Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. Heed the sound of my cry for help, my king and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch. Ps 5:1-3
We recently held a prayer meeting at our church. We set the date for a Saturday morning and invited all of our members to participate in a two-hour event to seek the face of God in prayer. It was well attended and the feedback was encouraging.
One of the many responses was, “We need to do this more often.”
While I would agree that prayer meetings are a wonderful way for God’s people to unite and lift our voices to the Lord, (as did the early church in the book of Acts) I have to ask myself if we don’t place too much responsibility on the church to do for us what we should be doing more often in our private lives?
It is no secret that our western culture provides many opportunities for an anemic prayer life. Our schedules are filled to the brim.
Smartphones and technology keep us connected to everyone but God. We pour out our lives and emotions on any number of social media platforms, leaving us little to set before God in prayer.
As I’ve studied the lives of the saints from over a hundred years ago, I was struck, not only by how seriously they took prayer,
But how much they discussed the care that should go into our prayers in order that they not be careless and ineffectual.
They really got into the specifics of how to pray and how not to pray.
A Few Crumbs?
In our culture of “anything goes,” we don’t like to think that there can be a right and wrong approach to something that feels so personal.
However, when we let our own preferences dictate our prayers, they will be weak and ineffective, unlike the powerful prayers of the righteous (James 5:16).
For our own sakes, and the sake of our families, churches, and nation, we must not settle for a “something is better than nothing” approach.
As Charles Spurgeon said: There is a vulgar notion that prayer is a very easy thing, a kind of common business that may be done anyhow, without care or effort. . . .We should plow carefully and pray carefully. The better the work the more attention it deserves.
Does prayer require so little of us that we’re content to give God the crumbs, when there’s nothing particularly pressing at work or interesting on Instagram?
Samuel Chadwick: The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayer-less studies, prayer-less work, and prayer-less religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.
If we want to revive our families, and our church, and our nation, then we must revive prayer — and it must begin with us.
A good place for me to start was to understand what prayer is and what it isn’t.
What Prayer Is Not
Prayer is not an empty ritual. May our prayers never be less fervent than our strongest opinions and emotions and social media posts.
Prayer is not simply “chatting” with God.
“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) doesn’t mean we just incessantly chatter to God about anything and everything while neglecting the act of intentionally coming before the throne of God for focused and fervent heart-searching, soul-seeking, honest-to-goodness prayer.
I love when my thoughts wander to God as I offer up little praises and prayers all throughout the day. That should happen, but that can’t be it — I must go deeper.
Prayer is not about us; it’s about God. It’s the thing that draws our eyes away from ourselves and fixes them on our great and glorious Creator.
What Prayer Is
Prayer is the turning of my soul towards God. It is communication with my heavenly Father, and the powerful force that links me together with Him, earth and heaven, my weakness and God’s omnipotence.
“Prayer is also listening! Tuning my heart for the divine impulses of God to bring eternal reality into this temporal life.”
Is this truly possible? Yes, and our blessed assurance is that this direct contact is only made possible through Christ Jesus, whose righteousness covered us and provided us unlimited access to confidently approach a perfect God.
When God feels distant, more often than not it’s because we are neglecting the very thing that spans the distance between Creator and creature.
“If I neglect prayer I am depriving the vital breath of my soul, and my spiritual life cannot thrive.”
Oh Lord, thank You for prayer meetings when the voices of Your people are lifted in harmony to seek You! But let my voice come before You daily as a powerful instrument of change through which the Spirit moves and earth and eternity are impacted.