Thursday, April 9, 2009 10:36 PM CDT
CLERGY VIEW: 'No Christian is greater than his prayer life'
By Sr. Chaplain Susan Westfall, International Fellowship of Chaplains
“No Christian is greater than his prayer life.” — Leonard Ravenhill, in Why Revival Tarries.
I was recently asked to coordinate a time of prayer for an upcoming outreach so I’ve been doing an extra bit of studying on corporate prayer. An offshoot of that has been a heightened awareness not only of my own prayer life, but also the prayer lives of my fellow believers.
Overall, I’ve been greatly disheartened to discover how many fellow Christians, including pastors, elders, Sunday school teachers, and youth group leaders who do not have a consistent, daily time of Bible reading and personal communication (prayer time) with Jesus.
Oh, we say that we want to be like Jesus. We go to church, we sing, we teach, we preach, live fairly moral lives, and do just about everything except the one thing we need to do, which is pray. Don’t believe me? At your next Bible study, ask people to pray out loud…
I’m afraid that Christianity has become yet another religion, full of empty, hollow rituals that do nothing more than make us feel good about ourselves and look down on those who do not profess to be Christians. We are on the treadmill of life, trying to relate to God on the basis of our “good works” instead of that personal relationship (prayer time).
Think of what we are missing. Pastor Damian Kyle of Calvary Chapel, Modesto, Calif., said it this way, “We are not like everyone else in the world; we are Christians. We claim an association with the true and the living God and people are coming to conclusions about our God upon the basis of the life we live.”
If our lives are not that much different from our non-Christian neighbors (many polls indicate such), what does that say about our God? I believe this is related to our lack of daily prayer.
I am developing a deeper understanding of 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If My people will humble themselves and pray….” If those of us who claim to be His people, would lay down our facades, perhaps this Easter Sunday, and cry out to God and ask Him to reveal Himself anew to us, what transformation could take place in our lives and in our churches?
Could we honestly evaluate our lives before Him, before His Word? Do we really know this Jesus about whom we read? Do we know Him personally? Do we regularly communicate with our Father in heaven? Father, teach us to pray!
John 10:27 says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” Do you hear His voice? If not, may I challenge you to re-evaluate your relationship with God?
God loves you. His love was demonstrated 2,000 years ago in flesh and blood. We are about to celebrate His resurrection this weekend. Those nails did not hold the Son of God to the cross. It was His love that held Him there. (I think that’s a song.) Love. God has done so much to prevent us from ever having to face the judgment of all our wrong choices in life. And yet, He loves us so much that He will not force us to accept that provision.
But once we do accept that free gift, God beckons us to walk with Him on a daily, personal basis. He will be as involved in our lives as we allow Him to be. This is what Christianity is all about, Kyle says, “becoming saved, beginning a personal relationship with God, and then continuing in it, walking with God day by day and asking Him to direct our mouths, our thinking, our hearing, our hands, our feet, our minds, and our lives by His Holy Spirit for His glory.” Prayer is the connecting point.
Come Monday morning, with God’s help, let’s re-arrange our priorities and follow in Jesus’ footsteps, “Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed.”
I have found Ravenhill’s words to be true in my own prayer life, and I trust you will discover the same. Happy Resurrection Sunday.
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just watching wrote on Apr 13, 2009 11:54 AM: