Pray

Anyone who is familiar with my ministry and life will testify that I emphasize the importance of prayer.  I’m not referring to merely saying prayers, but actually communicating with God.  I have discovered through years of ministry that unless one is in trouble, he or she will usually pray very little if any at all.   Therefore, I challenge people to pray.  However, to be honest and fair, prayer is a most difficult activity.  That is because to the natural mind, prayer is foolishness.  In fact, people who pray appear to be talking to themselves, or to the wind.  For that reason alone most professing Christians don’t pray.  Most of the very few that  have no prayer life, yet believe they should serve God, attempt to do so according to their natural ability.  They fail repeatedly, and usually settle back into something they can accomplish without prayer.  Sadly, they never achieve their potential and are no significant threat to the kingdom of darkness.   

If I still have your attention, I want to explain why prayer is important before go further.  What I cannot tell you why prayer works or how it works, but only that it does work.  Here are some hard facts that have been proven over thousands of years of Christian history.  Professing Christians that do not pray do not have an intimate relationship with God.  If one does not pray, one does not know the mind and will of God.  Prayerless people have little spiritual power.  Prayerless people are usually defeated in every attempt to move out of their comfort zones.  Prayer is also essential to spiritual sight and hearing, two things most needed in this period of great deception.   If one does not pray, he or she has much difficulty accessing the things of God that are so vital to productivity and survival.  Because of these reasons and more, I can tell within a few seconds of communicating with a professing Christian if they pray or not.

Prayer is the means that God gave us to connect at will to the spiritual realm.  Somehow, when a true Christian prays, or a repentant sinner prays for forgiveness, hi s or her words reach God.  Frivolous prayers, praying by hypocrites and other insincere praying, do not leave the temporal realm.  Prayer appears to be transferred into the spiritual realm by the Holy Spirit.  That is a major reason one ought to be filled with the Holy Spirit.      

I confess that I didn’t know the value of praying when I started as a young Christian.  However, I read a book by E. M Bounds entitled, “The Power of Prayer”, and I knew that he was right.  Therefore, early in my Christian life I began developing a prayer life.  It was very difficult because I had no examples, no one telling me to pray and leading the way.  As I grew I prayer, the Word of God became opened to me.  More than that, I saw things occurring in the spiritual realm both good and bad.  Eventually, I saw the corruptness of the professing Christian realm and its leaders, the frivolity of making church meetings the sum of Christian experience, and other errors.

When I began exposing these errors, I was challenged.  But my detractors did not use God’s word to challenge me, but rather, vain tradition and denominational protocol.  It took years before I realized that I had entered the church realm during the great apostasy. I encountered flagrant, and some not so flagrant, ungodly men and women, in high levels of leadership.   This type of individual is not kind and has no compunction about destroying a young minister when he or she feels convicted or otherwise threatened.   I would have been completely defeated, driven out of ministry, and probably back into the world system bitter and broken, had it not been for prayer. 

I began praying by simply telling God everything that was on my heart.  I prayed mostly for my problems and needs.  Gradually, I began praying for other people, mostly lost souls.  One day I realized that I was failing to pray for everyone that I had promised to pray for because I forgot.  That’s when I began a prayer journal.  I can tell you for a fact that if you write down the names of everyone that you promised to pray for, and then pray for them daily, you will develop a prayer ministry.  Presently, I begin each day with my prayer journal in hand.  However, I have prayed for hundreds, even thousands of people and needs for so long that I can now remember most of them if I happen to be away from my prayer journal. 

If you are going to begin a prayer ministry, you must first be convinced that it is important, that it is effective, and that is so essential that you cannot do without it.  If you do not settle these things in your mind, you will never get very far before you abandon the effort.  As I stated, prayer is a battle.  When you begin, hindrances will come from all sides.  Your flesh will rise up in rebellion.  Your mind will begin to wander.  People will suddenly need you during a time that they never called on you before.  Spiritual battles will occur.  Satan will create as much trouble as he can in your life.  He will make certain that you know that all the trouble is because you are praying, so I may a well tell you in advance.  In other words, if you will cease or just slack off, he will back off.  At that point, you have to decide if you are going to spend your life being herded by Satan into mediocrity, or if you are going to pray and enter God’s perfect will.     

Not many professing Christians will be prayer intercessors during this great apostasy.  Some of them may fight all the way through until they begin seeing spiritually.  Then they will become so discouraged by what they see that they surrender to the strong pull to revert back into blindness.  I must admit that sometimes I wish for an easier life, for acceptance with more professing Christians, and just a ministry where I could preach and teach the basics with no hassles.  But when you reach a certain point in your prayer life, there is no turning back.  You realize that to turn back is to die.  That is the point where ones prayer life becomes greatly effective.   That’s the point that Satan will do everything to keep any professing Christian from reaching.  But this world and Christianity needs more intercessors.  Many of the ones who were carrying this burden have departed, and their shoes are not being filled quickly enough.  It is not a ministry that only a few are called to, but that everyone that claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ is called to.  My prayer is that you will understand and submit to that call.  It is the high calling of God in Christ Jesus to be effective in one’s life for the cause and glory of God.