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
caring for your health. That is why there is no end to praying. You
don't just get it done in a week, or even a year, and even a lifetime.
You just don't get it done, for prayer is to be perpetual.
This makes prayer another big if. If it is hard to be humble, as we
saw in a previous message, so it is hard to be persistent in prayer. Part
of the problem is our limited understanding of the purpose of prayer.
My understanding has been expanded, and hopefully yours will be as
we focus on the purpose of prayer. Grasping its purpose will better
enable us to practice it as perpetual preparation for revival.
I. THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER.
According to Young's Analytical Concordance the Hebrew word
here for pray is Palal, and it is used 74 times in the Old Testament for
pray. It actually means to pray habitually. In other words, one does
not say I have already fulfilled this requirement because I prayed last
week, last year, or last decade. Practically everybody has jumped this
hurdle if all it means is that at some point you have prayed. This
Hebrew word not only refers to habitual prayer, but it also has a
second meaning that helps us see what the purpose of prayer really is.
This word refers to self-judgment. To pray means to confess
something about yourself.
If I go to my neighbor and say, "Can you please help me get my
car out of the snow-bank, or help me get it started," I am by that
request saying that I need help. I need somebody, for I am not
sufficient to handle all of life by myself. My request is a confession that
I see myself as dependent. Prayers purpose is to do just that very thing
to us in our relationship to God. Independent self-sufficient people do
not pray, for they do not need anyone or anything. Only dependent
people pray, for they are aware that they cannot give life meaning
without God. One of the primary purposes of prayer is to keep us
perpetually fulfilling the first requirement, which is to humble
ourselves. Prayer is itself and act of humility, and the person who will
pray without ceasing will not be filled with pride. Every sin we commit
could be prevented by prayer, and that is why praying without ceasing
is one of the keys to revival.
This helps us see prayer from a different perspective. We tend to
think that prayer is to change God, and this makes prayer so
mysterious that it leaves us unable to grasp the why of it. Why in the
world does God need us to pray, or want us to pray, so that He can do
His will? It does not make sense when you try to figure it out, and this
leads people to give up praying. This is a major problem with prayer
in our day. And it has been one for me as well as most of the pastors
that I know, or I have read about. After all, how long does it take to
ask God for what you need? You can even thank Him and praise Him
for all His marvelous gifts in just a short time.
I am sure that most who read of the old prayer warriors of the
past wonder what they prayed for, for hours. Did they take the name
of all the people they knew before the Lord? I suppose we could all
pray for hours if we had a long enough list, but the modern Christian
does not see this as being a very efficient way of praying. We could
cover all the missionaries of the world in one sentence, and all the
people that we know in another sentence. We can ask God to bless
everybody in a matter of seconds. This reasoning makes sense if the
purpose of prayer is just to ask God for something. But the Hebrew
word for praying implies there is also a self-oriented purpose in
praying.
In other words, true prayer is also a self-judgment. It says
something about how you feel about yourself. Our text does not say
what we should ask God for. It just says to pray. It I asked you to
pray, you would immediately ask for what? It is because our first
concept of prayer is to ask God for something. We are to ask God for
forgiveness, healing, and for revival. We have to want what He wants
to give, and so to pray covers asking, but what about the purpose of
confessing to God that you need Him, and that you are dependent upon
Him for forgiveness and healing? It is a self-judgment. This helps us
see prayer in a new light. It only takes a few minutes to ask God for
what you need, but it may take much longer to conquer your pride
before God, and to break through your sense of self-sufficiency.
The purpose of prayer is not to change God, or even to motivate
God. It is to make you a fit instrument for God to use. It only takes a
few seconds to ask God to fill you with His Spirit, but it may take hours
to empty yourself of your pride, and all sorts of other idols so that He
can fill you. Those old saints who prayed for hours were making a
self-judgment. They were saying, "Lord, I am so unfit and unable, and
so full of self that I need to struggle before you for hours to get myself
dependent enough upon you that I can be an instrument of the Holy
Spirit. The problem is not a reluctant God who refuses to budge. The
problem is the reluctant heart, which refuses to surrender and be a
channel of God's Spirit. The first purpose of prayer is to unclog that
channel.
This short cut mentality is one of the reasons revival is rare.
Christians have the false idea that revival is the way to be holy in a
hurry, and without much bother and struggle. This is not so, for
Christians have just as much responsibility in revival, and they have to
work hard to be holy. They have to labor to do God's will, and love
people, as well as know His Word. Revival is not quick fix that lets
everybody off the hook of hard work and responsibility. If that is your
dream, wake up, for you are living in a fantasy world. Man is always
responsible, and prayer is a part of that responsibility. The first thing
that prayer is, is obedience to God. Why pray? It is because God
wants us to. And why does He want us to pray? Because prayer
changes us and makes us prepared to receive His answers. Our
praying is God's answer to His prayer, which is that we will pray.
God does not want us to pray in order to change Him. God does
not need changing. He tells us here that even before judgment comes
that He is ready to forgive, heal, and give revival. Revival is never
delayed or withheld because God is not prepared and ready to respond
in grace. He is ready even before the fall. It is folly for us to get the
idea that God has to be begged and pleaded with to do what is good,
loving, and right. Heaven is always ready for a revival. The angels are
always prepared to rejoice over every sinner who repents. It is earth
that is not prepared. It is man who is not ready, and that is why God
demands that we pray. Prayer is our perpetual preparation for
revival. Samuel Shoemaker said, "I do not believe that prayer ever
changes God or His will of love: It can't make Him more concerned
than He was already without our prayers.... It only makes us more
receptive to the things He wants to give us." Centuries before
Augustine asked, "How can God grant you what you do not yourself
desire to receive?" The first purpose of prayer then is to get you
prepared to receive what God wants to give.
There are two types of prayer. There is the proud prayer that
comes seeking what I want, and then there is the humble prayer that
comes seeking what God wants. Jesus portrayed them in His parable
of the Pharisee and the Publican. The Pharisee in his proud prayer
wanted to thank God for being the marvelous person that he was, and
not at all like the rest of men, but the humble prayer of the Publican
was, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Which prayer prepared the
heart for God's grace in forgiveness and healing? The humble prayer
is the obvious answer. So we see that prayer does not so much change
God as it changes the one who is praying. It makes them ready to
receive what God wants to give.
Robert Cunningham said, "He who approaches God for anything
must approach with empty hands." This is why prayer takes time. It
is not because God is reluctant, but because we have our hands to full
to receive His grace. We are not prepared to receive, for we come in
pride with all kinds of stuff we think makes us capable of handling life
on our own. The battle of prayer is to get so honest with God that we
can see our pride even in our prayers, and see that we just want to use
God to get our will done. We need to pray sometimes, "O God, my
earth desires are full of snares; forgive and do not answer all my
prayers."
Jesus had humbled Himself and surrendered His will to the will of
God. I don't know how long it took Jesus to come to this conclusion,
but it was a while. How much longer would it take any of us to get to
that point? His request was simple and swiftly uttered, "Let this cup
pass from me." This was a minor prayer if there ever was one. It
would take only a couple of seconds. The petition part of His prayer
was a snap, and that is where we often end our prayer. That is why we
have such speedy and efficient prayer lives. Jesus went on into the
hard part of prayer, and into that part where we have to struggle with
pride and self, and strive to wrestle the self to the mat, and surrender
to God's will. This takes time, and that is why we tend to skip that
part, and the result is we do not fulfill God's requirement. Petition is
legitimate, but it is not the prayer that changes us and makes us ready
to receive God's best. This is not the prayer that God asks of us, for
He wants humble prayer, and the prayer that seeks to make us an
answer to God's prayer.
We need to see God's purpose in prayer and not just what we want
it to be for us. This is contrary to our usual view of prayer, but God
says that His purpose is fulfilled when we first focus on ourselves.
Prayer is self-preparation, for only when we are prepared ourselves
are we ready to receive what God wants to give. R. A. Torrey said,
"The chief purpose of prayer is that God may be gloried in the
answer." For God to be glorified, it is we who must be changed. It is
we who must wrestle with pride and become humble. It is we who must
seek God's face. It is we who must turn from our sin. All of this is a
part of the purpose of prayer, and it is in praying that we struggle to
make these changes. Prayer is much more than merely asking God for
things. It is a perpetual preparation of our hearts. It is a constant
answering of God's prayer, which is making us ready to receive what
He wants to give.
