Prayer

Covered in Prayer?

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

“It is no marvel that the pulpit is so powerless and ministers so often disheartened when there are so few who hold up their hands …. O, you blood bought churches, your ministers need your prayers!” (Gardiner Spring)

Is there any inconsistency between what we say and what we practice in regard to prayer and preaching?  If we, as preachers, genuinely believe that our preaching is dependent for its power not on technique, ability, skill, etc., but rather on the power of God Himself.  If we, as preachers, are aware of the spiritual battle that rages among believers and not-yet-believers during the weekly routine of church life.  If we, as preachers, are aware of our own struggles and weaknesses in the complex experience of life and ministry.  Well . . . shouldn’t the pursuit of prayer for the ministry be paramount in our many lists of priorities?

Do we diligently seek out prayer partners and ask them to stand with us?  Not because we are somehow special individuals, but because the ministry we are involved in is itself a special task for which we are inadequate?  Do we express to our listeners our need for prayer, or do we give the impression, even inadvertently, that we have it all together?

And finally, what about intercessory prayer meetings before and during and after the preaching of the Word?  In some circles this is standard practice.  In others it is unheard of.  Why?  If it is a spiritual battle, if it is by God’s strength alone, if it is a task too great for us to handle in our strength, then why not?  As I look back on last Sunday’s ministry, perhaps my greatest regret is that I didn’t request a simultaneous prayer gathering – even just two or three people praying for those listening, for the one speaking, for God’s power in it all.

(And just to be consistent with what I have written, here’s a link to our last couple of mini-updates . . . if you can spare a couple of minutes, I’d really value your prayers – http://pouredout.org/?page_id=580 – let me know if you’d like to receive our prayer letter regularly.)

Short Cuts to Nowhere Good

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

There are a couple of short-cuts taken by many preachers that need to be highlighted for the sake of Biblical Preaching.  Please be sure to read the explanation as well as the heading (it’s amazing how people miss the point of what’s written sometimes!)

1. Prayer. Prayer is not a short-cut.  It is a necessity.  It is critical.  However, it is not a short-cut.  In fact, praying in preparation will probably make the preparation take longer, but it is worth the longer journey.  Many preachers think that all they need to do is pray and then preach their impressions.  This is neither pleasing to the Lord nor helpful for the listeners.  Why do some preachers think God is so pleased when they essentially dismiss the Bible by skirting around the study process in preparation?  I suspect that if we pray “Lord, please show me what I should say from this text!” that His answer would include “I want you to say what the text says.” God takes His Word very seriously, so should we, and prayer is not short-cut around the blessing of spending significant time and effort wrestling with the true and exact meaning of the passage.

Tomorrow I will add another short-cut that is not worth taking if we are to be Biblical Preachers!

Sacred Substitutes

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Just following up on Monday’s post on prayer . . . I appreciate the next chapter in Piper’s Brothers We Are Not Professionals – Beware of Sacred Substitutes.  What is the greatest threat to genuine prayer and true meditation on the Word?  It is ministry activity.  “Ministry is its own worst enemy.”  (p59)

How true this is!  Turning to Acts 6:2-4, Piper exhorts the reader to guard against the many sacred substitutes, the real needs, the pressing concerns of ministry.  “Without extended, concentrated prayer, the ministry of the Word withers.” (p60)

Consider what must be sacrificed in order to take genuinely focused time in prayer this week.  Don’t leave prayer until your message is prepared.  Don’t leave prayer until the unplanned needs are addressed.  Don’t leave prayer until your next day off.  Don’t even leave prayer until it can be used to “redeem the time” in the car journey between appointments.

There are many sacred substitutes that come our way.  Even apart from the flesh, laziness, entertainment, and the enemy himself.  Just in the good and the right and the needy and the appropriate – there are many substitutes that will steal us away from the real priority.  “Without extended, concentrated prayer, the ministry of the Word withers.”

Refuse to Believe

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I’m scanning through John Piper’s Brothers We Are Not Professionals.  I resonate deeply with some of what he writes, then disagree with other elements – I suppose that makes for an engaging read.  Anyway, here’s an “I resonate” for us all to ponder in relation to preaching ministry:

“Prayer is the translation into a thousand different words of a single sentence: “Apart from me [Christ] you can do nothing” (John 15:5)

Oh, how we need to wake up to how much “nothing” we spend our time doing.  Apart from prayer, all our scurrying about, all our talking, all our study amounts to “nothing.”  For most of us the voice of self-reliance is ten times louder than the bell that tolls for the hours of prayer.  The voice cries out: “You must open the mail, you must make that call, you must write this sermon, you must prepare for the board meeting, you must go to the hospital.”  But the bell tolls softly: “Without Me you can do nothing.”

Both our flesh and our culture scream against spending an hour on our knees beside a desk piled with papers.” – Page 55

I don’t think I need to add much to this.  Amen, perhaps?  It is easy to respond to the conviction felt within by agreeing that we need to pray more.  It is easy to look ahead and imagine a change of circumstance in which we would pray more.  It is easy to spot a time later in the week when prayer may fit more easily than the current pressing situation.  Why not stop everything now and pray for an hour or two?  What’s more important?  What would the negative consequences be, really?  Ok, one more sentence to finish the post:

“Refuse to believe that the daily hours Luther and Wesley and Brainerd and Judson spent in prayer are idealistic dreams of another era.” – Page 57.

Patient Expectation

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Preaching ministry requires patience, not just passion.  It requires prayer, not just power.  It is about long-term faithfulness, not just fireworks.  As we head into another Sunday, let’s keep our thinking straight.  God is at work in the lives of His people, Christ is building His church, the Spirit is working all week in all manner of ways.  We stand to preach and we do so as part of God’s greater work in and through the church.

We should preach with prayer-fueled passion and faith-filled expectation.  Yet we must also preach with patient trust in God’s timing.  We preach for the small step forward unheralded during the handshakes and not just the dramatic outbreak of revival heralded in the Christian press.  We preach for small pieces of an invisible puzzle to move into place, for links to be added to a private chain, for unannounced questions to be answered in the quiet of a struggling heart.  Every Sunday cannot be earth-shaking, but every Sunday can be eternity-shaping.

We preach not for the glory of man, but for the glory of God.  So often His glory is tied to his loving patience and not just to His dramatic outpourings for the content of another bestselling paperback.  As we’ve said before, so we must say again this Sunday – we preach by faith.  By faith trusting that the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever, will as always be working out His purposes in far too many ways for us to realize.  We know the end of the story, so let’s not lose heart during the quieter chapters when so much is achieved behind the scenes, in the hearts, in private struggles, in personal journeys.  Let’s preach today with prayerful, faith-filled, passionate, and indeed, patient expectation.