| Matthew 7:7-12 - 28 February 2010
Andrew Lim
The story is told of five young college students
who were spending a Sunday in London many years ago
While in London they decided to go and hear the famous preacher
Charles Haddon Spurgeon / the prince of preachers
They arrived early / and while they were waiting for the doors to open
the students were greeted by a man who asked:
“Gentlemen / let me show you around
Would you like to see the heating plant of this church?”
They thought the man was rather odd
Why would anyone have any desire to see a heating plant
especially on a hot July day
They didn’t want to offend the stranger / so they consented
The young men were taken down a stairway
a door was quietly opened / and their guide whispered
“This / is our heating plant”
To the surprise of the young men
they saw 700 people bowed in prayer
seeking a blessing on the service
praying for conversion of hearts and mind
soon to begin in / the auditorium above
Softly closing the door / the gentleman then introduced himself
It was none other than Charles Haddon Spurgeon
He was such a great preacher / because behind his preaching
there were hundreds upon hundreds of godly men and women
down on their knees / storming the gates of heaven
- wouldn’t give up / till God blessed them
Lives are converted when we pray
The devil retreats and flees / when God’s people dig their heels in
take their stand and resist him / through prayer
Go back to the Bible and you will read
of great people of God / who accomplished great things
because they were such great men of prayer
Jonah became entangled by chocking seaweeds / he couldn’t breathe
then he became imprisoned in the belly of that great fish
And yet ultimately / his feet landed on dry land
saved from the storm / the seaweeds / and the Leviathan
How? / He prayed / and God delivered him
He was saved by God
through the mighty energy of his praying
When the plagues fell on Egypt
the Pharaoh showed himself a believer in the efficacy of prayer
When he fell under the dark shroud of the curse of God
he pleaded with Moses to pray for him
Four times he pleaded for Moses to pray
and four times the dreadful plagues were lifted from him
Hezekiah was told: “Set you house in order for you will die and not live”
He turned his face to the wall and began to weep and pray
and God heard his prayer / and God thru Isaiah said to Hezekiah
“I have heard your prayers / I have seen your tears
You will not die / for I will add 15 years to your life”
We read in the Bible / of the immense power that prayer unleashes
In the Bible prayer divided seas / rolled up flowing rivers
prayer subdued kingdoms
prayer quenched flames of fire
prayer made flinty rocks gush into fountains
prayer muzzled jaws of hungry lions
prayer disarmed vipers and rendered poisons harmless
prayer stopped the course of the sun
prayer locked up the rain clouds / prayer broke the rain clouds
prayer burst open iron gates
prayer conquered the strongest devils
prayer bridled the raging passions of man
prayer routed and destroyed vast armies of the proud
prayer brought one man from the bottom of the sea
and carried another in a chariot of fire into heaven
Prayer opened God’s limitless storehouse
With Elijah and Elisha
the power of prayer reached down even to the abyss of the grave
and in each case / a child was pulled out from the jaw of death
and brought throbbing into life again
Truly the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective
James 5:16
When he prayed fervently that it might not rain
the rain clouds did not break
but was held off / for three years and six months
And yet when he prayed again / that it rain
the storm clouds broke / and torrents of water came pouring down
and the earth brought forth her fruit / James 5:17-18
And the Bible insists that Elijah was a man just like any one of us
The Bible makes a point in reminding us of
that Elijah was a man just like you and I / v. 17
The only difference lies in these words / “He prayed fervently”
passionately / ardently / enthusiastically / zealously / v.17
Is it any wonder why this man could pull and push the rain as he chose
Through prayer Moses saved a nation / through prayer Ezra saved a church
Our Lord Himself would pray so very fervently
He devoted Himself to prayer
Luke tells us that He went off to the mountain to pray
and that He would spend the whole night in prayer to God
Luke also tells us that sometimes He would slip away
to the wilderness and pray
Matthew also tells us that He would go to the mountain by Himself
and that on the evenings / He was there alone
When He had much work to do / He prayed
When He needed company / He found it in prayer
He hand-picked His disciples only after much prayer
When tempted / he prayed
When He became tired in body / or spent in spirit / He prayed
In His most crucial hour before the crucifixion / His darkest hour
He prayed
Not only did Jesus prayed / He wants us now to pray
Three times our Lord Jesus invites us to pray
He says it at least three times
Ask / seek / knock / Matthew 7:7-8
Prayer / is the one thing God most wants from you
It is God’s will for you that you pray!
Colossians 4:2 says “Devote yourselves to prayer”
God is saying to us here / “My will for you is that you pray to Me”
It is abundantly clear from Scripture / God wants us to be praying
If this is so / then the one single most important thing I can ever do
in my life is spending time with God in prayer
I may do a few good things in my life / build up some broken people
- inspired a few to walk with God / love my family and grow them
- help a few poor people to get up and get going again
- help mend a few broken marriages
- fed and clothe a few needy people
- even lead people to come to know God
I may do all these things / and even do them well
but all said and done / nothing that I could ever do
can compare in importance / to the time I spend with God
- talking to Him and listening to Him in prayer
- meditating on what He has to say to me
Nothing comes near!!
When I am down on my knees praying
when I am thinking of nothing else but what God is saying to me
when I am hearing no one else but hearing God
when I do nothing but resigned myself to reaching out to God
- right there / at that time / I am doing
the most significant thing I can ever do in my life
Now if all this is true of prayer
then it must seem strange indeed
that we see such a great slackness in prayer
Bishop J.C. Ryle once made a startling statement / He said:
“I have come to the conclusion
that the vast majority of professing Christians do not pray at all”
And Helmut Thielicke the German theologian-pastor / sadly observed
that prayer is no longer the native soil of our life
that prayer is no longer the air we breathe
He says: “This world has become our home / and it fills us to bursting”
We could have this mighty hold on the hand of God
and yet we’ve chosen to let go of the grip
Everything depends on prayer / and yet we neglect it
The forces of good and evil are contending for the world
and through prayer we could stem the tide of the Enemy
and yet our lips are sealed and our arms hang limp on our side
When you think of this / it IS the height of folly
Just imagine this
Our prayers change things that otherwise wouldn’t change
if you didn’t pray
Our prayers / make things happen / that otherwise wouldn’t happen
if you didn’t
This is a perplexing mystery
But God / the sovereign God of the universe
has ordained that through our prayers / He changes things
James 4:2 “You have not because you ask not”
So / here’s the Lord of the universe
inviting you to be a part in changing the course of this world
And you go / “No thanks / I am too busy”
What utter folly!
Because in responding that way / you are spurning / disdaining
the one single greatest gift next to the offer of salvation in JC
and that / is the height of folly
But we will do everything / anything / but pray
We are far more ready to give of our money
than we are to go down on our knees to pray
It is strange that while we believe in the efficacy of prayer
we simply do not pray
Someone has said that the sin of prayerlessness
is a scandal to Christianity
Only very few Christians have any idea of the power and potency of prayer
The Church seems totally ignorant of the power that God has unleashed
to her / for use at her disposal
Prayer is our most formidable weapon
And yet / it is the one weapon / we are the least skilled in using
But what exactly is prayer / you may be asking
Now you may be in for a surprise
but prayer mainly means asking God for something
for whatever your heart desires or needs
To pray is bring our desires to God
Prayer is asking / we ask! / we ask for blessings / we ask for things
Some people tell us that “asking” is a lower form of prayer
- that as long as you're still asking in prayer
you're still in the kindergarten of your faith
They tell us that as we mature as Christians we'll do less of asking
and more of other “higher” forms of prayer
like meditation and listening
That is not right / Go to your concordance
and turn to everything that Jesus ever said about prayer
and you will find that 95% of it is about asking
Prayer is talking to God / and asking Him for things
Take the prayer of our Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
Take the classic prayer that He prayed in John 17
and count how many things he asked for
When the disciples ask Him: "Lord teach us to pray"
He didn't teach them the principles of meditation
He told them six things and everyone of them was asking
- three things God would want them to ask for / and
- three things they would want to ask for themselves
Of course when we pray we confess our sins / we praise / we give thanks
But all said and done / prayer is asking
Prayer is asking God for things
It is not just his will that we ask / it is his delight
God takes great delight when we ask him for things
Proverbs 15:8 says / “The prayer of the upright is His delight”
Gloria shared Isaiah 65:24 in our prayer meeting last Thursday
“It will also come to pass that before they call / I will answer
and while they are still speaking / I will hear”
Now in that prayer meeting was the youngest person of CS
- baby Joanna Butcher / just 7 days old and in a prayer meeting
And Vinay in a most touching prayer / make allusions
to the fact that Mike and Shelly
would look happily at baby in the basinet
and keenly anticipating to see what she would need next
being only too ready to give her what she needs
And Vinay praised God for taking such great delight in us
In fact God made special provision
to ensure that we will actually give Him no rest with our pestering
Is 62:6-7 / “On your walls / O Jerusalem / I have appointed watchmen
all day and all night they will never keep silent
You who remind the Lord / take no rest for yourselves
and give Him no rest until He establishes
and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth”
God so greatly desires us to ask Him for things
that He will actually appoints some people
to “give him no rest” and to never keep silent
until we are made the praise of the earth
There is another reason why God wants us to pray
The story of Elijah powerfully illustrates this / 1 Kgs 18 / Jas 5:17,18
After three years of drought / which is God’s judgment
God spoke to Elijah and said / “Go / show yourself to Ahab
and I will send rain on the face of the earth”
And Elijah prays seven times and finally the rain comes
It was all along God’s will / God’s initiation for the rain to fall
Why then / if it was God's will / idea and timing
did it have to take a human person’s prayers to “birth” the rain?
What seems to be happening here? / Why did God need Elijah to pray?
It is this
God has chosen to shape this world / through people
God has given us the responsibility of shaping the world
through our praying
Psalm 115:16 tells us quite clearly
“The highest heavens belong to the Lord
but the earth / He has given to the children of man”
God does not give away ownership of the earth to us
but to us / He assigns the responsibility of governing it
Genesis 2:15 says / “The Lord God took the man
and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it”
The Hebrew word for “keep” shamar / means “to guard or protect”
Adam was literally God’s guardian on the earth
God is sovereign over the entire universe
but where the affairs of the world is concerned
He has chosen to limit Himself to working through human beings
Why does He ask us to pray for His kingdom to come
His will to be done / if it was going to happen anyway?
Why does He tell us to ask for our daily bread
when He knows our needs before we even ask?
Why does He tell us to ask that laborers be sent into the harvest
when He is the Lord of the harvest?
God is both capable and willing to bring all these about
and yet we are supposed to ask Him
for something He is both able and desirable to bring about
It must be / that my praying / in some inexplicable way
releases God to act
The Bible teaches that our prayers / releases God to act
Listen to these words from the prophet Ezekiel
“And I searched for a man among them
who should build up the wall
and stand in the gap before Me for the land
that I should not destroy it / but I found no one
Thus I have poured out My indignation on them
I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath
their way I have brought upon their heads”
declares the Lord God / Ezek. 22:30,31
God is here saying / “In My justice I demanded judgment
and in My love I wanted to forgive
and had I been able to find a human to stand in the gap
ask Me to spare this people / I could have
It would have allowed Me to show mercy
Because I found no one / however / I had to destroy them”
We find this teaching quite unsettling and baffling
But the Bible clearly teaches that God has placed in our hands
the destiny of men and women / of nations / of governments
and by our praying or by our neglect of it
we are shape the world / one way or another
We have been made co-regents with Him
and we hold / right in our two hands the power of God
to shape the world / and that is prayer
But there is one more crucial reason why we are to pray
There is a spiritual war on and God has us with a weapon
No human effort / could win such a war
Ephesians 6 reveals the weapons in the believers’ arsenals
But as soon as Paul has finished listing down the list of weapons
he says “Pray”
God has not left us helpless in the face of the devil’s onslaught
He has given us the weapon of prayer
Through prayer / we are to make war with the enemy
Paul tells us / “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal
but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds”
Remember / until you go down on your knees
you haven’t yet begin to fight/ Fight your battles on your knees
Only prayer / puts Satan on the retreat
Your battle is won or lost / on your knees
Our battle with the enemy is fought and won on our knees
Samuel Chadwick said these great words:
“The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying
He fears nothing from prayerless studies / prayerless work
prayerless religion
He laughs at our toil / mocks at our wisdom
but trembles when we pray”
Mary Queen of Scots once said: “I fear the prayers of John Knox
more than I fear all the armies on the face of the earth”
The church of God everywhere / is under attack
and blessed is the church that has intercessors
serving as watchman on the wall / as the prophet Isaiah calls them
to ward off these attacks on the church / Is 62:6,7
Right here / I want to make a crucial point / and that’s this:
We need to know that all prayer is spiritual warfare
When we pray: “Hallowed be Your Name”
we’re already declaring to Satan where our allegiance lies
When we pray: “Your kingdom come”
we’re making it known / which side of the kingdom we belong
When we pray: “For Yours is the kingdom”
we’re saying to Satan ‘Let it be known the kingdom is not yours’
When we pray for the kids in our city / for lost souls to be saved
for the health of families / for the inmates in prison
- when we pray all these prayers / we enter enemy territory
- Satan’s stronghold
Warfare prayer is not a single type of praying
To pray / is to locked in battle with spiritual forces
- and that / is a fact we need to understand
Men and women of prayer
is what the church most desperately needs
And that if we will only pray / pray / and pray
the world will be radically turned upside down
It was Lord Alfred Tennyson / who once said
“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of”
E.M. Bounds once said these memorable words:
“What the Church needs today is not more or better machinery
not new organizations or more and novel methods
but men whom the Holy Ghost can use
- men and women of prayer / men and women mighty in prayer
The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods
but through human people
He does not come on machinery / but on men and women
He does not anoint plans / but men and women
men and women of prayer
“The Church is looking for better methods
God is looking for better men”
And Bounds is right / praying men and praying women / are God’s method
The entire church / must be marked by a life of prayer
When our Lord cast out the buyers and sellers in the Temple
He quoted the words from Isaiah:
“It is written / My house shall be called the house of prayer”
The life and power of the Church is prayer
The life of its members is dependent on prayer
This very place / is made sacred by our prayers rising to God
Without prayer the Church is limp / and lifeless / and powerless
Prayer transforms this building of brick and mortar
into a sanctuary / a holy of holies
where the Shekinah glory of God dwells
It is prayer which makes this building sacred
sanctifies it / and sets it apart for God
You can have the most beautiful church building
but without prayer / the church is a lifeless corpse
A praying church has God standing right in her midst
A church that neglects prayer
neglects the very power she needs to live for God
You can do nothing well without prayer
- for when you leave prayer out / you leave God out
It has also been a personal joy to Gloria
to have a group of people join us every alternate Thursday evenings
in praying for one another and for the Church
And together we would turn our home into a house of prayer
which delights the heart of God
For more than fifteen years now / there is a woman who lives in this city
who prays for me / every single day
- praying for strength for me praying for protection for me
A few years back one man made an appointment to meet me
and told me that God had prompted his heart
to ask me if I would let him be my rear-guard in prayer
So that as I work and pray and minister / he watches my back
I am openly asking you to be praying
for a few things crucial to the life of our church
our families / our marriages / our sons and daughters
our family altar
our mission / our evangelistic endeavour
Prayer / let us make it our core value
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