April 4 has been designated by the 1980 Annual Council as the beginning date for a concerted prayer effort in Seventh-day Adventist churches around the world. Pastors and preachers everywhere are being asked to present to their congregations on that Sabbath a sermon setting forth the great purposes and blessings of intercessory prayer.
In issuing this call, the Council took notice of the fact that every Seventh-day Adventist Christian, regardless of his or her circumstances, abilities, or situation, can pray, and that it becomes increasingly imperative that we do so as we face the ever-growing limitations of human resources.
The purpose of this prayer effort is to encourage every Seventh-day Adventist Christian to join fellow church members in intercessory prayer for the spiritual needs of his or her immediate neighbors, community, and nation; to clearly identify those needs; and to reach out with the gospel in alleviating them and presenting the Adventist message.
To prepare for this thrust, pastors and church boards have been requested to divide then- districts into sections, allotting to each family or individual within the church a specific territory for which to pray, together with other prayer objectives such as unentered cities, towns, counties, and countries.
As we attempt to lead our people into a concerted and sustained experience of intercessory prayer for the work of God, we pastors need to review our own acquaintance with and involvement in prayer. The adage remarks that few in the village are so poorly shod as the cobbler's children. God forbid that ministers, who so often pray with and for others, should be poorly acquainted them selves with personal prayer. Yet I suspect that the truth of the saying is more accurate in this context than most of us would like to admit. Ministers are prone to a peculiar occupational hazard. Even as we encourage our people to pray and study the Word of God, do we not sometimes excuse ourselves for a lack in these very areas by reminding ourselves that all our time is given to work of a spiritual nature? Because we pray frequently in the course of our daily activities (in hospital rooms, in people's homes, in meetings, in churches, et cetera), it is easy to neglect personal prayer, in which we come to God apart from any capacity as a minister to pray for our own needs and to praise Him personally. Yet to confine our prayer life to the praying that we do in our public role as ministers is a sure path to spiritual barrenness. Unless we pray privately from a sincere sense of our own personal necessity for God's guidance and blessings, our public prayers will become mechanical and lifeless.
Ellen White counsels: "Remember that prayer is the source of your strength. A worker cannot gain success while he hurries through his prayers and rushes away to look after something that he fears may be neglected or forgotten. He gives only a few hurried thoughts to God; he does not take time to think, to pray, to wait upon the Lord for a renewal of physical and spiritual strength. He soon becomes weary. He does not feel the uplifting, inspiring influence of God's Spirit. He is not quickened by fresh life. His jaded frame and tired brain are not soothed by personal contact with Christ." —Testimonies, vol. 7, p. 243. "Busy activity in the mechanical part of even the work of God may so occupy the mind that prayer shall be neglected, and self-importance and self-sufficiency, so ready to urge their way, shall take the place of true goodness, meekness, and lowliness of heart." Ibid., vol. 4, p. 535.
Does such a description sound familiar? We are so prone to think that the burden of the Lord's work in our particular area depends to such an extent on us that we have little time for personal prayer. If it is true that our work is vital to the success of the Lord's affairs, then it is all the more reason why we must spend adequate time with God in earnest prayer.
As we lead our people in this combined prayer effort, we need to be in the forefront not merely by word, but by example and deed. We need to be men of prayer who, like Jacob, know by experience what it is to prevail with God. —B.R.H.
