Introduction — When It Feels Like No One Is Listening
Dr. Ralph D. Nichols of the University of Minnesota once spoke at a high school commencement when chaos broke out—crying babies, restless children, a small boy galloping up and down the aisle.
Nichols tried every speaker’s trick to regain attention, but nothing worked. Finally he focused on one elderly man in the front row, smiling and nodding as if listening intently. Nichols finished the speech, encouraged that at least one person cared.
Later he learned the man was stone-deaf.
Many people fear their prayers meet the same fate—spoken to a God who seems deaf. But God is not deaf. Prayer is the key to a renewed life and a renewed church.
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1. Prayer: Key to Personal Renewal
Dwight L. Moody was once asked how to start a revival. He said, “Go home, lock yourself in your room, draw a circle on the floor, and pray for God to start the revival inside that circle. When He answers, the revival has begun.”
Revival begins inside the chalk line of a surrendered heart. Prayer is not merely requesting things; it’s entering the Father’s presence, trusting His love, yielding our plans, and receiving His power.
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2. Prayer: Key to a Church’s Renewal
Paul wrote to the Thessalonian believers,
> “We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers.” (1 Thess. 1:2)
The early church faced impossible odds. Every power of the Roman Empire opposed them:
Peter and John were imprisoned and beaten (Acts 4:3; 5:40).
Stephen was stoned (Acts 7:57-60).
James was executed and Peter jailed again (Acts 12:1-5).
All the apostles except John died as martyrs.
Later, when half of Rome burned, Nero used Christians as human torches. From every human perspective, the movement should have died.
A.W. Tozer captured it well:
“To persuade others that a man crucified as a criminal had risen and is the Son of God was doomed to failure—apart from God.”
Yet by the end of the first century, that tiny band of 120 believers had multiplied to roughly 10 million.
Why? Because the church was more than an organization. She was, in Tozer’s words, “a walking incarnation of spiritual energy.” Somebody was praying, and the Holy Spirit was empowering.
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3. God Still Answers Prayers Today
This pattern continues. After World War II, only about 5 percent of South Koreans were Christian. Today at least 20 percent are. Some Seoul congregations number in the hundreds of thousands. Church growth there averages around 10 percent a year—an astounding modern Pentecost.
Somebody is still praying. God is not deaf.
Perhaps we are the ones who need to listen. The world’s need is urgent. The “doomsday clock,” first set by atomic scientists, once stood at four minutes to midnight. Weapons of unimaginable destruction remain in human hands. No hiding place on earth offers safety.
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4. What Prayer Really Is
Prayer is not magic words to get our way. Bill Keane’s Family Circus cartoon shows a boy debating whether to pray, write Santa, or call Grandma for a new football. Too often our prayers sound like that—requests for things rather than relationship.
Jesus invited us to pray, “Abba”—Daddy. Think of Abraham Lincoln’s son bursting into the White House after a playground fight. He didn’t ask to see the President of the United States. He said, “I want to see my father.”
That’s what prayer is: coming to the Father.
In His presence we find peace and power, patience and passion.
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5. A Modern Portrait of Transforming Prayer
Consider Roland Hayes, the great African-American tenor who sang in Berlin in 1924 amid deep racial hatred.
As he stepped onto the stage, a storm of hissing and stamping greeted him. For ten long minutes the hostility continued. Hayes stood quietly, eyes closed, praying that God—not Roland Hayes—would be heard.
Finally the hall fell silent. Hayes began Schubert’s “Thou Art My Peace.”
God’s Spirit moved; prejudice melted. Hatred gave way to awe. Hayes later said, “It was not a personal victory. It was the victory of a Power greater than I am.”
That is prayer at its best: stillness before God that releases His transforming power into a hostile world.
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Conclusion — Fuel for a Praying Church
The church that prays like this will see God work beyond explanation. Prayer turned the world upside down in the first century. It can do it again.
Let’s draw the chalk circle around our own hearts and around our church.
Let’s become a church fueled by prayer—not a program, but a people through whom the Spirit flows.
