The Power of Prayer

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason, Salt Creek Bible Church

 May 4, 2003

Have you ever wondered about the progress you are making (or perhaps, not making) in your spiritual life? What might God have to say about that? If her were to speak with us on the matter, I think He would tell us that the culprit is our neglect of prayer. Our text for today is found in James 4:2. "And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it."

The King James Version goes like this: "You have not because you ask not." The asking is praying and prayer is our topic for today.

Let’s look at prayer from several vantage points: How do children see prayer?

Dear Pastor, I know God loves me but I wish He would give me an "A" on my report card so I could be sure. Love, Theresa. (Age 8, Milwaukee)

Dear Pastor, Could you say a special blessing for my Aunt Beatrice? She has been looking for a husband for 12 years and still hasn't found one. Yours sincerely, Debbie. (Age 9, Duluth)

Dear Pastor, Do I have to say grace before every meal? Even when I am only having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Wesley. (Age 9, Baltimore)

Dear Pastor, Thank you for your sermon on Sunday. I will write more when my mother explains to me what you said. Yours truly, Justin. (Age 9, Westport)

Dear Pastor, Please pray for all the airline pilots. I am flying to California tomorrow. Laurie. (Age 10, New York City)

Dear Pastor, We say grace every night before we eat dinner even when we have leftovers from the night before. Yours truly, Jacki. (Age 9, Chicago)

Dear Pastor, I say my prayer before I eat my supper but my mother still makes me finish my spinach and drink my milk. Julie. (Age 9, Buffalo)

A friend of mine took his small son with him to town one day to run some errands. When lunch time arrived, the two of them went to a familiar diner for a sandwich. The father sat down on one of the stools at the counter and lifted the boy up to the seat beside him. They ordered lunch, and when the waiter brought the food, the father said, "Son, we'll just have a silent prayer." Dad got through praying first and waited for the boy to finish his prayer, but he just sat with his head bowed for an unusually long time. When he finally looked up, his father asked him, "What in the world were you praying about all that time?" With the innocence and honesty of a child, he replied, "How do I know? It was a silent prayer."

Let’s get a little more adult in our thinking about prayer: Luke 11:9 tells us: "Ask and it shall be given unto you."

Peter was arrested for preaching about Jesus Christ and while he was in prison the early church prayed for his safety and release. The result was that an Angel of the Lord came and set him free. Tom Watson, speaking about this incident in the life of the early church said:

The angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was prayer fetched the angel.

How important is faithfulness in prayer? Dr. Wilbur Chapman often told of his experience when, as a young man, he went to become pastor of a church in Philadelphia. After his first sermon, an old gentleman said to him, "You're pretty young to be pastor of this church. But you preach the Gospel, and I'm going to help you all I can." Dr. Chapman thought, "Here's a crank." But the man continued: "I'm going to pray for you that you may have the Holy Spirit's power upon you. Two others have covenanted to join with me in prayer for you." Dr. Chapman said, "I didn't feel so bad when I learned he was going to pray for me. The 3 became 10, the 10 became 20, and 20 became 50, the 50 became 200 who met before every service to pray that the Holy Spirit might come upon me. I always went into my pulpit feeling that I would have the anointing in answer to the prayers of those who had faithfully prayed for me. It was a joy to preach! The result was that we received 1,100 into our church by conversion in three years, 600 of whom were men. It was the fruit of the Holy spirit in answer to prayer!"

What is prayer? In its simplest form, prayer is speaking with God. Why do we pray?

God has put his infinite power at our disposal. The believers of the early church were people of great power. God’s power was manifest in the midst of the opposition they faced from the religious leaders of Judaism. According to the book of Acts, people were added to the church daily who were being saved. The church experienced explosive growth in numbers and in spiritual life as well.

The Apostles give us the key to their success in Acts 6:4 "Then we can spend our time in prayer and preaching and teaching the word." Prayer is their first priority. It is where they began their ministries.

What about us today? Our problem is that we are just too busy to pray. The result is that we are too busy to have the power to make our lives count for Jesus, as we should. However, our verse: "You have not because you ask not," tells us that:

There is power available to change our lives.

There is power available to change our families.

There is power available to grow our church.

There is power available to see our children walk with the Lord.

There is power available to heal the sick.

There is power available to save our loved ones.

There is power available for anything!

Our normal experience in the church is that we have lots of activity and we accomplish little of what God intends for us because we neglect the important thing: prayer. We can have the power to accomplish all God intends for us. Those who have had an impact upon the world around them have always been people of prayer.

The Devil does not care one wit about our activities and programs, how much we expand our facilities, or how many concerts or even revivals we have. But he does care about how much we pray. It we would just give up praying, his victory will be complete over us and all we want to accomplish for Christ. The Devil is not afraid of organizations or programs. He is afraid of God. And organizations without prayer are organizations without God.

Why is that? Prayer can accomplish anything God can do. All the infinite resources of God are available when we pray. "Ask and it shall be given to you." is Jesus’ command to us.

Where do you suppose we should begin with this thing we call prayer? I think we begin at the point of our understanding of our powerlessness. Moses is an example of this: He met God in the burning bush. He spoke with God (prayer) and out of his powerlessness and his inability came the power of a life that set God’s people free and saw them to the Promised Land. It was out of the intimate contact of Moses with God that he had the power to accomplish God’s will in his own life and that of God’s people. So it can be with us.

Let me make this statement for our consideration: Your life and mine will never spiritually out distance our prayer life.

The point I am trying to make is that there is power in prayer. We must become people of prayer if we would be people who know and experience the power of God in our lives and ministries.

Why don’t we pray, as we should?

I have already suggested that we are too busy. Prayer is not really high on our list of priorities. We know that is should be but we would admit that it is not.

I think there is another reason we should consider: We have prayed in the past and nothing has happened. We waited for God to do whatever it was that we asked Him and either it did not happen or it did not happen very quickly and we got tired of waiting and forgot about it.

Let me share an example of something God did for me years ago that might shed some light on what I see happening in most of our lives.

I was invited to offer the Pastoral Prayers at Graduation in Stoughton, Wisconsin when I was pasturing a church there in the mid-70’s. The responsibility was passed around to the various churches in town and it became my turn to do the honors that year. It just happened that one of the girls in our church named Beth was graduating that year. She expressed a desire to be able to have the graduation outside and we began praying that God would give her what she wanted. That meant that we prayed for clear weather and no rain. The longer we prayed the more it rained. Finally, on the day of graduation, I got ready to go over to the High School. It had been raining off and on all day and I commented to RuthAnn that it would be a lack of faith for me to take a rain coat or an umbrella. So I left without them.

When I arrived at the school and checked in, I was met by one of the teachers. When I asked about the plans for being outside that evening the teacher made a rather snide remark about me knowing the man upstairs and that I should have some influence over that. It angered me that he had no apparent respect for God or for me as a Minister. I told him that he did not have to worry about it. We had been praying all week long and that there would be no problem with having it outside. About 10 minutes before the class was to go outside the rain stopped and graduation was held outside on the football field.

When it was time for me to go out to the platform, I was led to a chair with cushions on the seat and the back which had gotten wet. I got up to pray and began by thanking God for stopping and holding back the rain so that we could be outside. The graduating class and spectators all laughed at the thought I had expressed. I finished praying and then sat back down on the wet chair. I noticed that there was a cold wind that had sprung up that was blowing down the football field from my right. The cool wind on the wet seat was quite uncomfortable. As I listened to the various things that took place during the graduation ceremony, I noticed that the clouds moving from my left to my right began to split apart at the far end of the football field. All during the ceremony there was a bowl of clear, starry sky over the football field.

When the ceremonies were completed, I got up again to pronounce the benediction. I again thanked God for holding back the rain so that we could have the graduation outside as we had prayed. Once again, there was a ripple of laughter that coursed through the crowd. But it was different this time. There was a nervousness about their laughter this time. They had seen God at work because God’s people had prayed. It was very interesting. They had seen a display of God’s infinite power at work because of the prayers of God’s people.

When I arrived home afterwards, RuthAnn met me at the door and expressed her disappointment that Beth was not able to have what she wished…a graduation outside because of the rain. I assured her that it was held out of doors and that it was really a nice time. It was then that she told me that at the house approximately one quarter of a mile from the school it rained with lightning and thunder all during graduation. That is why she thought that it had been held inside.

That was a long time ago. I have only seen God do something like this on a few other occasions. If God’s infinite power is available to us when we pray why are situations like this so infrequent? Why does God not seem to do what He once did for us…now? What is the difference?

What are we to make of this power that is available through prayer? It is clear that God Hears our prayer. He answers our prayer. How much we believer and how much we pray will determine the amount of the Holy Spirit’s working in the church. Prayer lies at the heart of our spiritual life and the power that is available to us as individuals and as a church today.

We can have the same power to change our world that the early church had to change theirs. All we have to do is ask God for it. Where there is much prayer there is much of the Holy Spirit. Where there is much of the Spirit of God there will be ever increasing prayer. Prayer is still the means of drawing down the blessing of Heaven in power.

If we were to close in prayer today…what would you ask God for? What do you think He would give you? Let’s try it and see what happens!

When we pray, remember:

1. The love of God that wants the best for us.
2. The wisdom of God that knows what is best for us.
3. The power of God that can accomplish it.

 --- Dennis Gleason