Prayer is a vital aspect of the Christian life and one of the highest privileges of God’s children. But it can be difficult! How then, are we to pray? And how can we persevere in prayer? By remembering the power of prayer. This power is found in the One to whom we pray. It resides the throne room of heaven, where God our Father sits eager to hear and answer the prayers of His people.
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This evening we will be continuing our series Mere Evangelism.[1] For the last few weeks we have been talking about the practice of evangelism: how to communicate the gospel, use imagery, handle objections, and expect opposition. Tonight we are going to discuss one of the vital organs to this body of evangelistic living: prayer.
Without prayer, our evangelism will be plagued by self-dependence, a deadly disease which weakens and kills any effort to serve God. Yet it is not only necessary for evangelism, but for all of Christian living. Someone once asked Charles Spurgeon which was more important, Bible-reading or prayer, to which he responded, “which is more important, breathing out or breathing in?” Prayer is an essential component to any life of faith, any relationship with God, and subsequently, any attempt to do something for God. We must pray.
But prayer is very difficult. Though it should be natural to us to speak to our heavenly Father, we all struggle with when, how, how often, or how long to pray. We need constant encouragement to remain faithful in this spiritual discipline, and we are given such encouragement in the Scriptures! I want to consider several of those tonight with you and look at prayer from a birds eye view and then take a specific look at how it applies to evangelism. We will look at four aspects of prayer: The privilege of prayer, the pain of prayer, the power of prayer, and the practice of prayer.
Continue reading “The Power of Prayer”
In Bible and Mission, Richard Bauckham seeks to respond to postmodernism’s rejection of universal metanarratives in favor of particulars by demonstrating that the Bible consistently moves from the particular to the universal, and thus, particulars are the means by which God achieves the universal. In other words, Bauckham wants to show the reader that the Christian faith is not just another universal truth claim that can be dispensed with in favor of particular or diverse expressions of religion, but that the Bible contains a series of God-ordained particulars that open the door to His universal kingdom. By establishing this movement from the particular to the universal in the Bible, Bauckham hopes to provide the reader with the ability to read the Bible in a way that takes seriously its missionary direction by taking both the particular and universal seriously, and achieving the latter via the former (11).
Before reading Putting on the Armor, I must confess that I often viewed the “armor of God” passage in Ephesians 6 as somewhat irrelevant. In a way, I knew it was probably important, but it seemed to be no more than a descriptive metaphor for walking with God, something I could easily skim over and get the point. I remember hearing a small handful of sermons or talks on the subject that seemed to trivialize the description of the armor. These talks of “praying on the armor” or “which piece of the armor are you missing?” trivialized the concepts of the passage so much that it had a negative effect on how I viewed the relevance of the verses. Dr. Lawless’ book has changed my view on the concept of the “armor” by providing me with an accurate view of the passage as a whole, helping me understand each individual piece of armor, and walking me through how to “wear” the armor in everyday life.
JARRETT FLETCHER 