So I heard this story about one my fellow team-mates and it really struck me as a powerful testimony to the power of prayeful faith. I’ve known his testimony for a long time, but I heard this particular part of it for the first time today I really wanted to share it. My team-mate Blair has not exactly grown up as a Christian; in fact he only became a Christian a matter of months before coming on this trip. He has an amazing testimony of how God changed his life of drug and alcohol addiction into who he is today: a solid and faithful, passionate man of God. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to share his whole story, and I don’t think I could really do it justice anyway, so let me just share this one part:
Blair did not grow up in a Christian family. His father left when he was young, and his mother did the best she could to raise him alone I think. Although she was never a firm believer in God, she did have some small seed of faith in her life, and would pray every day. So when Blair started to get more and more involved in drugs and alcohol, she prayed harder and harder. Eventually it came to the point where Blair could no longer live at home anymore, and he was forced out. But still his mom continues to pray. Eventually God finds his way into Blair’s life and frees him from that former life. He goes through rehab and begins to change his life around completely. He quit the rock band that he was part of and spent all his free time in prayer and Bible study. Basically he showed everyone that God has the power to change peoples’ lives, even today.
Later on Blair looks back at his mother’s journal to find that every day after he had been forced out of the house his mother had written in her prayer journal for him. She was not even a believer yet, but she faithfully lifted him up in prayer, and her prayers were answered. And today they are both firm believers in the power and presence of God. I think it’s pretty clear we don’t see this happening very often any more. Why is it that we don’t see God moving in powerful ways like that? It was certainly common place for the early church, and during revivals and in other countries of the world. BUT WHY NOT HERE? I think that we don’t see God working in amazing ways, because we aren’t living by faith in Him. In all reality we don’t need to have faith in God any longer, because we are secure in our material things, our weekly church services and our safe prayers. How often do we put ourselves in a position that demands faith? How often do we pray for something passionately, expectantly, and faithfully: something that we cannot do on our own. Perhaps if we had faith like that, then God would reveal himself to us in new and exciting ways.
Some quotes on prayer:
“The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God’s standing challenge, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not!'” (J. Hudson Taylor)
“Satan trembles when he sees the weakest Christian on his knees.”
“I look at a stone cutter hammering away at a rock a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the 101st blow it slpits in two. I know it was not the one blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Matt, have you ever heard of the International House of Prayer? They do night and day prayer together with singing and reading the Word.
I went to a conference they put on in Kansas City called Onething 08. It was incredible. There were 15,000 people there. The worship was so anointed and the teaching was rich. It focused on the end times and the book of Revelation. I responded to a call for forerunnerspeople committing to a lifestyle of prayer and fasting in the spirit of John the Baptist to prepare the day of the Lord, this time for his second coming.
They talked about how the understanding and expression of Christianity is going to change in a single generation, to be focused and founded on prayer. They charged churches to spend half their budget on prayer. They talked about how it will be our prayers that hasten the day of the Lord and release his judgments. And the Lord will not return until the whole bride agrees and says, “Come!” Right now too many Christians simply don’t long for his return.
May the Spirit continue to guide you into all truth.
Your brother
I have heard of IHOP before, I remember a group from Taylor going there last year as well.
I would love to see an entire generation of believers change their focus on prayer. That’s also great that there are people making commitements to live as John the Baptist did: a lifestyle of absolute simplicity, and focused on God. I would also add that John also preached: a baptism of repentance. And not different from our own world, in John’s day the leading teachers and preachers of the Word were some of the worst hypocrits of all. They are the ones who claim to have all the knowledge, all the law, and all the righteousness. John was the “forerunner” to truly upset the common thinking of the day.
I sometimes have to rethink our idea of “desiring Christ’ return,” because I fear that that is all we do is hope. It’s true we have hope in a better future, but there is much to be done now: there are many who are still in bondage of sin, and there are a great many who have never even heard of Jesus Christ before. Matthew 24:14 says “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
Obviously we can’t know when God has determined for the end to come, surely the day is soon. But until then, we must do as you suggested: we must live as John the Baptist, focused on prayer, fasting, and preaching a baptism of repentance to the world.