PRAYER

“Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what He did for me. For I cried out to Him for help, praising Him as I spoke. If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer. Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer or withdraw His unfailing love from me.” (Psalm 66:16-20)

There are three points in this passage to receiving answers to prayer:

1. Confession of sin – personal and corporate: “If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (verse 18)

2. Prayer itself: “For I cried out to Him for help …… But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer.” (verses 17 and 19)

3. Praise: “For I cried out to Him for help, praising Him as I spoke. ……. Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer or withdraw His unfailing love from me.” (verses 17 and 20)

1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to “pray continuously” or as some versions translate it: “Never stop praying”.

And Acts 2:47 tells us that the first Christians devoted themselves to prayer: “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.”

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD” or as other translations put it: “Come now, let us settle the matter” (Isaiah 1:18)

Some quotes on prayer by previous saints of God:

E.M. Bounds who was an American minister and theologian who wrote 11 books, nine of which focused on the subject of prayer.

“Spiritual work is taxing work, and men are loath to do it. Praying, true praying, costs an outlay of serious attention and of time, which flesh and blood do not relish.”

“The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.”

“What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer.”

“The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. Little prayer, little power, much prayer much power.”

From a prophet of God, Leonard Ravenhill:

“The true church lives and moves and has its being in prayer”

“No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”

“Prayer is not an argument with God to persuade him to move things our way, but an exercise by which we are enabled by his Spirit to move ourselves his way.” – and after all isn’t that what we want and what I have been talking about.

“Surely revival delays because prayer decays.”

“If we are weak in prayer, we are weak everywhere.”

From A. W. Tozer:

“Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God where miracles seem tame … by comparison.”

“The key to prayer is simply praying.”

From Charles Spurgeon:

“To pray is to enter the treasure-house of God and to gather riches out of an inexhaustible storehouse.”

“He who knows how to overcome with God in prayer has heaven and earth at his disposal.”

On the subject of prayer we need to understand:

No revival has ever been started without prayer.

No churches have ever grown without prayer.

Without prayer, in the end we may have a few, or even many, programs that have worn us out – and yet we will have accomplished nothing eternally of value for the Kingdom.

“Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” (Psalm 127:1)

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