How Will You Respond?
1986
I want to ask you if these things mean anything to you—if the example of Jesus, the commands of the Bible, the practical examples of people that CAN devote their lives to prayer—how will you respond to the grace of God? How will you respond to the word of God? I want to remind you of this, and that is that if we’re not obviously a house of prayer, then there’s no evidence that we’re a church of Christ. Remember Jesus said, “MY Father’s house (I don’t know about anybody else’s house) but MY Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer.“ —shall be an evident characteristic of the people of God is that they’ll be a people of prayer.
Now just to show you that that’s possible as a group as well as individuals, back in the 1700s there was a group of people that decided that they were going to devote themselves to prayer. And they prayed around the clock—24 hours a day. They had a prayer chain of each person was responsible for praying during an hour of the day—around the clock, 24 hours a day, for 100 years. Non-stop, 24 hours a day, for 100 years in a little-bitty, small town. That small town sent out over a hundred missionaries in a 25 year period, in a town not nearly as big as Burlington. I want you to know that it is entirely possible to be a people of prayer, but we’re going to have to work at it. We’re going to have to labor in prayer, and wrestle in prayer, and that’s not always easy. But you’re no different than those people, and I’m no different than those people. It’s just what we make up our mind we’re going to do. That’s all in the world it is—if we’re going to live our lives for the glory of God, or we’re going to live it for our own particular pursuits. You can do whatever anybody else did.
Now satan’s probably saying to you, “Hey, you don’t really have to do that. You can’t do that anyway. After all, look at all these responsibilities that you have.” All of those people had responsibilities, too! They were married. They had families, and all of that. And satan’s telling you, “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t apply to you.” But really, secretly, what he’s saying is, “You guys can have all the meetings that you want. You can have all the Bible studies that you want, all the sermons that you want, all the business meetings. You can do all that kind of stuff that you want, but please don’t bring the presence of God to bear on my kingdom by prayer.”
He’ll use anything he can to keep you from doing that because he knows that his life is at stake, and that you can bind up the strong man with supernatural weapons. He knows you can do that. He’ll delude you to keep you away from doing that. You’ve learned enough about prayer even if you’d never heard the word before three weeks ago, and I know you knew all this before then. But you’ve heard enough about prayer just in the last three weeks that you don’t need to learn anymore about prayer. You don’t need to study it. You don’t need to know the Greek. You don’t need to think about it. You don’t need to talk about it. All you need to do is DO it. And God will bless you. Pray that He’ll give you a heart of prayer if that’s your first prayer. Pray that He’ll cause you to desire to pray. You know, PRAY!
Teach your children to pray. Teach other people around you to pray. Show them how to do that. Teach them to pray over a particular scripture, to look a verse that says, “Be kind one to another,” and to stop and to pray about that. “Father, show me how to be kind. Show me what ‘kind’ means. Show me who you want me to be kind to, even though they don’t deserve it. Teach me to love the way you’ve loved me, and the way that Jesus showed we could love.” Teach people, teach your children to pray that way, and you pray over scripture.
Pray and teach your children and your friends to pray over disasters in the newspaper or on television. You see about a big mudslide or something on TV, click off that television set and sit down and pray with your children about that. There’s lives involved. There’s people involved in these things. It’s not some little picture on the tube or words on the page. Teach them to reach out with their life as well as with their prayers, but certainly start with prayer. Teach them to pray over the promises of God, and you pray over the promises of God. It’s necessary that we pray about those things to see their fulfillment. When you hear a siren go off, or you see a police car or an ambulance or a firetruck, when you hear that siren let that be an automatic indicator to you that you need to be in prayer about something that’s going on out there that you don’t know about. When you’re driving down the street and you pass a car, pray for the occupants of that car. Pray that God will somehow touch their lives, and that God will somehow bring them into the kingdom where they can find eternal happiness. Pray about those things. Be instant in prayer in season and out of season. When the phone rings before you ever pick it up, pray for the person at the other end of that. And pray for them when you hang it up. You know, you CAN do that. You can pray in that way. You can get pictures of all the members of the body here or the leaders of the congregation, the leaders of the community, the leaders of the nation and the world. Get a picture of those people, maybe put them on 3x5 cards and pray about those people. It’s a command to pray about them, you know. We can do that. Get a globe and a world atlas. There’s about 200 countries in the world. Pray about each country by name and specific things you can pray about it. It might take a while to do that, but you’ll never do it if you don’t get started. Pray that the gospel will be open to those areas.
All these things are relatively new things for me, too. And I guess one thing that probably jabbed me in the kidneys harder than anything was about a year ago when Kathy and our kids were stranded in the Newark airport. They didn’t have any money for lodging. They didn’t have money for food, nothing like that. I asked Joshua, “Are you taking care of your mom?”
And he said, “Yeah, I am.”
I said, “Have you prayed about it?”
“Nope. Haven’t prayed about it. I didn’t even think about praying about it.”
It drove me to my knees at that one moment because I realized that I had taught Joshua how to pray. I’ve heard some amazing prayers come out of his lips and Melissa’s, also. I was really amazed. I was really proud of him because this kid is really, obviously, drawing close to God because he knows how to pray. At bedtime, at meals, I heard some amazing prayers come out of their lips. And yet, I taught them how to pray, but I never taught them TO pray. I’d never taught them a dependency on God. I never taught them in the situations of life to turn to God, TURN to God. I hadn’t done that, and I’m ashamed of that. And you know why? Because I wasn’t doing that. That wasn’t where MY heart was at. I can’t give something I don’t have. And you all know that’s true. I was really convicted about that. I’d made up my mind almost a year ago—that was when I really committed myself to really understanding prayer and giving my life totally to God in prayer.
I want you to realize that you can be a prayer warrior because you’re just flesh and bones like everybody else is, and there’s nobody that’s ever done anything that you can’t do. Elijah was a man like we are, is what the Bible says. And you can be a prayer warrior, but if you’re not what you need to realize is you’re going to miss the infinite blessings that God has associated only with those who pray. You’re not going to see those things EVER in your life—the intervention of God without prayer, without devotion to continual, fervent prayer.
In 2 Kings 20, a dying man added 15 years to his life by prayer. Prayer has stopped powerful rivers and just stopped them in their tracks. Prayer has raised the dead. Prayer has won wars. Prayer has caused water to rush from a rock. Prayer has caused a couple of fish and a little bread to be multiplied over a multitude of thousands of people. Prayer has shut hungry lions’ mouths. Prayer has provided wisdom and wealth as it did in answer to Solomon’s prayer. Prayer has actually stopped the physical universe in its tracks. Remember in Joshua 10 where Joshua prayed that the sun would stand still, and the whole solar system grinds to a stop at the prayer of an ordinary man, prayer of a guy that was called the servant of Moses. He was just an aide. He was an also-ran. And the whole universe ground to a stop at that particular time.
The text we read in James 5:16, “Confess your sins one to another, and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us.” That was James, the Lord’s brother, with calluses on his knees that had seen the supernatural intervention of God himself—he could say that. He could say, “Elijah was just like us. There’s nothing special about Elijah. He was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for 3 1/2 years.”
Elijah was a man just like us. You picture him in your mind sitting under a juniper tree feeling sorry for himself, and self-pity, and doubts and fears, saying, “Oh, God, I’m the only one out here,” and “I wish I could die.” That’s the Elijah we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about some monumental muscle man. We’re talking about a man just like us who God made all the forces of nature subject to his prayer because he was man of prayer, and a man devoted to God’s purposes. A man just like us. I want to say this as clearly as I possibly can: that in the name of Jesus Christ, if your life is hidden in Christ all of the universe is subject to your prayer by the promises of God, a God that can’t lie, a God that can’t even fool us. Very clear. All the universe is subject to our prayers. Supernatural weaponry, the Bible says. Supernatural means, “beyond the natural, above the natural.” Whatever you see that’s natural, God says that we have weapons that are above that, control that, have dominion over the natural.
What I’d like you to do this morning is to set your life in order. I’d like you to recommit your life to a life of purity, a life of holiness, a life of perseverance, a life of love, a life of service, and a life of prayer. To dedicate yourself to the life of prayer. Being devoted, laying siege as it says of new Christians in Acts 2. Lay siege to prayer, be devoted to that. Pray without ceasing. Pray fervently. Pray passionately, and you’ll see the hand of God in your life. There’s no question about that. Bind up the strong man.
