Prayer: That Powerful, Profound Mystery

“When all else fails, pray.” How many times have you heard someone say that? Perhaps you’ve thought it yourself at times. As if the primary purpose of prayer is like sending an ‘SOS’ to God, reserved for times of crisis and distress. 

The Scriptures teach that prayer isn’t to be treated as a fire alarm for use only when all other courses of action have been exhausted. Prayer, admittedly mysterious in some respects, serves as our means for uninterrupted communication with the God of creation, the One who declares, “Call on Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3).

 

Yes, we can – and should – use prayer to present urgent needs to the Lord. That’s what Jonah did after spending three days and nights inside a great fish: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and You listened to my cry” (Jonah 2:2). Similar pleas for help appear in the Psalms. But we do ourselves – and God – a great disservice by limiting prayer to crisis management.

 

Recently I found these comments in a devotional book by Charles H. Spurgeon, the great 19^th century British preacher: “Prayer is the never-failing resort of the Christian…. Prayer is an open door which none can shut…. Prayer is never out of season…[it] gains an audience with heaven in the dead of night, in the midst of business, in the heat of noonday, and in the shades of evening…. Prayer is never futile. You may not always get what you ask, but you will always have your true needs supplied.”

 

This truth is expressed succinctly in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. It says we’re to “pray without ceasing,” while another translation expresses it in two words: “pray continually.”

 

Much is made of “the full armor of God” described by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:10-17 – “belt of truth…breastplate of righteousness…feet fitted with the gospel of peace…shield of faith…helmet of salvation…sword of the Spirit.” However, the next verse points to perhaps the most powerful weapon of all. We’re told to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” 

 

Then Paul adds, “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel…” (Ephesians 6:18-20).

 

I don’t know how many times I’ve been guilty of undervaluing prayer. Someone asks me to pray for them, and I promise I will, but then I forget. Or if I do pray, it’s more like a ritual than an act of sincere intercession. When the going gets tough, however, I suddenly remember how important prayer is.

 

I mentioned earlier that prayer is mysterious. We know from the Bible that prayer is an essential part of one’s relationship with God, but often it seems like one-way communication. Philippians 4:6-7 tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God.” It doesn’t say that He will get right back with us. Sometimes what we get is only silence. ‘Is God listening? Does He even care?’

 

This is where faith comes in. When we pray, we can’t see God, make eye contact with Him. We don’t hear an audible response. His answers to our prayers often aren’t immediate – and may be different from what we expected. As Spurgeon noted, “You may not always get what you ask, but you will always have your true needs supplied.”

 

How, then, are we to pray? Years ago, a friend, Bob Foster, offered a simple acronym that can help us in shaping our prayers and not saving them for emergencies only. The acronym is ACTS:

A – Adoration. For all that He is and all that He has done, is doing and will do, God deserves our sincere and fervent praise.

C – Confession. Even if we are born again, “in Christ” as 2 Corinthians 5:17 states, sin remains a perpetual problem. Jesus Christ died on the cross, paying the penalty for our sins, but when we do sin we confess, acknowledging them and repenting to restore our healthy relationship with the Lord.

T – Thanksgiving. God is at work in our lives every day, often in ways we don’t even recognize. In prayer we express our gratitude for what we know He has done – and for the things we haven’t realized, at least not yet.

S – Supplication. This is where we present needs to the Lord – our own needs and concerns, as well as the needs of friends, family members, our communities, missionaries, people in distant lands, and whatever He brings to our minds.

 

As I write this, I’m convicted that my own prayer life isn’t what it should be. We’re busy people, easily distracted, focused on myriad important and urgent things that must be addressed. But it may be that prayer is the most important thing we can do – even today. Even right now.

Genuine Faith Should Be Multi-Generational

One of the memories from my days as a community newspaper editor in Tomball, Texas is an interesting fellow I got to know through my participation in the local Rotary Club. His name was Jimmy Tanner, and he regarded himself as the club’s poet laureate.

He’d get up near the start of the meetings and announce, “Gen’men, I’m gonna recite for you a little piece of poemtry.” (That’s correct, Jimmy would say, “poemtry.”) Then he’d repeat the same poem he’d offered to us the preceding week:

“Now a bell isn’t a bell until it’s rung,

And a song isn’t a song until it’s sung.

Now love wasn’t given in our hearts to stay –

For love isn’t love until you give it away.”

 

Simple, yet profound. Because if you don’t want a bell to ring, why make it? If you don’t want a song to be sung, why write it? And most important, love unexpressed isn’t love at all. It needs to be communicated and demonstrated to the object of affection.

In a similar sense, genuine faith in Jesus Christ needs to be shared. Some people might argue, “Faith is a personal matter.” However, if trusting in Christ and committing our lives to Him is as important as we think it is, failure to share our beliefs and what the Bible teaches can be summed up in one word: Unloving.

 

In Evening by Evening, a devotional book by Charles H. Spurgeon, he offers a biblical example of how naturally the sharing our faith should be. Andrew, who was an eager disciple of John the Baptist, had encountered Jesus and decided to follow Him. After spending the day with the Lord, “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah’…. And he brought him to Jesus” (John 1:41-42). Andrew knew the news was too good to keep to himself. (You might recall the impact it had on Simon, whom Jesus later renamed Peter.)

 

One of the wonders of Christianity is its growth from a tiny handful of faithful followers of Jesus into today’s vast global movement. In 2020, the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated more than two billion professing Christians worldwide. One reason is that from the beginning, God intended for faith to be multi-generational.

 

Speaking to Abraham, whom God had chosen to become “the father of many nations,” He said, “I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, to be your God and the God your descendants after you” (Genesis 17:4,7). 

 

Later He affirmed this promise: “I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies. And through your offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Genesis 22:17-18).

 

This covenant – God’s unilateral commitment – didn’t waver over the passage of time. In one of his psalms, King David wrote, “Descendants will serve Him; the next generation will be told about the Lord. They will come and tell a people yet to be born about His righteousness – what He has done” (Psalm 22:30-31).

 

And speaking through the prophet Isaiah, despite His chosen people’s repeated waywardness and rebellion, God offered this reaffirmation: “‘As for Me, this is My covenant with them,’ says the Lord. ‘My Spirit, who is on you, and My words that I have put in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever,’ says the Lord” (Isaiah 59:21).

 

In the New Testament we find this divine promise expanding beyond the people of Israel and their direct descendants. “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12-13).

 

And Galatians 3:29 declares, “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.” Can you imagine? As followers of Jesus, we can trace our spiritual lineage back to Abraham, thousands of years ago. But it’s not to stop with us. We have the great privilege of passing our faith along to future generations.

 

Our first “mission field” should be in our own homes – our families. In the same devotional entry, Spurgeon said, “You may or may not be called to evangelize the people in any particular locality. But certainly you are called to look after your own relatives and acquaintances.”

 

Concerning this, the apostle John stated, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4). This obviously applies to one’s biological children, but isn’t limited to them. As we read in Acts 2:38-39, “Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

 

Many other passages address the multi-generational dimension of faith, but the apostle Paul summed it up writing to his protégé, Timothy: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2). This single verse presents four generations of believers: “you” (Timothy), “me” (Paul), “reliable men,” and “others.”

A question worth asking is whether we’re actively taking part in God’s multi-generational parade of faith. And if not, why not? To paraphrase Jimmy Tanner’s little poem, “Now faith wasn’t given in our hearts to stay – for faith isn’t faith until you give it away.”