Category: Prayer

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On Unanswered Prayer for Revival

 

Then another angel with a gold incense burner came and stood at the altar. And a great amount of incense was given to him to mix with the prayers of God’s people as an offering on the gold altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, mixed with the prayers of God’s holy people, ascended up to God from the altar where the angel had poured them out.

Rev. 8:3–4 NLT

Revival hunger is wanting God’s presence more than sleep, desiring God’s face more than food, hungering for God’s holiness more than our comfort, and pursuing God’s glory more than our daily routine. Revival hunger yearns for God above all others, removes idols of the heart, glorifies God in public worship, mortifies sins of the flesh (i.e., sin nature), renews commitment to God’s covenant promise, and more importantly, humbles oneself under God’s mighty hand (2 Chron. 7:14). Revival hunger yearns for God more than self-exaltation, self-concern, and self-fulfillment.

Revival hunger is a good thing, but it can become a bad thing if our desire for revival causes us to become impatient with God and doubt his willingness, timing, and provision. Though we are called to participate in preparing for revival, ultimately God’s timing for revival is his sovereign choice. Even if a revival is delayed, not a single prayer for revival has gone wasted or ignored.

This thing becomes an obsession. For fifty years I’ve wept, and I’ve prayed and I’ve groaned, and I’ve read, and I’ve fasted, and I’ve met with guys for nights of prayer, and days of prayer and days and days of prayer, for revival.

There is not much sign of it. Well, are you sure? You see, prayers never die. What are these: the prayers of the saints (Rev. 8:3). You never pray a prayer born of God without it being on record with God. God never wastes anything. Do you think you and I have prayers born of grief, born of anguish, born of desire to see an overthrow of iniquity (for after all that is what revival is), and you think God will let them die?”

Leonard Ravenhill, Revival Study Bible, note on Rev. 8:3

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Your Problems, His Concern

But because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. Therefore he is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf.

Heb. 7:24–25 NLT

Jesus Christ is our continuously praying intercessor (Rom. 8:8:34; Heb. 7:24-25). He is always praying for you and me. Jesus’ prayer life reflects his priorities: Jesus is personally concerned about your personal concerns (1 Peter 5:7). He is not like an earthly priest who tires, lacks knowledge, fails occasionally (or numerously), and can only bear a few burdens. Our high priest, Jesus Christ, never wearies in praying for us, he knows all, never sinned, and can carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Jesus is praying for us and our concerns: without hesitation he is praying that we will make it. Every prayer that Jesus has ever prayed has always been answered by the Father. Therefore, the prayers of Jesus that you will persevere to the end will be answered. You will make through all your struggles while glorifying God the Father. How? Christ is praying for you every day, every hour, every minute. Your problems are his concern.

But I see the basic, wonderful truth here, that day by day the Lord Jesus Christ is ministering in heaven on my behalf, and yours. . . . May I put it pointedly: all the aspects of your Christian life are His concern. Your great high priest is concerned about your prayer life: He knows all about it; He is concerned about it, and His loving concern is that your prayer life might be rich and full.

He is concerned about your spiritual babyhood, if that is true of you. He is also lovingly concerned that you should go on to maturity. . . .

He is concerned about your particular problems. Maybe you think nobody is concerned about your problem: it is too difficult to share with anybody. I say that the Lord Jesus Christ all about it, and He is concerned about it.

He most lovingly wants that problem dealt with; and His whole ministry in heaven concerns you, in all the loneliness of your spiritual problem, which you can share with nobody. You have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Doesn’t that encourage you? Open your heart to Him.

K. A. A. Weston, “Our Great High Priest,” Daily Thoughts from Keswick: A Years’s Daily Readings, ed. Herbert F. Stevenson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980), 94.

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God’s Voice, George Washington Carver, and the Peanut

O Lord, hear me as I pray; pay attention to my groaning.

Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for I pray to no one but you.

Psalm 5:1-2 NLT

Prayer is an ongoing dialogue-a real and intimate conversation-between God, our Father, and us, his beloved children. Since prayer is a conversation between us and God, we can expect to be heard by the Holy Spirit and to be spoken to by God. Our conversation with God involves sharing, asking questions, clarifying, and responding. Prayer opens our hearts to God’s presence, our ears to his direction, our minds to his will, and our spirit to his great love. Prayer makes us great receivers of God’s most gracious grace. Prayer provides insights into our struggles, alignment with God’s will, and wisdom for life’s problems.

George Washington Carver wanted to help Southern sharecroppers: their soil was exhausted from years and years of growing cotton and the boil weevil had destroyed thousands of acres of new crops. Mr. Carver needed to find alternative crops to restore the soil and create new markets. Carver, the President of Tuskegee Institute, turned to the Lord for help:

George Washington Carver was one of our great scientists, and he often prayed, addressing God as “Mr. Creator.” One night he walked out into the woods and prayed, “Mr. Creator, why did you make the universe?” He listened, and this is what he heard: “Little man, that question is too big for you. Try another!” The next night he walked into the woods and prayed, “Mr. Creator, why did you make man [meaning, the human race]?” He listened and he heard this: “Little man, that question is still too big for you. Try another!”

The third night he went into the woods and prayed, “Mr. Creator, why did you make the peanut?” This is what he heard: “Little man, that question is just your size. You listen and I will teach you.” And you may know that George Washington Carver invented some three hundred ways to use the peanut.

Richard J. Foster, Sanctuary of the Soul: Journey into Meditative Prayer (Kindle Locations 578-583), Kindle Edition.

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Pray on. Fight On. Sing On.

 

I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.

Joel 2:28 NLT

We are a passive generation, we are easily discouraged and depressed by our circumstances. In the following quote, A. W. Tozer calls on us to be spiritually determined to press into God. He encourages us to get past our difficulties and thank the Lord in the midst of our trials. Tozer reminds that as we seek God in the pressures of life, we will experience a fresh and ever deeper revelations of God.

Pray on, fight on, sing on. Do not underrate anything God may have done for you heretofore. Thank God for everything up to this point, but do not stop here. Press on into the deep things of God. Insist upon tasting the profounder mysteries of redemption. Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment. If you thus “follow after,” heaven will surely be opened to you and you will, with Ezekiel, see visions of God.

A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous, Chapter 15.

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Greatest Thing About Prayer


Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Phil. 4:6-7 NLT

Prayer is an ongoing dialogue-a real and intimate conversation-between the Abba Father of Jesus and us, his beloved children. Prayer is standing before God in a real and intimate conversation sharing our hopes, desires, fears, and needs with our Abba Father who loves us and cares for us (Gal. 4:6-7).

If I wanted to tell what I think is the greatest thing we can learn about prayer from the Bible, then I would say that the greatest is that we come into the presence of our Father through the conversation of prayer, that we taste his peace in the midst of all unrest, and that we attain a place to stand against everything that presses in upon us and threatens to get the best of us.

Helmut Thielicke, How to Believe Again (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1970), 99.

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Our Choice: Better or Bitter

 

Responding or Reacting

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Rom. 5:3-5

We live in the midst of the fallout of the Fall: sin has affected every area of creation and all aspects of our lives. Disappointment, pain, and trouble are significant ingredients of our daily lives. Ill-timed, unexpected tragedies can shape our Christian lives for the better or make our hearts hard through bitterness. The choice is ours: better or bitter.

Teach me. O God, to use all the circumstances of my life to-day that they may bring forth in me the fruits of holiness rather than the fruits of sin. Let me use disappointment as material for patience: Let me use success as material for thankfulness: Let me use suspense as material for perseverance: Let me use danger as material for courage: Let me use reproach as material for longsuffering: Let me use praise as material for humility: Let me use pleasures as material for temperance: Let me use pains as material for endurance.

John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 101.

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The Daily Office

daily-office1

 

The Daily Office is a structured service of Morning, Midday, and Evening Prayer performed as a community or individually as an act of worship to God and intercession on behalf of the people of God. This regular cycle of daily prayer orders the life of the Christian. The cycle brings rhythm of life around which other “normal” activities can take their proper place. The practice of the Daily Office is a little known outside of liturgical communions and denominations. However, the value of this daily spiritual discipline is proven those who keep its hourly obligations:

The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. It is confirmed in work. The morning prayer determines the day. Squandered time of which we are ashamed, temptations to which we succumb, weaknesses and lack of courage in work, disorganization and lack of discipline in our thoughts and in our conversation with other men, all have their origin most often in the neglect of morning prayer.

Order and distribution of our time become more firm where they originate in prayer. Temptations which accompany the working day will be conquered on the basis of the morning breakthrough to God. Decisions, demanded by work, become easier and simpler where they are made not in fear of men but only in the sight of God. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col 3:23 ESV). Even the mechanical is done in a more patient way if it arises from the recognition of God and his command. The powers to work take hold, therefore, at the place where we have prayed to God. He wants to give us today the power which we need for our work.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 1970), 64.

The daily lesson readings (Psalms for the day, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospel) can now be found here in the English Standard Version (ESV) with audio files. Also, these audio files can be selected for podcast into your mp3 device for mobile listening.

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My Baptism in the Spirit (Conclusion)

 

He Wants Us to Ask

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Luke 11:13

My testimony of Spirit-infilling is not intended to be a formula or a model or a pattern for others, but a testimony of God’s faithfulness. I asked for more of his Holy Spirit in my life and ministry and God answered. I found that I lack power for witness that morning in Dallas and by that afternoon God provided through a bold petite African-American witness. God’s word’s was true, “Ask and our Heavenly Father will give us the Holy Spirit” (Luke 11:13).

The Persistent Neighbor

Let us examine Luke 11:5-13 and discern what Jesus would want us to do. The context of the chapter is prayer, with Jesus telling a parable describing a persistent neighbor. In that parable, the main character is the next-door neighbor. He has suddenly received an unexpected guest. The neighbor is very needy because he lives in an age where food is not readily available. He has to care for his guest, and he does not have the resources to provide. He goes to his sleeping neighbor and asks for his leftover bread. The neighbor is perturbed. If he gets out of bed, he will awaken his whole family who are all asleep in the same bed with him. Any parent knows the difficulty of getting a group of children to go asleep, but now the needy neighbor wants to disturb them. Yet, the sleeping neighbor does hand over his leftover bread because of the friend’s boldness. Jesus commends the friend’s boldness as a true characteristic of genuine prayer. All God wants us to do is to ask and to ask boldly! “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13, NIV). How to we receive the Holy Spirit? We ask and we ask boldly!

However, we must have a flexible attitude. Whatever type of bread the Father decides to give must be acceptable to us. Many times, we will say “We want the bread of the Holy Spirit!” but when God gives it we say, “This is not the kind of bread we wanted!” “No Lord, I wanted rye, wheat, or pumpernickel!” When the Holy Spirit comes whatever gifts he wants to display through us, we must be willing to receive. Remember the gifts of the Holy Spirit are just that-gifts. Gifts are for blessing, for encouragement, and for spiritual growth. The purpose of the charismata is to bring you and me, as the Body of Christ, into a deeper love relationship with Jesus. So, Let us ask! [Robert Smith, Jr., “Christian Preaching Practicum” [class notes] (Birmingham, AL: Beeson Divinity School, 2002), April 30.]

Like the disciples, all God desires is that we recognize that we are at our wit’s end and we cannot go on any farther without him. All he waits for us to do is ask! Then, he will come and pour his presence upon us, bathe us in his love, and display his great and mighty mercy. The Holy Spirit will come and will reveal Jesus to us. If you desire more of the Holy Spirit, pray boldly, and you will be filled afresh with the sweetness of his presence.

Glenn E. Davis, “Who Is the Holy Spirit for Us Today?”, Pilgrims on the Sawdust Trail, ed., Timothy George (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 97.

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“Does God Have All of Me?”

Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.

Psalm 86:11 NIV

One of my favorite authors and teachers is the late Alan Redpath, his sermons and books stir me to the core of my spiritual life. Today, I listened to his message, “God Seeks a Man of Prayer,” I was deeply affected by Redpath’s passion for Christ and his passionate heart-cry for prayer. His message was one of the most anointed sermons I have ever heard.

In that sermon, Redpath, former pastor of Moody Memorial Church, relates a story concerning leaving a church meeting with Stephen Olford. As they walked out the door, a Bible student asks Olford, “What is the secret to Christian leadership?” Olford responds, “Bent knees, wet eyes, and a broken heart.” Redpath elaborated by admonishing those in Christian ministry not to rely on a theological degree for ministry success, but be dependent on God’s grace and Spirit that “God clothes you with himself.” Redpath quoted Isa. 59:16 and Ezek. 22:30 as examples of Christians not seeking God, but God seeking us. Redpath relates that God is looking for a man (or woman) who is determined enough, bold enough, and small enough to pray and intercede for our nation on God’s behalf. With this kind of bold intercession, we not only grab ahold of God, but God lays claim to every aspect of our hearts.

Alan Redpath had two daughters who loved to swarm him when he came home at night. As he came in the door one evening, his little girls ran to meet him. One grabbed his leg and hugged him with all her might. He snatched the other daughter up in his arms. The one squeezing his leg said, “Now, I’ve got all of Daddy.” The daughter in his arms replied, “Yes, but Daddy has got all of me!” Perhaps the question we need to continually ask is, “Does God have all of me?”

Daily Christian Quote/Alan Redpath

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Conversing With God

A Still Small Voice

And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper.

1 Kings 19:12 NLT

Prayer is an ongoing dialogue-a real and intimate conversation-between the Abba Father of Jesus and us, his beloved children. Since prayer is a conversation between us and God, we can expect to be heard by the Holy Spirit and to be spoken to by God. Our conversation with God involves sharing, asking questions, clarifying, and responding. Prayer opens our hearts to God’s presence, our ears to his direction, our minds to his will, and our spirit to his great love. Prayer makes us great receivers of God’s most gracious grace.

Prayer is standing before God transparent and open in a real on-going back-and-forth conversation. In that conversation, we share our hopes, fears, needs, and desires knowing that our Abba Father who cares for us will respond. He will hear our cry and answer: he will move on our behalf and provide what is best for us.

Does God, then, really tell us things when we pray? Yes. We shall probably not hear voices, nor feel sudden strong impressions of a message coming through (and we shall be wise to suspect such experiences should they come our way); but as we analyze and verbalize our problems before God’s throne, and tell him what we want and why we want it, and think our way through passages and principles of God’s written Word bearing on the matter in hand, we shall find many certainties crystallizing in our hearts as to God’s view of us and our prayers, and his will for us and others. If you ask, “Why is this or that happening?” no light may come, for “the secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29); but if you ask, “How am I to serve and glorify God here and now, where I am?” there will always be an answer.

J. I. Packer, Growing in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994).