The worst sin is prayerlessness. Overt sin or crime or the glaring inconsistencies which often surprise us in Christian people are the effect of this or its punishment. We are left by God for lack of seeking Him.
P. T. Forsyth1
We are not free to pray or not to pray, nor to pray only when we feel so inclined. For prayer is not an activity which is natural to us. Prayer is a grace, and we can expect this grace only from the Holy Spirit.
Karl Barth2
Before any habit can be broken or formed, we need to become convinced that change is necessary. Until then, nothing will happen. The natural inclination of our psyches is to maintain the status quo. Something needs to happen to get us off dead center.
What can move us off dead center? Often the happening is the result of an accumulated unhappiness at the way life is going.3 Other times it’s a specific incident, something we read, or a friend finally setting us straight.
Theophan the Recluse wrote at length about what it takes to incite change. Change begins “the moment your heart starts to be kindled with divine warmth. But you must realize that this kindling cannot take place in you while the passions are still strong and vigorous. Passions are the dampness in the fuel of your being, and damp wood does not burn. There is nothing else to be done except to bring in dry wood from outside and light this, allowing the flames from it to dry out the damp wood, until this in its turn is dry enough to begin slowly to catch alight.”4
The “dry wood” brought in from the outside differs from person to person. Some of us require oak logs; others of us are warmed by birch. The following four accounts illustrate quite different ways in which the recognition of our inherent need for prayer becomes real. Perhaps you’ll find yourself in one of them.
Learning Through Personal Trial
John Frey and his wife were driving on Interstate 80 across the flat plains of Nebraska. The monotony of the long drive ended in Kearney, where Frey had a heart attack.
Frey is telling the story in his sunshine-filled office at his Midwest church. At sixty-five years of age, Frey is preparing to retire after more than forty years of pastoring several Christian Reformed churches, but his full head of thick white hair and his trim build suggest a younger man, certainly not one who experienced a life-threatening heart attack just twelve months earlier.
“As I lay in the hospital bed,” he says, “I saw nothing but billowing clouds of the most intense white I have ever seen. Psalm 103:2, 3 ran across my mind: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases.’ I had been lying there in extreme pain, but all of a sudden I got a peace that was beyond understanding. I felt clean. It was as if I was being cleansed to match the clouds I was seeing. It’s a fabulous experience to know you can be on the verge of death and be calm and feel clean before a righteous God.”
Frey had been airlifted from Kearney to Lincoln where doctors performed bypass heart surgery. But the story for Frey and his wife was the prayer support they received from others. Never before had prayer seemed so essential, so like food and air to their wilting spirits.
“A Baptist church in Kearney befriended my wife the days we were there. The pastor came daily to pray with me. When we got to Lincoln, a family we didn’t know that lived near the hospital opened their house to my wife and daughters. God’s salt is sprinkled throughout society. When you need it, it’s there. That experience taught me more about prayer.
“I had long known the value of personal prayer. I attended the International Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis in 1969, and there I learned to be open to the moving of the Holy Spirit. I found a freedom in prayer that I didn’t have before. I realized God didn’t want John Frey to be anyone but John Frey. I found a joy in the ministry I never had until that time.
“Those two experiences—the Congress on Evangelism and the heart attack—taught me what I know about prayer. I’m not a perfect pray-er by any means. But I never underestimate its importance. And I’m always open to learning more as God teaches.”
Learning Through People’s Needs
For Doug Hazen, prayer became vital when he felt a burden for the community of Eugene, Oregon: “Last February three things happened almost simultaneously that convinced me to pray for our community.
“First, we had an evangelism conference here at the church, which sensitized me to the needs of this community.
“Second, I read a study done by a University of Washington sociologist that concluded that Eugene had one of the lowest rates of church attendance of any community in the country. The study also showed there was a direct relationship between low church attendance and cult activity. That’s certainly true in Eugene. We’re in the top ten in cult activity and the last of the 215 communities rated in church attendance.
“Third, economic conditions here are not good. We have a couple of families in our church with small businesses who are facing bankruptcy right now.
“I did a lot of thinking about that on my daily commute. I sensed a personal need to pray for this community. I’m just one guy out of 105,000, and I realize I can’t change the world in my own power. But I do have the power of the Holy Spirit to draw from, and the way to tap into that is through prayer.
“Now I find that the evangelizing of our community is a natural occasion for prayer. In a sense, our church’s mission forces me to pray. I don’t pray because I have to, but because it is fundamental to loving people.
“Not long ago we had a critical board meeting. Both the senior pastor and I felt under the gun, and we spent a lot of time praying about it. God gave us the wisdom to deal with the situation, and I remember how comfortable I felt about prayer being the central point of our deliberation.”
Learning Through Books
Books can teach something of life and prayer. Norris Magnuson talked about their importance to him as he sat in the special collections room of the Bethel Theological Seminary library, where he is librarian. In one corner sat F. O. Nillson’s steamer trunk that came over with the first Swedish settlers. The walls are lined with large paintings of other Swedish and Norwegian faithful who led Bethel Seminary after its founding in 1871. An ancient lectern from some early Swedish Baptist church sits imposingly in one corner.
“It’s possible to read about giants of spiritual history and feel challenged rather than guilty about the contrast between their lives and mine. For example, Frank Laubach. The story of his awakening is moving. And his little practical booklet, The Game With Minutes, on deepening one’s walk with God makes the whole process fun. Yet there’s never a question that it’s an enormously urgent undertaking.
“I have also been challenged negatively at times by the things I’ve read. P. T. Forsyth, in The Soul of Prayer, says, ‘The worst sin of all is the sin of prayerlessness.’ That jarred me. Maybe prayerlessness is the root of all negatives. If God doesn’t factor into our life in some way, we’re lost. Prayer opens our lives to God and makes us functioning Christians.5
“In The Struggle of Prayer, Donald Bloesch talks about busyness being the new holiness. I find time to be my biggest problem. Time and the fact that our culture doesn’t want the things that Christ wanted. Servitude, obedience, suffering, hanging on the cross—all of them run counter to our society’s values.6
“My models of prayer have tended to be biblical and historical. That’s probably why I’m an historian. Augustine, Luther, Wesley—all very gifted, learned, and earnest persons—were preeminently persons of prayer. Deep personal encounters with God freed them into their remarkable life works. Jonathan Edwards, the pietist Zinzendorf, Charles Finney, and other notable leaders were similarly marked by prayer. Working in the pietistic heritage of Swedish Baptists as well as in the larger evangelical awakenings, has increased my awareness of the central role of prayer in the Christian story. It has also made me agree with A. W. Tozer when he said, ‘Listen to the one who listens to God.'”
Learning Through Ministry
Prayer is not necessarily easier for men and women in local church ministry. Pressures of being “spiritual giants” can inhibit growth. The need for the church to “make it” can turn the leader into an administrator and organizer rather than a servant concerned with the spiritual well-being of those in the flock.
Scotty Clark had just resigned as pastor of the Friends Church in Silverton, Oregon. Constant bickering with the Christian education committee about church programs and infighting with the elders had destroyed what was left of his ministerial idealism. He walked into the church’s prayer chapel, raised his fist and shook it in the face of God. “If this is all there is to being a minister, then I just can’t handle it.” His anger vented, he slumped to his knees and prayed.
“I remember dissecting myself, giving the parts to God: ‘Here’s my mind, Lord, it’s yours. Here are my hands, Lord, they’re yours … I can’t handle this by myself. I’m your servant.’
“It was the most moving prayer experience I have ever had. I felt like the weight of the whole church was lifted from my shoulders, and I became filled with an energy that I haven’t experienced since.”
For thirty days he was on a spiritual high. He slept only about three hours a night. He wrote sermons that flowed in one sitting. He prayed through the list of church families daily. “When I went into the pulpit, I felt a sense of compassion for and an identity with the people that had been totally absent before.
“One Sunday shortly after this experience, I preached a sermon on Jesus’ teaching about the narrow way and the broad way. I called on the people to open themselves to the love and discipline of Christ in a fresh way. After we sang three choruses of ‘I Surrender All,’ eight people, including several elders, came to the front for prayer. Some of them were the ones I had been fighting with. I stepped from the platform and prayed with each one individually. Afterward they said, ‘Scotty, you prayed exactly what I was feeling and thinking.’ That was probably the most profound experience of discernment and positive feedback I have ever had with prayer.
“I was able to give myself to prayer and teaching the Word of God in the remaining five months of that ministry. I felt free to minister rather than trying to make the church go, and I discovered more things about true ministry than at any period of my ministry up to that point.
“Even though prayer has become a bedrock of my ministry, I’m still a babe in the woods when it comes to prayer. I’d like to have a long quiet time with the Lord every morning, but frankly I’ve never been able to achieve that. I pray on the run. When people telephone and ask for prayer, I pray with them right there over the wires. If someone stops me after the morning service and asks for prayer, I pull them aside and pray right there. I pray sentence prayers throughout the day as they become needed.
“I wish I could say I love to pray all the time, but there’s something about this flesh that resists it. I used to think that there were universally applicable techniques to learning how to do it—that if I followed them perfectly God would be pleased and prayer would be easy. I don’t believe that anymore. Now I think God calls us all to a unique style of prayer to fit us. Our task is to discover what our style is. That’s what I pray God will teach me—my style.”
The need to pray is unique. The way it finally bores its way into our souls and becomes a permanent feature of our lives is as unique as our conversion experience, for it is in fact a reflection of our relationship with God. Samuel Chadwick said, “Prayer is the privilege of sons and the test of sonship. It would seem as if God divides all men into the simple classification of those who pray and those who do not. It is a very simple test, but it is decisive and divisive.”7
One Christian leader remembered his intense search for prayer as a young pastor. “I felt so strongly that I needed to pray more; I decided to spend three days alone to fast and pray. Near the end of that time I felt an urging to call a man I had confidence in as a spiritual leader. I asked him to come pray for me.
“He lived quite a distance away and so I told him to come only if it seemed right to him. He thought about it and prayed for a day, and then said he’d come. He came, and I was all ready to prostrate myself before him and let him pray over me. Yet the first thing he did was sit down in front of me and begin to confess all his sins. I sat there thinking, What are you doing? I’m supposed to do that for you. He kept doing it, though, and I remained quiet. Finally, he said, ‘Now, do you still want me to pray for you?’
“Then I realized what he was trying to tell me. I had looked to him as a spiritual giant, able to tell me how to fill my need for prayer. He had the discernment to see that, and he wouldn’t help me until I fully realized that it was a matter between God and me. Once he saw I understood that, we began to talk about my spiritual needs.”
The need for prayer is between each person and God. He may use a friend, books, ministry, or other events to point us to that need, but those are only tools to get us face to face with God. Once there, we have a decision to make.
P. T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1916), 11.
Karl Barth, Prayer and Preaching (Naperville, Illinois: SCM Book Club, 1964), 21.
Stanton Peele, “Out of the Habit Trap,” American Health (September/October 1983): 42ff.
Igumen Valamo, The Art of Prayer (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 204-205.
Donald Bloesch, The Struggle of Prayer (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1980), 147.
Samuel Chadwick, God Listens (Westchester, Illinois: Good News Publishers, 1973), 8.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
