No Jesus, No Change

The early Church believed that God was energizing them by his own personal presence. The Spirit was given so that individual believers, and still more the believers when joined together for corporate worship, would take up their responsibilities as God’s eyes and ears, his hands and his feet, to do what needed to be done in the world. This is why, from the very start, the early Christians looked out at the world, as Jesus had looked out upon his beloved people Israel, and had seen what God was wanting to do and say, and had prayerfully got on and done and said that themselves. That is what ‘mission’ is all about.

Dr. Helen Roseveare, missionary to Zaire, told the following story. “A mother at our mission station died after giving birth to a premature baby. We tried to improvise an incubator to keep the infant alive, but the only hot water bottle we had was beyond repair. So we asked the children to pray for the baby and for her sister. One of the girls responded. ‘Dear God, please send a hot water bottle today. Tomorrow will be too late because by then the baby will be dead. And dear Lord, send a doll for the sister so she won’t feel so lonely.’ That afternoon a large package arrived from England. The children watched eagerly as we opened it. Much to their surprise, under some clothing was a hot water bottle! Immediately the girl who had prayed so earnestly started to dig deeper, exclaiming, ‘If God sent that, I’m sure He also sent a doll!’ And she was right! The heavenly Father knew in advance of that child’s sincere requests, and 5 months earlier He had led a ladies’ group to include both of those specific articles.”

There is a great burden for those who are lost and bound and yet there should be a great burden for men and women of prayer. Today while on earth Christian men and women have become less prayerful and more religious. Less potent in believing God yet waiting on God for the things He knows we need yet never petitioning Him for it in prayer, we need men and women of prayer. We need not to become prayer-less Christians, our world today has become a religious world and have brought these conditions into the Christian church and now we have good deeds take the place of powerful prayer. We have those that give with a clynical pride think that because they have given financially that prayer is an extra curriculum activity, not necessary but beloved prayer along with your giving will go a long way as oppose to just giving, whether it is your time, your finances or any resource, prayer should be the Christians way of breathing.

Beloved prayer is a potent thing, we must remember that even if difficulties stand in the way we must pray. We have many avenues of prayer, we have corporate prayer, this is the praying of the people of God together. Beloved if we are going to pray successfully in our corporate prayer meetings, we must pray in harmony with the will of God and I harmony with eh work He has set for us to do. We must have an aim in our prayers and not just meet and scatter our prayers. Think with me what the needs are, Families that need salvation, Friends that we know are going to hell without Jesus, neighbors and co-workers and so much more, people we haven’t even seen yet, we need God to move in our prayers.

We daily deal with people in the secular world in a business manner whether it is job, transactional or personal beloved there is a great need for us as everyday businessmen and women to infuse our mundane affairs with the spirit of prayer. Sometimes we seem to forget that there is a great army of successful merchants that belong to the body of Christ and it is high time that we as the body as well attend this matter. We have over three thousand churches that are going to participate in this time of prayer and fasting, over three thousand. We need to put God into business, the realization and restraint of His presence and of His fear in all the secularities of life. We need the atmosphere of our prayer closet to spread through our entire public affairs. The sanctity of prayer is needed to impregnate not only our business but just as much His business. We need the spirit of Sunday to carry over to Monday all the way to next Sunday.

Men are badly needed who are devoid of greed, but who, with all their hearts, carrying God with them into the secular affairs of life. The world looks at prayer as impotent towards the affairs of life. Against such a misleading doctrine, Paul the Apostle sets the whole commands of God, loyalty to Jesus Christ claims of pious character, and the demands of salvation of the world. Men and women of God must pray and put all their strength and heart into their praying.