I remember asking an elder in a church I once attended how much time he spent in prayer. He admitted that he wasn’t spending much time in prayer. He was so busy doing things! We were all so busy doing things! Good activities. But, looking back, what base did those activities have? Were they from God or were those activities driven by the organisation and whim of man?
My brother-in-law recently shared with me that Watchman Nee once said that heaven has no outlet if the church does not pray. Certainly, that is food for thought. After asking the Lord to teach us to pray we had a picture of prayer. It was in a circle and at the top of that circle was the heart of God the Father.
The prayer was birthed in His heart and given to our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ who gave it to the Holy Spirit to impart into our hearts. That prayer is then taken back to the Father in Jesus name and the circle is complete. How many times do we break that circle by failing to pray and by failing to seek the will of the Father as to what and how to pray?
Dr J.B. Phillips who gave us the Phillips New Testament, said of the first chapters of Acts:
 This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity.
 This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became muscle-bound by over organisation.
 This is the church of Jesus Christ where they didn’t gather together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine: they just healed the sick.
 This is the Church of Jesus Christ where they did not say prayers, but they prayed in the Holy Ghost.
Is this not a terrible indictment against the church today? We pray that the “inconvenient truth” will bring us to our knees and that each one of us who declares Jesus as Lord will begin to cry out for God’s mercy and grace and that we will begin to pound on Heaven’s door and our cry will be, “Lord Jesus I want to know You more; by the Spirit of God be revealed to my heart, and Lord, teach me to pray.”
“If the church would only awaken to her responsibility of intercession, we could well evangelise the world in a short time. It is not God’s plan that the world be merely evangelised ultimately. It should be evangelised in every generation. There should be a constant gospel witness in every corner of the world so that no sinner need close his eyes in death without hearing the gospel, the good news of salvation through Christ.”-
Post published in: Faith