3 Secrets of A Saint’s Prayers

What is Prayer? It may be a simple question. But in our society there are some very different notions of what ‘prayer’ is. Consider these contrasts:

Is prayer asking?  Or is it being consumed into the Deity?

Is prayer honest cognitive speech to God? Or is it mindfulness, being in the present, being at peace?

Is prayer the speech of a child to a parent, simple, desperate, and sincere. Or Is prayer a secret language known only by the sophisticated?

 

Theologian David Wells says that our culture is like an India, being ruled by a Sweden. What he means is that our cultural elites are against spirituality, while the mass of people are flooded with spiritualities.


Into such a confusing context, the church of Jesus Christ offers clarity to the most important, yet often misunderstood spiritual practices. The practice of prayer.

When the Apostle Paul (or Saint Paul if you like) thinks about connecting with Christians in Rome that he hasn’t met, he shares with them the most accessible point of Christian fellowship.

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He prays for them.

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In his letter to the church at Rome, he shares with them 3 ways that he has been praying for them:

 

First, he gives thanks to God for them [Romans 1.8]. Paul is grateful for this church. But he isn’t just happy that they are around. He acknowledges the source of this church, and the source of the benefits and blessings that this church provides— He thanks God, through Jesus Christ. You see, the gospel is always close by in Paul’s thinking. He is not just generically happy. He is thankful to God, praying because he has access to the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son— Paul’ Saviour.  Paul’s gospel is always the channel of Paul’s prayer.

 

What is he thankful for? He is thankful for their reputation as being a church characterized by faith. Imagine that. A church is famous for their faith.

 

What is faith? My sons told me I should use a definition of faith that we found in the comic book, Luther, the Graphic Novel.

“Faith is the living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times” – Martin Luther according to the comic book.

I checked the reference. The definition comes from Luther’s Preface to his commentary on Romans.

 

So Paul is thankful for the Roman church’s faith: “their living, daring confidence in God’s grace”

The Roman congregation was in the center of the Roman Empire, surrounded by the debauchery of the city known as The Great Prostitute.

 

That local church in Rome was famous for their faith.  That is a good reason for Paul to give thanks to God.

 

Second,  Paul interceded for them. Paul prayed to God, for their benefit. And he did this a lot. At every instance of his regular prayers, he always prayed for the Roman church. He never stopped praying for them.

For God is my witness,whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers,[Romans 1.9-10]

 

‘Without ceasing’ is not the sense of a vague, undefined, mystical state that you remain in. It is the idea of regular, habitual prayer. Prayers that are set aside, not extemporaneous. Prayers that are planned, regularly, not just the emergency ones.

 

And at every regular time of prayer, Paul never stopped praying for the Roman Church. This shows how important prayer was for Paul’s missionary role.

 

Third, Paul  shared with the Romans the content of what his repeated request to God was. He requested that “somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you” [Romans 1.10].  Paul did not have a specific guarantee that he would get to Rome. But he did know that he would preach the gospel before kings (Acts 9). He would speak to King Agrippa (Acts 26) , before being sent to Rome and presumably appearing before Caesar himself.

 

Paul always presented his desires to God, so that if God answered his prayer, his desires would be met in God’s way.

 

So Paul’s Gospel is the channel of his prayers.

Paul’s Gospel is the motivation  for his prayers

Paul’s Gospel is the goal of his prayers.

 

Do you know this gospel?

Do you know this ‘good news’ of the summons to believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour from the coming wrath— this Saviour who delivers to eternal life?

5 Prayers for an Outreach Event

Credit: Praying Man by Vittore Carpaccio (1466-1525), Wikipedia

Credit: Praying Man by Vittore Carpaccio (1466-1525), Wikipedia

If you are unable to attend your church’s outreach event, you still have a critical role to play, namely to pray. Outreach events are often a lot of ‘doing’ and the ‘praying’ part can be forgotten. Below is a simple guide for the hard work of praying for an outreach event.

  1. Pray for Clarity. In most outreach events, there are opportunities to be a good neighbour, but it can be easy to pass up on being clear about the gospel.  Pray that every opportunity to speak the gospel will be met with a clear, concise, winsome statement of the gospel of Christ.
  2. Pray for Soil. Jesus told the parable of the sower (Matthew 13) and distinguished different kinds of soil. There is really only two kinds, the kind that bears lasting fruit and the kind that doesn’t. We need to pray for the supernatural work of God to prepare ‘spiritual soil’ that will respond to the gospel seed sown.
  3. Pray for Harvesters. Jesus announced that the harvest was ripe and ready. The only issue was the need for harvesters (Matthew 9.37-38). Jesus said that disciples need to pray that more workers would be sent by God into the harvest. This shows the invaluable role that prayer has in God’s purposes. This command from Jesus should be obeyed leading into outreach opportunities as we pray that workers would be sent into the harvest.
  4. Pray for Unity. Jesus explicitly stated that the unity of his disciples would provide the warrant for others to know to whom they belonged. This unity is expressed in love for one another. At an event that requires organization among sinners, there will always be rough edges between people. Therefore we must pray for the unity that love for one another produces. Love is effective in this because love “covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4.8), and “bears all things” (1Cor 13.7)
  5. Pray for Compassion. Consider the compassion of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel (9.36, 14.14, 20.34). It is easy to mistakenly think of people as ‘projects’ and the goal of an outreach as letting people know how smart you are. But we need to pray to see others with the compassion that Jesus had for lost sinners. Prayer overcomes our tendencies to turn outreach into self-promotion. Prayer also reminds us most of all of Jesus’ compassion toward us—- sinners whose only boast is the mercy of the Saviour.

Remembered Revelation is the Root of Prayer

Credit: Betende Hände by Albrecht Durer, 1508, Wikipedia

Credit: Betende Hände by Albrecht Durer, 1508, Wikipedia

Prayer is an active memory recital toward the living God. In prayer, we remember both needy people and God’s revealed promises. We boldly request that God would act for the people in accord with the promises.

Paul focuses on memory in prayer in Romans 1.9. When Paul said he prays, “without ceasing I mention you”, the word “mention” is the Greek word is mneian. It is a word for ‘remembering’. It is also in the first chapter of most of his letters (Phil 1.3, Eph 1.16, 1 Thess 1.2, Philemon 1.4, 2 Tim 1.3). If we want to pray like Paul, we need to have the same focus. We need to remember.

Why is this important? Why is ‘memory’ and our prayerful ‘mentioning as remembering’ important? Because it keeps our prayers from being merely speculations. We are not imagining whatever we want. We are not ‘dreaming’. We are remembering and reciting.

There are two aspects to prayer where our remembering comes in:

Remembering God’s Word. This means that the Scriptures, and God’s revealed will in the Bible is what should shape our prayers.

Remembering Others. This means that we actively recall people and situations.  We remember people who are close to us and those far away. We remember them: from missionaries to mother-in-laws.

This is not “listening prayer” as certain modern supposedly evangelical mystics say. We are not imaginatively speculating about what God would say to us, and acting like God actually said what we have speculated.  This is extremely dangerous, but it is becoming a more mainstream practice among evangelicals.

Rather prayer is remembering what has already been revealed and requesting the living God to act based upon that prior revelation.  Remembered Revelation is the Root of Prayer.