
being "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing" (2 Cor. 6:10). While
experience is never a basis for
spirituality, confirming and comforting experiences will often
accompany biblical
spirituality. Prayer is the arena where God is able to grant certain spiritual
experiences as he determines that we
need them.
God is always working to teach us truth, transform our
character, and equip us to love. All three of these processes are experienced in
a personal way, involving both
positive and negative emotions. Sometimes they are experienced with no
particular emotion. The point is not so much what we have felt, but that we have
understood truth, or grown in character, or extended ourselves in love.
THE CONNECTION WITH
GOD’S WORK
A person with a strong and fervent prayer life is an
instrument God can use in his work. The authenticity of a prayer life is borne
out by the passion to love others that flows from it. Many times I have lost my
steam to continue working hard in the Lord’s harvest because I have worked
from the wrong incentive—usually the reward of accomplishment or significance.
Yet, as great as this feels and as proper as this is, the reward is not always there. In John Stott’s book The
Contemporary Christian, he speaks of the relationship between love for God
and love for the work of God. He refers to the exaltation of Christ as the
“Incentive for Mission”:
Motivation is a very important aspect of every human enterprise. We need
to know not only what we should be
doing, but why we should be doing
it. When our motives are sound and strong, we can persist in any task almost
indefinitely… To seek to win people for Christ is hard work and unpopular,
and often provokes active opposition. The church will need powerful
incentives, therefore, if it is to persevere.
The primary motive for mission is neither obedience to the Great
Commission nor even love for those who are oppressed, lonely, and perishing,
important as both these incentive are, but rather zeal or
‘jealousy’ for the glory of Christ. It was ‘for His name’s sake’
(Rom. 1:5; 3 Jn. 7), in order
that it might receive the honor which it deserved, that the first missionaries
went out. The same passionate longing should motivate us.
It is this zeal for Christ which integrates the worship and witness of the
church. How can we worship Christ and not mind that others do not? It is our
worship which impels us to witness to Christ, in order that others may come
and worship Him too.
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