The Perpetual Preparation Of Prayer Series

Dr. R. G. Lee told of a preacher who use to open his Bible and put

his finger down, and whatever it pointed to would be his text for the

message. He told this brother that he needed more preparation for his

sermons. The proof was the message that he preached on Naaman the

leper. He put his finger on that text one day and thought it said

Naaman the leaper, and so he took off on the theme and said that when

a job needs to be done God does not need a setter or a stander, but he

needs a leaper-one who will leap to it. What God needs in our day is a

mighty host of leapers, and not crawlers or strollers, but leapers like

Naaman. On and on he went lauding the leapers.

Even though the brother had a good point, it had nothing to do with

the text, and we must agree that he needed to devote more time in

preparation. The other side of the coin is the man who spends so much

time in preparation that he gets to bogged down to do what he is

preparing for. Like the boy who got so far back to get a running jump

over the stream that by the time he got to the stream he was too tired

to jump. Someone wrote,

I completed my preparation

But, alas, I found with chagrin

I had worked so hard getting ready

That I was too tired to begin.

The beauty of God's plan of preparation for a revival is that the

preparation is itself a part of the revival. You can't overdue it and get

too humble or too prayerful. There is no way to over prepare for a

revival, for these preparations are to be perpetual. This becomes a

process by which we are continually revived. Yesterday's humility will

not keep me revived if I am proud today. Yesterday's prayer will not

make me alive to the Spirit if today I am self-centered and prayer-less.

Revival is not just a goal, it is a process, and this process is itself very

pleasing to God, and a fulfillment of His purpose in our lives.

These 4 requirements that God gives us to fulfill before He

responds with forgiveness and healing ought not to be seen as mere

stepping-stones to something better. These preparation steps are not

left behind, but they become a part of the ultimate goal of being in a

right relationship with God, and being what He wants us to be. They

are like the ABC's. They are not just preparation for reading, and so

once you learn to read you can forget them. They are a part of the

goal forever, and they become so intertwined with the goal that the

means and the goal become one. You can't ever say that once you

know how to read, you can forget the alphabet. Nor can you ever say

that once we re revived we can forget these preparations for revival.

Just as the alphabet plays a perpetual role in reading, so these

requirements are perpetual in the life of the believer.

No one but the most blind would ever think that once we are

revived we can then go back to being proud and prayer-less. These

preparations for revival are themselves the essence of revival, and so

the key to revival is revival itself. If you humble yourself, pray, seek

God's face, and turn from your sin, you are revived. These

preparations are more than mere preliminaries that we can dispense

with once we get to the main event. They are perpetual preparations

that keep the main even alive. Man's biggest failures in the history of

revival are due to his neglect of this truth that these preparations must

be perpetual.

All of these preparations are perpetual, but prayer is the one most

often emphasized. Pray without ceasing is a command. There could be

a verse that says humble yourself without ceasing, seek God's face

without ceasing, and turn from you sin without ceasing, but there isn't.

It is prayer that is uniquely stressed as the perpetual preparation.

That is why we are deceived if we think we are doing something

significant by having a prayer week. This is like having a health week

in which we take a couple of vitamins on Sunday and talk about health,

and then take another vitamin on Wednesday and say more about

health, and then wrap it up for the year. Anybody who would expect to

be healthy on the basis of such a week needs more than vitamins can

supply. Health care is perpetual. You do not just get there, for you

have to stay there and maintain it, and that is why there is no end for