The Power of Prayer

[March 2008 newsletter]

As we continue to talk about the spiritual disciplines, this month we are talking about prayer, with excerpts from Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard Foster.

"Of all the spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father. . . . To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ.”

A few years ago, I attended a seminar on prayer. One of the presenters made the following statement: “At the heart of an absence of Christian victory in living is an inactive or ineffective prayer life. At the heart of churches that don’t grow is the absence of a strong prayer ministry. At the heart of an individual Christian who feels distant or disconnected from God, who cannot see the hand of God moving in their lives and in the world, is the absence of effective prayer. At the same time, the opposite is true. A person who is living a victorious Christian life, even in the midst of trial, will be a person who prayer often. Churches that consistently grow, pray.”

Another church in our conference started a Sunday morning prayer walk many years ago. Each Sunday morning, before Sunday school, the pastor and any who wished to join him would pray in each room of the church. Over the piano, they would pray that the music would be filled with the glory of God, that the words would convey a message of faith, and that the music would usher them into a worshipful atmosphere. Over each pew, they would pray that those who sat there would have their ears open to the Word. In the children’s rooms, they would pray that God would surround those children with His love, and that the Holy Spirit would empower their parents to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. At the front door, they would pray that all who entered there would feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, and experience God’s amazing grace. The same year the prayer walk began, the church began to grow . . . and has continued to grow EVERY YEAR since then.

You’ve probably heard the little saying “a family that prays together, stays together.” The same is true for a church. A church that prays together, grows together. There are many types of prayer: discursive prayer, mental prayer, centering prayer. The prayer of quiet, the prayer of relinquishment, the prayer of faith, and the prayer of guidance. Though we can learn to pray more effectively, there is no RIGHT way to pray. There’s no magic formula that makes God do what we ask, nor must we get the words just right in order to pry God into action. Rather, we should seek to pour our hearts out to our Father, knowing that He cares for us, wants to hear from us, and longs to speak back to us about our concerns. He loved us before we even loved Him. He sought out relationship with us before we wanted one with Him. He will not refuse to listen to you because you “didn’t do it right.”

All the things that can be said about prayer could fill a library! I want to tell you about “Flash Prayers,” an idea developed by Frank Laubach. He sought to learn to live so that to see someone was to pray for them, to hear someone was to pray for them, to have anyone come to mind was to pray for them. As you pass someone on the street, quickly, silently pray for them. When you hear a child cry, pray for him and his parents. If you hear an ambulance, pray for the situation. Many times the person you pray for will never know and have no response, but every now and then, someone will suddenly turn to look at you, usually smiling, as though you’ve spoken out loud to them. Laubach says “We could change the whole atmosphere of a nation if thousands of us would constantly throw a cloak of prayer around everyone in our circle of nearness.”
“Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance.” E.M. Bounds in Power through Prayer. We need an ocean of God’s love to sweep across our world, convicting, cleansing, forgiving, and drawing into holiness and righteousness. See how many drops in the ocean you can contribute!

May you pray without ceasing!

For more information on prayer, I recommend the following books:
Power through Prayer, E.M. Bounds
Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Richard Foster
Clinging: The Experience of Prayer, Emilie Griffin
Earth & Altar: The Community of Prayer in a Self-Bound Society, Eugene Peterson
Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton
Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World and Learning the Vocabulary of God, Frank Laubach
Intercessory Prayer (and anything else by), Dutch Sheets