A 7-year-old little girl had just won $2.00 for her memory work in Sunday school, which included scriptures, prayers, the Apostle’s Creed, etc. After the morning service, the pastor’s wife congratulated her.
The little girl proudly announced, "And I put it all in the morning’s offering!"
"My, how wonderful!" the pastor’s wife exclaimed. "I’m sure God will be pleased."
"Yes," the child replied. "Now maybe God will let me do some of the things I want to do!"
I wonder if that is how we feel all too often when it comes to the important things in our faith and practice. Take prayer, for instance. It is amazing that when pastors preach on prayer most of the congregation think they know all there is to know and yet statistics show that Christians spend a woefully small amount of time each day praying. Maybe that is true for you and maybe it isn’t, but I want to begin a series today on prayer that I believe has the potential to change our lives.
Let me begin with the Scripture I read a moment ago. In the cold, black night of Christ’s betrayal, His disciples could not tarry with Him even one hour in prayer. In the garden of Gethsemane, while Jesus earnestly prayed in such agony of spirit that His sweat became like great drops of blood, His disciples, ignorantly oblivious to the eternity-shaping events about to transpire, slept. Jesus, heavy and sorrowful in spirit, awakened His sleeping disciples and asked, “What, could you not watch with me one hour?”
Larry Lea, pastor of Church on a Rock in Rockwall, TX where he leads a congregation of over 15,000 made a statement about this moment in Jesus’ life that I just can’t ignore. He said, “Mirrored in that tragic scene is the plight of the church today. Jesus, our interceding High Priest, is praying; His disciples are sleeping; and Satan is winning contest after contest by default. It would be impossible to calculate the failures, the ruined reputations, the defeats, the broken homes and the other multiple tragedies that could have been avoided if believers prayed. It would be impossible to measure the destruction that could have been turned and the judgement that might have been averted if only God’s people had taken time to pray.” I am guilty and so are you.
But I didn’t come here today to put any of you on a guilt trip. You see, I know what it is like to be haunted by the call to pray, and because I know what it’s like to let interruptions, fatigue, pressures and just plain busyness and laziness drown out that call. You see, God has been haunting me for the last several years with the call to pray at least 1 hour a day. Just recently, I bowed before Him, repented of my excuses, my inability to avoid distractions, my failure to balance my time appropriately and asked Him to teach me how to pray. It has begun a revolution in my soul.
I want to make you a promise this morning: Something supernatural happens when you pray an hour a day. It does not happen over night, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, the desire to pray becomes firmly planted in the soil of your heart by the Spirit of the Living God. This desire then crowds out the weeds of apathy and neglect, and matures into us the discipline to pray. Then one day you discover that prayer is no longer just a duty or a drudgery; instead, the discipline of prayer becomes the delight of our lives. Then you will find yourself eagerly longing for your daily time with God. Someone once remarked: “Prayer is profoundly simple and simply profound.” When you get right down to it, prayer is simply talking with the God who loves you and longs for you to know Him. He wants us to spend time with Him. In fact, it is urgent that we do so for our own and others’ spiritual well being.
Now how do I know this? I know because as I said, God has been impressing on my heart over and over again to spend at least 1 hour each day with Him. Over the years of my Christian life I have prayed and read the Scripture and witnessed and attended church and got involved in different service opportunities that really helped people. My problem has been that too often, I did these things sporadically. When there was nothing else to do or I was desperate for a sermon idea or someone I loved was in pain or in need. Maybe you have found yourself there in that same RUT. It is not a fun place to be for you feel frustrated and the very least, you feel separated from God. You lack consistent joy and you do not constantly experience the presence and peace of our Lord.
Recently I came across a book by Dr. Larry Lea entitled, Could You Not Tarry One Hour. I kind of set it aside but God kept drawing me to it. It is a book about his prayer life, but a book that will translate into any believer’s life. It reminded me of what I at times have seen and experienced: the awesome power and love of our mighty Savior.
On Wednesday nights we’ve been studying the Book of Genesis. In the Tuesday morning men’s Bible Study we’ve been studying Mark. And this past Thursday I began meeting with the Disciple 4 group to lead them in the study of Revelation. And our family Bible reading has concentrated on Acts. God has used all of these to push me to the realization that for me to be transformed I need God. I can’t do it on my own and neither can you.
In the Book of Acts after Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples are pretty much the same as they were in that Garden: still sleeping. But Jesus told them to go and pray and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. And they did!! What made them into the mighty, spiritual army that seized difficulties and turned them into opportunities? What made them into an army characterized by clear-headed, incisive decisions instead of foggy thinking and confusion (which is where I am too much of the time)? And what made them into an army that, in one generation, turned the world upside down for Jesus Christ? PRAYER, plain and simple. Prayer that unleashed the power of God and tapped into His infinite resources.
What will transform the slumbering disciples, disheartened believers and wishy-washy followers of Christ into a mighty army with deliverance as its song and healing in its hands. PRAYER. Prayer that snatches the victories Jesus won for us out of Satan’s greedy clutches. Prayer that storms the gates of hell.
Florence Sherrill knows what I’m talking about. She has seen God work through earnest, deliberate prayer that won’t quit until God answers that prayer or changes the way we pray.
Yesterday, Laurie, Faith, and I were traveling back from Monroe where I conducted a wedding. We stopped randomly at a rest area and ran into someone we had not seen in a while. That person needed us IN A BIG WAY; needed our encouragement and prayers. Was that a coincidence? ABSOLUTELY NOT! It was a God-ordained moment manufactured by Him because we were open to His leading. As I told you, I made a commitment to pray and yesterday morning with all I had to do to get ready for the wedding, I made myself spend nearly an hour in prayer and study. Since I have made that commitment I have been blessed to lead 2 persons to Christ and to see coincidences like the one I just described that are nothing more than the results of obedience to Christ’s call.
I believe God is calling His church to pray. But to many of God’s people, prayer is a lost art. The desire to pray is not something we can work up in our flesh. In other words, if the only motivation to pray is because we as Christians are supposed to or because I preached on it, we will fail. Prayer is not something we work up in our flesh. In verse 41 of Matthew 26, Jesus said, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” You see, the desire to pray must be birthed in us by the Holy Spirit. Like me, you can ignore or drown out God’s voice in a variety of ways. With all the chaos, confusion, pain, suffering, and tragedy of people walking a path that leads away from God and towards an eternity separated from Him, do you not hear God calling you to pray? Do you not sense that inward yearning to really know the God who created you and redeemed you? As Richard Foster once said, “Prayer is not a technique, it is a falling in love.”
Here at Patton we have 2 weekly opportunities to join together and pray for our community and our church and I count on 1 hand the number of people who come.
Here at Memorial we struggled to get a few people signed up for our recent Prayer Vigil. I also realize we need a weekly prayer time to come together and pray for this Church: our finances and faithfulness to God’s call; for the lost and how we can reach the hurting, confused, lonely around us; our own ministries and where God would lead us; our nation and our world. We need to use our prayer room which I am guilty of letting stand empty: A monument to too many of our own prayer lives. Thanks be to God for His forgiveness. He is giving us a new opportunity. Will you cease upon it?
As we go to the Lord in prayer today, here are the requests:
After these SAY: As you bow with me to lift up these concerns and needs, these praises and rejoicings, won’t you also pray and ask Jesus Christ to place in your heart the desire to pray and the ability to develop a daily consistent time of prayer? As we learn to pray as Jesus taught his disciples, our prayer lives will no longer be a hit-or-miss experience, instead 1 hour won’t be enough time to bask in Jesus’ love and to raise our concerns, needs, troubles and delights to the Lord.
LET US PRAY
