Blood, Sweat, and Prayers
Luke 19:46 NIV
46 "It is written," he said to them, "’My house will be a house of prayer’
A lack of prayer will results in self-inflicted injuries.
1. We fail to pray and find ourselves at the End of One’s Rope
A number of elaborate devices designed have been invented to give a horse freedom to graze, but not to run away. Intricate hobbles and tethers seldom proved more effective than a length of rope, however.
With one end of a rope fastened to the bridle and the other to a post, a rider could rest while his mount filled its stomach. Many an animal moved to the end of the rope, then strained to eat grass barely within reach.
Like a tethered horse, a human who has exhausted all there own resources, is at the end of his or her rope.
2. The best way to halt your spiritual life, is to stop praying & pull the plug
If financiers or authorities “pull the plug” on a project, there is a good chance it will go down the drain. Still, this way of expressing the idea of bringing something to an end is not indebted to round rubber plugs used in old-fashioned bathtubs.
Rather, it was the pulling of an electrical plug from an outlet that gave rise to the phrase.
Borrowing from everyday experience, early in the electrical age it became common to express the idea of termination by using the phrase spawned by bringing early appliances and machines to a halt.
Just stop praying and see what happens,
A. PRAYER IS NEEDED TO CHANGE US.
THE LATE DR. DONALD BARNHOUSE, greatly admired American pastor and author, once came to the pulpit and made a statement that stunned his congregation: “Prayer changes nothing!” You could have heard a pin drop in that packed Sunday worship service in Philadelphia. His comment, of course, was designed to make Christians realize that God is sovereignly in charge of everything. Our times are literally in His hands. No puny human being by uttering a few words in prayer takes charge of events and changes them. God does the shaping, the changing; it is He who is in control. Barnhouse was correct, except in some minor details.
Prayer changes me. When you and I pray, we change.
B. GOD SEEKS OUR PRAYERS FOR OUR BENEFIT
2 Chron 7:14 (NLT)
Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven . . .
1 Peter 3:12 NLT
The eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right, and his ears are open to their prayers.
C. CONFESSING TO GOD RELEASE’S HIS RENEWING.
FRANÇOIS FÉNELON, a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Frenchman, said this about prayer:
Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and others.
If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed.
D. WE ARE A HOUSE OF PRAYER
Isa 56:7 NIV
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.
[Even them will I bring to my holy mountain] (See Isa 2:3). That is, they should be admitted to the fellowship and privileges of his people.
[And make them joyful] In the participation of the privileges of the true religion, and in the service of God, they shall be made happy.
[In my house of prayer] In the temple-here called the house of prayer. The language here is all derived from the worship of the Jews, though the meaning evidently is, that under the new dispensation, all nations would be admitted to the privileges of his people, and that the appropriate services of religion which they would offer would be acceptable to God.
PRAYER STRATEGY’S
A. Prayer must be a priority
When You Don’t Feel Like Praying
It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business in the morning and the last in the evening. Guard yourself against such false and deceitful thoughts that keep whispering: Wait a while. In an hour or so I will pray. I must first finish this or that. Thinking such thoughts we get away from prayer into other things that will hold us and involve us till the prayer of the day comes to naught.
—Martin Luther
B. "TRUE PRAYER IS A WAY OF LIFE NOT JUST A CASE OF EMERGENCY."
The great baseball catcher Yogi Berra was involved in a ball game in which the score was tied, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. The batter from the opposing team stepped up to the batting box and made the sign of the cross on home plate with his bat. Berra was a Catholic, too, but he wiped off the plate with his glove and said to the pious batter, "Why don’t we let God just watch this game?"
That is good theology when applied to the outcome of a baseball game. It’s terrible when applied to the way we live our lives and carry out the work of God.
Worse than that, it is fatal. God is merely in attendance at the game, our prayers are merely ceremonial functions: tips of the hats, verbal recognition over the loudspeaker between innings, or requests to throw out the game ball. Prayer is always getting nudged aside, neglected or perfunctorily performed. Many of us feel we just have too much to do to have time to pray.
C. "IF PRAYER DOES NOT DRIVE SIN OUT OF YOUR LIFE, SIN WILL DRIVE PRAYER OUT.
Ps 66:18-19 NIV
18 If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened;
19 but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer.
In his book Why Prayers Are Unanswered, John Lavender retells a story about Norman Vincent Peale.
When Peale was a boy, he found a big, black cigar, slipped into an alley, and lit up. It didn’t taste good, but it made him feel very grown up ... until he saw his father coming. Quickly he put the cigar behind his back and tried to be casual.
Desperate to divert his father’s attention, Norman pointed to a billboard advertising the circus. "Can I go, Dad? Please, let’s go when it comes to town." His father’s reply taught Norman a lesson he never forgot. "Son," he answered quietly but firmly, "never make a petition while at the same time trying to hide a smoldering disobedience."
D. THE WARFARE IS FOUGHT IN YOUR MIND
2 Cor 10:4-5 NIV
4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
WHAT TO PUT IN YOUR MIND
1 Thess 5:16-18 NIV
16 Be joyful always; 17 pray continually; 18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Ps 1:2 NIV
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
E. REMIND GOD OF HIS PROMISES
Isa 55:10-11 NIV
10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Isa 62:6-7 NIV
6 I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, 7 and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.
F. FOCUS ON GOD’S ASSURANCES AND PROMISES
The Prayer of Faith
I once spent the night in a crumbling hotel in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A friend and I ascended to our room, high in the building, in a tiny, creaking elevator. From our window I saw slums spreading out far beneath me, and I felt uneasy. That evening I prayed, “Lord, please save me from any danger of fire. You can see we’re at the top of a dilapidated hotel, which is nothing but a firetrap. There isn’t a fire station near, and I can’t see any fire escapes outside the building. Lord, you know that this building would go up in flames in a second, and at this very moment it is probably full of people falling asleep with Marlboros in their mouths …”
By the time I finished praying, I was a nervous wreck, and I hardly slept a wink all night. The next morning, as I evaluated my evening, I realized that my bedtime prayer had focused on my negative feelings rather than on God’s assurances and promises, and learned an important truth: Unless we plead in faith, our prayers can do more harm than good.
Mark 11:23 NIV
23 "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ’Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him
E. PRAYER IS TO BE CONSISTENT AND PERSISTENT.
Heb 10:23 KJV
23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)
24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
APPLICATION: PRAYER MEANS SPIRITUAL POWER
James 5:16 KJV
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
The Prayer Chain
In 1722 Count Nikolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, troubled by the suffering of Christian exiles from Bohemia and Moravia, allowed them to establish a community on his estate in Germany. The center became known as Herrnhut, meaning “Under the Lord’s Watch.” It grew quickly, and so did its appreciation for the power of prayer.
On August 27, 1727 24 men and 24 women covenanted to spend an hour each day in scheduled prayer, praying in sequence around the clock. Soon others joined the prayer chain. Days passed, then months. Unceasing prayer rose to God 24 hours a day as someone—at least one—was engaged in intercessory prayer each hour of every day. The intercessors met weekly for encouragement and to read letters and messages from their brothers in different places. A decade passed, the prayer chain continuing nonstop. Then another decade. It was a prayer meeting that lasted over 100 years.
Undoubtedly this prayer chain helped birth Protestant missions. Zinzendorf, 27, suggested the possibility of attempting to reach others for Christ in the West Indies, Greenland, Turkey, and Lapland. Twenty-six Moravians stepped forward. The first missionaries, Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann, were commissioned during an unforgettable service on August 18, 1732, during which 100 hymns were sung. During the first two years, 22 missionaries perished and two more were imprisoned, but others took their places. In all 70 Moravian missionaries flowed from the 600 inhabitants of Herrnhut, a feat unparalleled in missionary history.
By the time William Carey became the “Father of Modern Missions” over 300 Moravian missionaries had already gone to the ends of the earth. And that’s not all. The Moravian fervor sparked the conversions of John and Charles Wesley and indirectly ignited the Great Awakening that swept through Europe and America.
The prayer meeting lasted 100 years. The results will last for eternity.
F. PRAYER IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE for work, thinking, watching, suffering, or giving; prayer is a support for all other efforts.
