With all our preaching, teachings, denominations, organizing, and all, how many souls can we account for as truly converted? Some Churches and denominations have not recorded a thousand new souls in the last twenty years. We are fast becoming a generational Church (children and grandchildren …); not one with newly regenerated souls, does it mean that there are no sinners around anymore in town?
The Apostles’ ministry was marked by serial conversion of souls, they knew the master’s heartbeat, that all men be saved, thus producing an earth-shaking effect.
I am appalled and staggered with great awe to see people try to run the church without praying (using different methods and all human techniques). We have become the Galatian church who began in the spirit but wants to finish in the flesh (Gal. 3:3). Isn’t it hilarious that we have become so spiritually abnormal that we neglect the normal pattern of expanding God’s Kingdom? Throughout all ages, the Church has grown through prayer and the ministry of the word (Acts 6:4). No true church can grow without prayer; I mean soul-seeking prayer. The devil is not fighting prosperity in the church today because he knows that it has little impact in extending the kingdom of God. Let the man of God try to pray for an hour, and you’d see the attack with which the enemy will sweep in. The devil will do everything to stop a praying man and a praying Church; to stop a man’s vision and passion, is to stop the man from praying. We must repent else we be spewed out of his mouth.
We blame our deadness and failure in church growth on everything but ourselves, we even blame God for not doing what we never trusted Him for in prayer. We are expecting magic, we want to reap where we have not labored to sow, God forbid.
In the word of Leonard Ravenhill, can any man really impress God? Can we do something that will catch Him unawares? Does He not know the end from the beginning? Does He not know our thoughts from afar off? Does He not see through the future? Yet God who is all in all through all ages delights in men’s prayer. That’s why you’d see God calling us to pray throughout the scripture. This honestly I would not understand, that the God of heaven delights in the prayer of ordinary clay as we, it seems so dear to him that His children prays.
It breaks God’s heart that His children do not pray or do not know how to really pray when He has designed prayer for us to receive from heaven’s treasury – He must be grieved to see us in poverty when all things are ours.
We have been caught naked, the heathen now knows that we only boast of mighty savior whom we trust not. One sad but true assessment was best said about the Christians in India by a local boy, “brother, before now, the Hindus are willing to easily give houses to the Christians because they know we are different (in-quote) but now they won’t, there is no more difference between us, they smoke so does the Christians”, what a shame and reproach brought upon the precious name of Christ.
One man (Elijah)’s Prayer changed the course and destiny of a nation, how much the prayer of a congregation, will it not avail much more? One man’s intercession could have a saved two nations Sodom and Gomorrah if there are but ten righteous men; the praying Moses would not let God go in intercession, thus preserving the nation called Israel today even when God was willing to destroy that nation (God said, let me alone …); he must have pressed so much on God to secure such blessing. You can also change and make history in your time if you won’t let God rest until he makes your generation praise.
The suicide of the Church is self-inflicting; it is the death of prayers in our churches. I have been to many church meetings, but I have found few people attend prayer meetings. In most churches where I have labored, I found that few turn out on prayer days. Even in the prayer meetings, we hardly pray – we do more sermonizing than pray. Our insecurity in prayer is too wonderful for me, can we really hide from God? David pointed out the omnipresence of God in words like “thou knowest my thought afar off”, not even in hell or in darkness can we hide from him (Ps. 139), why then do we say or think in our hearts as Ephraim who says, “I will hide from him, He whose eyes compass the whole earth”. Can we duly confess our nakedness and poverty to Him in prayer that He might help us? Our helpless must run to Him for help, and we being naked must look to Him for dress. Shall we not run to Him who can quicken and make dead? Let not pride stand in our way of God’s saving grace. We must return to the old pattern, that ancient landmark which our master Jesus Christ laid for us. A principle of the Kingdom; engaging the Divine Being in prayer and not trusting in the arm of the flesh thus becoming accursed.
