Do we (do I) believe in the power of prayer? Sure I give verbal assent to it, and I even preach of it’s importance, but the fact that it still does not motivate my behavior in a significant way, shows me that I still don’t really believe it. If I/we understood what a life of prayer can accomplish, we’d seek after it with renewed enthusiasm and perseverance.
Here are a few examples of what we can expect when we live a prayer-filled life:
- We will experience unbroken fellowship with God.
- Through the unbroken fellowship with God we will experience the reproach and self-condemnation that often characterizes our life replaced with confidence in our Father.
- We will have a deep consciousness of God’s almighty grace proving that we bear His image.
- The hour of planned time of prayer will become the happiest time in our whole day, and God will use us there to share in carrying out His plans, making us a fountain of blessing to the world around us.
- We will enjoy His power flowing through us for the work to which we are called.
- The preacher will learn to receive his message from God through the power of the Holy Spirit and to deliver it in that power to his congregation.
- We will be filled with the love and zeal that will enable us in every interaction to meet and help each individual in a spirit of compassion.
- We will be, “more than conquerors through him that loved us.” We will become “ambassadors for Christ, calling all men to be reconciled to God.” These will not just be dreams or pictures of a vain imagination. By experience, we will know the all-sufficiency of grace that can do all things for us as it did for Paul.
- The prospect that opens before us the future.
- We can hardly conceive of the power God will bestow when we are freed from the sin of prayerlessness and pray with the boldness that reaches heaven in the almighty name of Christ to bring down blessing.
- What a prospect! Ministers and missionaries brought by God’s grace to pray with full faith and joy! What a difference it would make in our preaching, in our prayer meetings, in our fellowship with others! What power would fall in a prayer room, sanctified by communion with God and His love through Christ. What influence would be exercised on believers, urging them forward. How great this influence would be felt throughout the church and among the unsaved. Who knows how God might use us for His church throughout the whole world!
I know all too well what weak concepts we have concerning the promises and the power of God. I see how prone we are to backsliding, to limiting God’s power, and to deeming it impossible for Him to do greater things than we have seen. It is a glorious thing to get to know God in a new way in our prayer time. That, however, is only the beginning. It is something still greater and more glorious to know God as the All-Sufficient One and to wait on His Spirit to open our hearts and minds to receive the great things, the new things that He longs to bestow on those who wait for Him.
God’s purpose is to encourage faith in His children, His servants, so that they understand and rely upon the unspeakable greatness and omnipotence of God, so that they take literally, in a childlike spirit, this word: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Ephesians 3:20–21). Oh, that we knew what a great and glorious God we have!
Prayer is not merely coming to God to ask something of Him. It is, above all, fellowship with God and being brought under the power of His holiness and love, until He takes possession of us and stamps our entire nature with the lowliness of Christ, which is the secret of all true worship.
Questions:
- Do you long to experience God working through you to accomplish “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power?” As you read the description of what is possible if we truly lived a prayer-filled life, how does that inspire you?
- What is your dream for how God might use you for His kingdom? What great or new things can you imagine God doing through you when you wait on Him?
- How can your time with God become the happiest time in your whole day?
- What is God inspiring you to do as a result of these thoughts? Who can you ask to hold you accountable to make progress?
Adapted from Andrew Murray Living a Prayerful Life, Chapter 6
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