Tag: prayer

Prayer of Confession

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
Nothing of eternal significance happens apart from God.  Jesus said it clearly in John 15:5 – “Apart from me you can do nothing.”  There is simply no substitute for a close relationship with God.  The will of God can only be accomplished through the spiritual practice of prayer.  Prayer is by no means a passive activity, but an active engagement with the God of the universe.  If done well, prayer takes time, a great deal of effort, and a keen sense of priority.  It is quite possible that biblical praying can be the most challenging, exhausting, laborious, and rewarding thing we do.
 
            Through prayer we can become filled with the Holy Spirit, gain wisdom to make godly decisions, and access spiritual power that can melt the hardest of hearts and change the minds of the most stubborn of people.  In prayer we have the privilege of expressing our concerns and needs, as well as having God’s agenda revealed to us for what to do.  What is more, our personal and corporate holiness is in direct proportion to the great task of prayer.
 
            When faced with the reality that Jerusalem was in trouble, Nehemiah prayed (Nehemiah 1).  In prayer he owned the problems that Jerusalem faced of having its walls broken down and its people unprotected.  Nehemiah, along with Ezra the priest and scribe, sought the spiritual health as well as the physical well-being of the Israelites left in the land after being conquered by the Babylonians.  Nehemiah owned Israel’s problems through a prayer that emphasized and reminded God of his covenant with his people; he confessed the sins by which Israel violated that covenant; and held onto the promise that God would lift the curse on the city if the people would repent.
 
            Nehemiah had a compassionate heart that did not ignore what was going on in his native land, but wept, mourned, and fasted and prayed.  He had a deep concern for and was profoundly disturbed by the news that Jerusalem was in trouble.  Rather than being preoccupied with himself, or turning his back on what was going on and focusing on his own new life in Babylon, he sought to do something about the security and spiritual health of his people.
 
            In his prayer to God, Nehemiah was genuine, persistent, confident, humble, and submissive to God.  He did not distance himself from the sins of the people, but clearly identified with them through a prayer of confession.  That confession was intense, honest, real, and urgent.  Sin always needs to be identified, acknowledged, and pardoned.  If it isn’t, there is no hope for things to be different.  It only makes sense for the contemporary church to recover and practice having a prayer of confession in each and every worship service.  Sin is not just personal and individual; sin resides in the community, and so requires a corporate confession and repentance.
 
            There is a season for everything.  Deer season may come and go, but it is always open season for prayer.  And Nehemiah’s prayer is a solid biblical model for us to emulate.  The church will always have her challenges and problems to face.   Like Nehemiah, let’s own those challenges through prayer that is biblically focused, compassionately offered, and spiritually curious to know and do God’s agenda for our lives and our churches.
 

 

            Throughout this Advent season, let’s have a spirit of prayer to God in everything we say and do – prayerful spirits that above all seeks God’s will, and doing that will through God’s love as we anticipate the coming of our Savior.

Remembering Prayer

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
The early believers in Jesus turned to God in a time of persecution, found comfort in how God had worked in the past, and claimed the strength to carry on with speaking about Christ in their everyday lives.  When the church heard about the threats against the apostles, they did not get angry about how awful the government is, or upset about how terrible things were, but decided to concentrate on corporate prayer together (Acts 4:23-31).
 
            God is going to do what God is going to do.  No government, no nation, no group of people, and no one person can ever thwart God’s agenda for his world and his church.  Since it is true that God is sovereign over everything, our place is to decide whether we will participate in that agenda through the ministry of prayer and speaking the word of God or whether we will let God use other people’s prayers and other people’s speech.  There is nothing on earth or in heaven that is quite like letting God use usto accomplish his purposes.
 
            Just as God has acted in the past, so God is still in the business of transforming lives for his glory and forming faithful disciples of Jesus.  If it can happen in ancient Jerusalem; if it can happen throughout the history of the church; if it can happen in other places around the word, it can happen today with me and you.
 
            Prayer is to be like the oxygen we breathe – more of God, less of me.  Prayer in Scripture often takes the form of first remembering what God has done in the past.  Then, it moves on to praying specifically for current situations that connect to the larger purposes of what God is doing.  All the while we are to be anticipating that God will hear and act, just like he has done throughout history.
 
            Remembrance is an important dimension to biblical prayer.  Remembering is necessary because we have a tendency toward forgetfulness.  The older we get the more we tend to forget, probably because we have so much to remember!  So, continually rehearsing what God has done keeps us grounded in Scripture and tethered to what God can do now and in the future.  Remembering God’s saving actions and finding our own personal stories and circumstances in his grand story helps us to pray rightly and pray in ways that are according to God’s will.
 
            God will work out his plans and his purposes, even using people whom have no acknowledgment of God.  Since God is sovereign and rules over everything and everyone, he is never surprised by our troubles and our tough situations.  And God is never frustrated by people acting badly, because his divine providence and guiding hand is in control, even if we cannot always perceive it or cannot see it in the moment.
 
            It is interesting that believers of Jesus in the New Testament did not pray for relief from oppression or for God to judge their persecutors.  Instead, they prayed for boldness to speak the word of God in the middle of their trouble.  They rightly discerned from remembering about who God is and what he is about that they needed to pray for courage to speak about Jesus.  They prayed for God to act in power, not to deliver them from harm, but for God’s Word to go forth, and Christ’s Name to be glorified.
 
            Do our prayers sound like that?  When, in the face of trouble and problems, do we ask for boldness so that God’s saving plan would continue unabated?  We need to have prayers that all believers, including me, would have Spirit-filled speech that will impact and persuade others with Jesus.  First century believers prayed to see God stretch out his hand and perform miracles, and that those acts of healing in Jesus’ name would confirm the message that Jesus is real, that through his death on a cross and his rising from death would transform sinfulness and misuse of power into the same mercy and grace that were displayed by our Lord himself. 
 
            If you are at all normal, you will yearn for the same kind of boldness that was displayed by the early church, and, at the very same time, totally fear getting that kind of prayer answered!  It is scary because this is more than just trying to overcome some feeling of awkwardness or shyness.  There was, for ancient believers praying a prayer for boldness, a very real and immediate danger to speaking up about Jesus.  I’m sure it did not feel good for Peter and John to be silenced by the authorities and told that they had better not talk about this matter of Jesus again (Acts 4:16-18).
 
            What we need more of today are people who know how to ask good questions and have the patience and attention to listen well and respond thoughtfully, rather than just giving out answers to questions that people aren’t asking.  Speaking about Jesus does not mean that we have to go and knock on doors and make spiritual cold calls.  Instead, it mostly means speaking casually, one-on-one, with a friend, co-worker, neighbor, or family member that you already know.  Too often we might try to fly under the radar and avoid people because we think that speaking of Jesus is going to be too difficult, too hard, or just out of our league.
 
            Speaking with confidence and courage about Jesus is not so much telling people what they ought to believe; it is rather like sharing a precious gift with someone.  It begins in relationships with people we care about, and extends to a relationship with God.  It is more about discovering God together, and helping lead another to a life transforming relationship with Jesus, instead of only trying to bring them to church.  If we are Christians, we all have a personal story about what God means to us, and what he has done for us that we can share with another.
 

 

            When we link our prayers to what God has done in the past with what he is doing in the present, this is worship.  When we pray for boldness and courageously make ourselves available to God then we are offering our lives to God as living sacrifices which is our spiritual act of worship.  Who knows?  After praying we might find our meeting place shaken, lives transformed, and everyone filled with God’s Holy Spirit.  May it be so.

The Daily Office of Prayer

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

 

          

          I think that one of the things the season of Advent does for us is really expose that the trajectory of our daily schedules tend to revolve around, well, me! As believers in Jesus most of us would like to have our everyday center in Christ. But it does not often happen for a host of reasons, not the least for all the many responsibilities we have.

Now, hang with me for a moment. I think one of the great tasks of all churches, ministries, and individual Christians is to be both indigenous and catholic. What I mean, is that we are to live our lives in such a way as to express our faith in ways that are realistic and consistent with the society and culture that we are in, but to do it in such a way that connects us with what Christians of all times and all places have done throughout history and do now all across the world. It is to this last point that we tend to woefully fail and find ourselves living a bifurcated existence with no relation between our faith and our work.

One of the things that has been done throughout church history and can help connect us to Christ each day what is called the “daily office.” This is a routine and rhythm of short prayers throughout the day that center in the life and death of Jesus. Hippolytus, a third century father of the faith, instructed Christians to pray immediately after waking up for God’s presence through the day, at nine in the morning remembering that Christ was nailed on the cross, at noon because of the darkness that fell over the earth, at three in the afternoon to mark the death of Jesus, and before bed to give one’s life over to God.

The idea here is to always have Christ in your mind so that you do not succumb to temptation and live, instead, according to God’s will. No matter where you are, at set times in your day, you can pray in your heart or out loud remembering Jesus and offering yourself to him, pressing the effects of Christ’s redemptive events further and deeper into your heart. Why not give it a try? The only thing to lose here is a few ungodly thoughts and selfish decisions in your day. May you find peace in the coming of Christ.

Prayer and Providence

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

 

          Prayer – the very word itself sometimes evokes feelings of guilt that we don’t do it more.  The core and essence of church leadership is prayer and the ministry of the word (Acts 6:4).  Yet, prayer is often not at the center of ministry, being pushed to the margins by the rigors and demands of administrative tasks, meetings, and people problems.  We desire to pray, but don’t pray enough or as much as we want. Sometimes the issue is not that we don’t pray; the problem is that we don’t persevere in prayer. Instead of taking the legalistic route of exhorting you that you should stop being so lazy and get on your knees (not very inspiring, is it?), let’s consider God for a moment.

Our Triune God is the Creator of the universe. Everything is his, and he is sovereign over all. His relationship to his creatures is what we call “providence.” God’s providence means that he is intimately involved in the world he has made. The Lord sustains and governs all creation. We, as the apex of his creation, are totally and completely dependent upon him. All creation was pronounced “good” because it came from God, who himself is good. Events, then, that happen in God’s world are neither random and by chance, nor deterministic and by fate.

The providence of God is working to fulfill his good plans in the world. God is, therefore, concerned to use human prayers to accomplish that plan so that intercession is integral to God’s design, and not in contradiction to it. God is present and active in human lives. Question and answer 28 of the Heidelberg Catechism states, “How does the knowledge of God’s creation and providence help us? We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.”

Want to pray? Think about God, and be inspired to pray because of our great dependence upon him for everything, and since everything God does is good. Please join with me in prayer that God would save a whole bunch of people, and bring them into the life of the church. Even so, come Lord Jesus.