The Purpose of This Blog

In response to the challenge by the Southern Baptist Convention that churches take on the task to share the gospel with unengaged unreached people groups, the missions team of Harmony Pittsburg Baptist Association felt the need for a way to focus prayer on the task. This blog is intended to facilitate prayer for those contemplating their role in fulfilling the Great Commission. This on-line prayer guide may prove useful to those exploring a call to missions involvement as well as to those who have sensed a call to pray for those who will go to the front lines.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Prayer

The denomination that I am part of is not known for its prayer life.  It is known mostly for its emphases on the Bible and on evangelism and missions.  It's not bad to major on the Word and the work, but both of those activities tend to be ineffectual apart from prayer.  That last statement would receive hearty amens from all my fellow Baptists because they know what the Scriptures teach about the necessity of prayer.  However, knowing the theory well has not translated into following the practice well.  More than one pastor has found attendance at the church's mid-week meeting dwindling when he tried to eliminate the Bible study in favor of a true prayer meeting.

Why do so many of us find prayer so difficult?  And finding it difficult, do so little of it?

One reason of course is that the devil does all he can to keep us from praying.  He has nothing to fear from what we do in our own strength and cleverness.  He knows far too well the real damage to his realm that the King of kings can inflict.  He will use his bag of tricks to distract us, discourage us, and divide us so that either we won't pray or that our prayers will be disqualified (Matthew 5:23-24).

Another reason is that our "flesh" resists praying.  Our natural self is "anti-matter" to matters of the Spirit (Romans 8:7).  Prayer is decidedly un-natural.  One way of understanding Adam and Eve's eating of the fruit is that they were looking for a way that they could gain knowledge without having to depend on God.  We have inherited this drive for independence.  I wonder if God sees us as we often see babies crying, "I can do it myself!" and then making a mess of things.  Humbling ourselves to depending on God goes against our grain.  No wonder we find prayer difficult.

Finally, there is a practical reason for a tendency to prayerlessness.  Not seeing answers to prayer leads one to question its value.  We might think, "What good does it do to pray?  I tried praying and nothing happened."  Such a thought reveals faulty understanding of prayer.  If we see God as being like the genie in Aladdin's lamp, we are sure to be disappointed.  But now we have a real problem because the best way, perhaps the only way, to learn to pray is by praying.  What a "catch 22"!

We must become a praying people.  We are either praying or sinning (1 Samuel 12:23).  Pray today that Jesus would teach us to to pray (Luke 11:1).  Pray that the Spirit would help us to pray (Romans 8:26-27).  The Nike corporation might say, "Just do it" but the Father tells us, "Just pray!"  We cannot extend His glory to the nations without prayer.

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