In recent years prayer appears to have become a "growth industry" within the body of Christ. The increasing emphasis on prayer may be due to the fact that nothing succeeds like success, and in this case that means God seems to be answering just about everyone's prayer for just about everything.
Though we rejoice when prayer is answered, Jesus Himself cautioned His disciples that there can be deceptions in answered prayer. In Matthew 7:21, 22 He described a future day in which many would use answered prayer as an affirmation of their ministry. They will say that they had cast out devils and done other spectacular miracles in His name, yet He will answer in effect that what they have achieved really had nothing to do with Him (verse 23).
These verses are a serious call for ministers not to evaluate their ministry as one would evaluate a for-profit business. At the end of a day the for-profit business rises and falls on what is called the bottom line. However, in things having to do with the kingdom of heaven this type of measurement can not only be inaccurate but misleading and perilous. It is dangerous to measure the blessings of God with a material yardstick. If material, or in our case professional success is a sure sign of the blessing of God, then almost anything can be read into this or that "success."
Prayer not a substitute for the Word
As we lead our people to a deeper prayer life, it is important that we call them to faithfulness to the Word of God. While prayer may be thought of as the umbilical cord connecting us with the Almighty, we must not forget that the nourishment that flows to our hearts through this cord is the Word of God.
Prayer is very subjective and may actually crowd out the Word of God in the life of the minister. It is not uncommon to hear some one say that God "told" them thus and so. On occasion I have even heard a person say, "I don't care what the Bible says, I know what God told me." The point is obvious prayer must not be allowed to become a substitute for the objective truth of Scripture. The two must work together.
His will or ours?
Through the years I had the habit of closing my prayers by saying, "If it be Your will." As I look back I can now see that what I probably meant was that if my prayer didn't turn out the way I expected, then I would not be to blame. More recently I have come to under stand that the first purpose of prayer is to bring our lives into a condition to accept the will of God as revealed in His Word. If this is true, then to pray "Not my will, but Thine be done" is the highest expression of prayer rather than an escape hatch (Matt. 6:10).
Is it possible for us to place ourselves, and even our congregations at risk when we turn to pray without a readiness to understand and submit to the will of God? There are those who feel we have nothing to fear in this respect if we can somehow find a text some where in which God at some time did a particular thing for someone, which happens to be along the lines of what we are requesting.
I believe we must not presumptuously ask God to do for us today what He did for some one at some time in the past. This approach to prayer can make us susceptible to the reprimand of the Holy Spirit for praying for selfish reasons (James 4:3).
Sometimes in prayer groups a petitioner may make a particular request and the leader will ask if there are others to affirm the petition. This is done based on the text in Matthew 18:19 that where two or three agree, it will be done. It is not difficult to get two or three in the group to agree to a particular request. What is more difficult for us to agree upon, however, is that we will obey a clear "Thus saith the Lord."
I once talked with a young woman who was dating a person not of her faith. She asked me to pray that God's will would be done in their relation ship. Since the Word clearly states that believers should not be joined together with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14), I explained to her that God had already revealed His will to her in this respect and that she might do better to pray for faith and strength to obey.
Systematizing prayer
In this highly organized age there is a growing tendency to systematize prayer. Answers to prayer are seen as being conditioned on using the correct technique. Someone once asked me who we should pray to, the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost. I asked her in turn why she wanted to know, and she replied that, inasmuch as she didn't seem to be getting any answers to her prayers, she feared she might be praying to the wrong One!
Today there is a trend to emphasize the physical place of prayer, the time of prayer, and the positions of prayer as important to successful prayer. In effect, the Samaritan woman asked Jesus "Where should we pray, my place or Yours?" (John 4:20). Jesus came right to the point. He told her that prayer is not about place (or technique), rather it is about spirit and truth (John 4:21-24).
This lesson should not be lost on any leader of prayer in the twenty-first century. Increasingly, prayer is being reduced to something done "by the numbers." Instead of prayer being directed from our hearts toward God, it often seems to be something we do to or for each other perhaps even to manipulate and intimidate. A person who owns a Christian radio station told me recently that in seminars she has attended it is suggested that frequently mentioning prayer to the radio audiences increases donations!
Praying to manipulate
In Christ's time, prayer was evidently being abused and misused by the religious leaders. Jesus instructed His listeners not to pray as the Pharisees prayed (Matt. 6:5). The point was, they were using prayer to impress and even to manipulate each other. Jesus said that the best place to pray is in secret; and that if a person has a meaningful personal prayer experience, it will be evident by the way they live and, for us who stand in the pulpit week by week, by the way we preach (verse 6).
We ministers should consider carefully what we pray for and how we pray in front of the congregation. Often, before we preach the prayer is, "... and now, Lord, may every word that I speak be Your Word." Praying this way in the hearing of the people may be somewhat intimidating. Although there is no doubt that as preachers we want our sermons to be a proclamation of the Word, when we pray this way it may sound as though we are telling the congregation that they had better listen to what we have to say because it is verily the word of God.
As we preach, it is important that people feel free to evaluate what we present in the light of whether it is indeed in conformity to the Scriptures (Isa. 8:20). Therefore, it may be more appropriate for us to pray this prayer silently in the pastor's study before we go into the pulpit. In short, the prayer with the congregation before the sermon is better as a "we" prayer than as an "I" prayer.
Praying to be, not to get
During my study for my book Transforming Prayer, I realized that the highest purpose of prayer is not to "get" but to "be." At a time in which success is seen in terms of what happens to be selling at the moment, we must resist the temptation to commercialize and exploit prayer.
We must not see prayer as a substitute for the Bible or the study of the Bible as a substitute for personal prayer. Sometimes in a sermon I use the concept of the computer to illustrate the importance of prayer. I tell the congregation that, when we read Scripture, the Word is put into, as it were, the RAM (read-only memory) of the mind. To lay the Word down without praying that the Holy Spirit will implement it in our lives will result in the Word being lost (hitting the Delete key). To take up the Word in prayer enables the Holy Spirit to "Save as" a changed life.
Secret prayer, a breath of life
Many wonderful books on prayer have been written in recent years. As we search for a deeper connection with God through prayer and His Word, we get to know the true purpose of prayer. As starters, I would recommend the classic little books by E. M. Bounds on prayer and the book by Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer.
As ministers of the gospel, we must be men and women of prayer, not just of public prayer but much more of private prayer. A minister who in the morning spends an hour alone with God praying not to "get" but rather to "be" in harmony with the written Word will be a person whose ministry will leave the hearers saying, "Did not our hearts burn within us when we heard our pastor preach?" Anyone can form a sermon from the "dust of the earth," but it is the secret prayer life of the preacher that will breathe into it the breath of life so that through the power of the Holy Spirit its hearers become new and liv ing souls in Christ.
