Remedy Covenant Core Value #4 – Prayer (part 1)

We live in a culture where instant gratification is the norm and a core value. Think about, we can pay instantly for our gas at the pump, we can instantly order movies off our TV service, instant messaging, next day delivery, instant approval on loans and credit cards, heck we can’t even wait for a good cup of coffee but we have to have it instant too, Facebook, Twitter, we know instantly what our friends are doing, where they are and what happened without having to actually talk with them, I mean you do don’t even have to hit ‘search’ on Google before it starts giving you search results, and you don’t have to wait for an album to hit the store and then save enough money to get it, you can now instantly buy the first single off the album for a tenth of the price.

Now is this bad? No. In fact a lot of things that are ‘instant’ help us help people better. However we need to be aware of how all the instances of instant effect our heart and mind. When everything around us moves faster and faster and becomes more instant we become conditioned to expect this out of other areas of our life. In our relationships we begin to look for quick fixes and easy hook ups, in our search for jobs we want that instant connection and can’t wait through the application process (the idea of waiting patiently through many rejected attempts of applying to a job is foreign to our current culture), and we even port this idea of ‘instant’ into our relationship with God. Sundays become an instant fix for a week of distracted atrophying spirituality at best or a week of apathetic surrender to sin at the worst. We expect to find our calling, be blessed, have victory over persistent sin in our life, and have abundant life with the same amount of gumption that we apply to those ‘friends’ on Facebook. Occasionally we check their page to see what’s up and look their photos, but really our day wouldn’t be much different if we didn’t even do that. Our church culture has at large set their status as ‘in a relationship’ with Jesus, but on the whole it is long distance relationship that bears no weight in the day to day life of believers.

So how and why must we guard our hearts against letting this ‘culture of instant’ harm our relationship with God? We must bypass the craving for instant with patience and diligence in our pursuit of God. We must patiently seek God’s presence even when the world around us is vying for our attention and we must be diligent and intentional in making time to be in God’s presence through prayer and study.

Our actions speak louder than our words, and when it comes to prayer our actions many times say that we really don’t believe in the worth of prayer. So lets reexamine what scripture says about the effects of prayer and the reason of prayer. In the book of Revelation John peels back the curtain of reality and lets us take a glimpse of what is happening in the spiritual world and how it intersects with our world. In 5:8 he paints this picture of the church falling down before the thrown of God and holding golden bowls that are full of incense and that incense he says are the prayers of the saints. A few chapters later we see what happens with that bowl full of incense:

3 Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. 4 The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. 5 Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

-Revelation 8:3-5

So John gives us this picture of our prayers being stored up in a golden censer that is at God’s disposal to ‘hurl it on the earth’. Don’t you just love the language there… our prayers are hurled! And then once they hit the earth there are peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. Didn’t know your prayers could do that did ya? But in all seriousness, the language of thunder, lightning, earthquakes and the like is the way scripture speaks of God’s activity in the world (think of Mt SInai in Exodus 19:18-20 or moments immediately following the crucifixion and resurrection Matthew 27:45-54). So the idea is that God uses our prayers to act in our world. John Wesley once said that “God does nothing except in answer to prayer”. However, many times it does seem that are prayers are ‘bouncing back off the ceiling’. Yet God hears the prayers of His children and responds in his own time. Our prayers are at His disposal. So does prayer exempt us from action? Certainly not. Keep in mind what John Bunyan said, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you will never do more than pray until you have prayed.” So the starting point for our spiritual lives and our corporate life together is prayer. Take the beginning of the church as a case in point:

12 Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk^[c^] from the city. 13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues^[a^] as the Spirit enabled them.

Acts 1:12-14, 2:1-4

Now, Jesus had told them to go back to Jerusalem and wait. But wait for what? The Holy Spirit, of course, but what does that actually look like? No one knew what it would be. But they waited and prayed, and waited and prayed. I have a feeling that if we were in this same situation our ‘superior reasoning’ would kick in and we would soon realize that we have our mission: to make disciples of nations by proclaiming the Gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. We have all the knowledge that we need… we had been with Jesus for nearly 3 years, we saw the crucifixion and resurrection. What are we waiting for? Lets go do it! However, there first reaction was to wait and pray. And this is God’s will for our lives and churches today as well: to begin by waiting and praying. We can either start on our mission and get going in our own power, or delay gratification and wait and pray. Psalm 37 tells us that if we trust in the Lord he will act, and it also admonishes us be silent before the Lord and wait patiently on Him.

If you examine the New Testament the two things that we are admonished to pray for are spiritual maturity for believers, inlcuding deliverance from temptation, and the expansion of the Gospel. While there are instances of praying for healing, for enemies, for boldness, or other petitions, the overwhelming majority of prayers in the New Testament are for the building up of believers and the expansion of the Gospel.

For the maturity of believers:

• John 17 – Jesus prays for the disciples and for the ones that will believe because of them
• Acts 8:15 – For new believers to receive the Holy Spirit
• 2 Corinthians 13:7-9 – For restoration of believers and strength during temptation
• Ephesians 1:18 – Fuller knowledge of hope for believers
• Ephesians 3:16-18 – Maturity in and knowledge of Christ’s love for believers
• Philippians 1:9 – For believers to grow in love
• Colossians 1:9 – For the knowledge of God’s will for believers
• Colossians 4:12 – For believers to stand firm, mature, and assured in the will of God
• 1 Thessalonians 3:10 – To supply what is lacking the faith of believers
• 2 Thessalonians 1:11 – For God to make the believers worthy of His calling and to produce fruit in their lives

So if it safe to assume that Paul and the other New Testament writers were in line with the will of God it is also safe to assume that at the heart of God is both the maturity of the Church and the expansion of the Gospel. So even in our prayers our ultimate goal is the fulfillment of the great commission to make disciples of all the earth.  And in praying we join in the fight for maturity of believers and the expansion of the Gospel in a real way.  Prayer is the workhorse of the Kingdom. (Romans 15:30).

To be continued…