Talking About Prayer

Richard Bewes

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2001
• eBook ISBN: 9781781912478

Part 1

The Life of Prayer

I would like to rise very high, Lord,

Above my city

Above the world

Above time.

I would like to purify my glance and borrow your eyes.

Michael Quoist, Prayers of Life

1

The God who answers

Prayer does not start with you; it is God concerned with his world.

– Revival leader Festo Kivengere of Uganda

On the lower slopes of Mount Kenya where I was brought up as a child, life was simple. There were no western style shops, no tarmac roads, no gas, electricity, telephone, postal service, water supply or sanitation – only a tennis court, built by an early missionary called Mr McGregor.

But it was revival time. A mighty work of the Spirit of God had begun in Rwanda and had spread to Uganda, and then to Kenya – and my mum and dad were themselves involved in a movement that was bringing the church to life across East Africa, affecting thousands, and finally millions. It was normal to see the churches packed and to hear the singing of Gospel hymns across the valley below our tiny village of Weithaga. We grew up in all this, coming to know leaders in the movement – Joe Church, Simeoni Nsibambi, Yosiya Kinuka, Erica Sabiti, William Nagenda and Festo Kivengere - as life-long friends. It has been a massive privilege.

A true revival of the Christian faith is marked by five major characteristics – an impassioned preaching of the Cross, deep-seated moral repentance, hundreds of thousands of conversions to Jesus Christ, widespread unashamed personal witness and unceasing prevailing prayer.

And it was through prayer among precisely four of these people – gathered under a thorn tree outside Kigali, the capital of Rwanda – that it had all begun. It was Jaques Ellul who once wrote, ‘It is prayer, and prayer alone that can make history.’

Turning back the tide

There have been numerous spiritual turnings of the tide in history. We have only to go back in the Old Testament to the time of the prophet Elijah to read of his prayer by which false teachers were confounded, idolatry was overturned and the hearts of people were once again turned Godwards:

Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again. (1 Kings 18:37)

How to turn the tide back when it’s an incoming flood of moral decay and idolatrous practice? Come to the New Testament, and it is the interpretation of James chapter 5 and verses 16-18 that reassures us that Elijah was no superman!

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.

When a man prayed

Here was a regular guy, who started to pray – and even the weather was affected, as God’s judgment of a three and a half year drought was pronounced upon the land. The whole of the prophetic tradition in the Old Testament began, when a man prayed. The entire apparatus of the Baal cultic tradition was dismantled in a single day, because a man prayed. The revival of true religion in Israel was brought about, because a man prayed.

And anyone who is a friend of God can pray; anyone who is in a ‘righteous’ relationship with the Lord; that is, with sins forgiven, and a love for truth and righteousness, can pray.

Why pray? We need to remind ourselves that, while the agenda belongs to God alone, He has nevertheless chosen prayer as His appointed means by which we co-operate with His will. In obedience, we pray! In response, God works!

God’s dwelling place

Far beyond this world, far beyond our own solar system and the Milky Way, far beyond and above the millions of galaxies and unknown galaxies yet to be observed, there is another dimension altogether – out of our sight, and yet inhabited by untold myriads of sentient beings, arrayed in perfect symmetry, glowing colours and dazzling, majestic surroundings. It is the dwelling place of God Almighty, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

It was symbolised to God’s people of old by the Most Holy Place, a cube structure within the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness journey of Moses and the Israelites – the Tabernacle. No one could enter that Most Holy Place, except the High Priest, and then only once a year. There was a curtain that kept the people out; a curtain that was perpetuated in the Jewish temple that was to be the successor of the tabernacle.

Escorted to the throne

Readers of the Bible know the story of how – at the moment of the death of Jesus – the curtain in Jerusalem’s great temple was ripped in two from top to bottom. The message was plain; that, with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for sin, a new and living way had been opened up – right into the Most Holy Place, directly into the throne room that it represented; that final Reality above all the constellations, where God lives.

And I, a redeemed and forgiven child of God, have every confidence that Christ – whom I trust as Saviour and Mediator – will conduct me immediately to the side of the One who sits on the throne, and I may lay my praises, my petitions, my sorrows and desires there before Him.

I have always loved Hebrews 7:25, where we learn that Christ always lives to make intercession for us. I take that to mean, not that the ascended Lord is on His knees before the throne, pouring out a stream of prayers on behalf of us – but rather that He is directly beside the throne, to usher us into the presence of the Father – in virtue of His death, resurrection and ascended triumph.

His work on earth completed, He – the God-Man – is the perfect mediator to support our case as we approach the throne. We come – as we say, “in Jesus’ Name,” and Christ in effect is announcing us – ‘I know him! I know her!’

So although Elijah, like Abraham, Moses and countless others, lived before the coming of Jesus, nevertheless – because the shadow of the Cross falls backwards as well as forwards on the highroads of history – those Old Testament saints, because of their faith in the Lord, were themselves also covered by the blood shed at Calvary.

Get into the flow! It is Jesus who escorts us to the throne every time even the newest of His followers prays.

An unstoppable force

A man prayed …. And when God answers prayer, an unstoppable force is released. “Baal?” asks Elijah. “A god of fire? Then let’s meet fire with fire!” And the challenge goes out to Ahab – “Bring on your prophets!”

Prayer is different from magic. The Baal worshippers were working with magic; lancets, knives, imprecations, rituals and charms. That is the approach of magic – as Moses, earlier, had witnessed at Pharaoh’s court – the attempt to bend unseen forces, using charms and symbols (even sacred symbols – which is what ‘white magic’ is), to try and obtain the desired result. And whether it’s white or black magic, the whole exercise is plugging in below. Essentially, humanity is in the driving seat, in an attempt to gain power.

Prayer the reverse of magic

Prayer is the very reverse. God is in the driving seat, and in prayer we are not seeking our will but his. We are not struggling to bend unseen powers to our advantage; we are putting the whole issue into the hands of the One we call our Father – trusting Him to bring about His own desired will. That takes all the strain off us!

In magic, man is trying to make unseen powers his servant. But look at Elijah’s prayer in ch. 18, verse 36: ‘At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed, “O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and have done all these things at your command.’”

The test was, The God who answers; who answers by fire when the two rival sacrifices have been laid – why, that would be the true God, and all Israel would come around His banner. Well, we read the story, and the rest is history; the utter routing of the practitioners of falsehood, the ending of a drought and the turning of the tide among an entire people… because a man – not unlike any of us - had been prompted and inspired to pray.

Prayer is such an education! We go on learning about it all our lives. We never reach the point when we say, “I’ve got prayer licked.” Never.

The Lord lives!
Praise be to my Rock!
Exalted be God, the Rock,
My Saviour!

A Prayer of David,
(2 Samuel 22:47)

2

A Lost Art?

Prayer is the pulse of life.

– Andrew Murray

It is futile to pretend that prayer is indispensable to man. Today he gets along very well without it.

– Jacques Ellul

There is a town in the centre of Africa called Jinja. I have passed through it on more than one occasion. It is a significant place, and for one reason only – it straddles the very source of the Nile, where the waters of Lake Victoria have, for centuries, boiled out with unimaginable power into a narrow channel, only to cease flowing three and a half thousand miles later in the Mediterranean. These waters were harnessed in the 1950s when the prestigious Jinja Dam was completed, so providing Uganda with millions of kilowatts of generated electricity.

‘Jinja to me is a parable,’ said John Wilson, himself a product of Uganda, and a leading light in the work of African Enterprise before his untimely death in the 1980s. We were drinking tea just before John was to address a meeting. ‘In Uganda’s infancy,’ he went on, ‘we Africans regarded that place at Jinja with superstitious fear. It was a place to walk past quickly, a place to keep away from. But then,’ and he smiled expansively, ‘we found it to be a source of power. It provided for our lighting, our heating, our cooking and our industry. It took us a long time to realize the potential of that place!’

‘It is the same with the driving power behind Christianity,’ continued John Wilson. ‘All too easily we walk quickly past it, not realizing what it represents. Only in recent decades have we in Africa tasted the power of the Gospel and of living prayer. Meanwhile many of you in the West have largely forgotten it!’

Prayer and Materialism

If prayer has become a lost art in much of contemporary life, it is because of its apparent irrelevance in today’s computerised, digital society. ‘Ask, and you shall receive’ are the words that take many back to their Sunday school days, but is there today a curiously redundant ring about them? We tend to be on the receiving end of plenty of this world’s goods, even when prayer has gone out of the window, and deep down we know it. Indeed, people who never pray often appear better off materially than their more devout neighbours. One sympathizes with Christians praying for a spouse, when surrounding unbelievers appear to have no difficulty in acquiring one.

But this is no new phenomenon. ‘I had nearly lost my foothold,’ confesses David the psalmist, centuries ago. ‘For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked’ (Ps. 73:2-3).

Prayer – no insurance policy

But what did we expect? That God would heap His gifts upon the believing world and keep the wicked short? If so, our expectations rise no higher than the standards set by the gods of Greek mythology. God – the only true God – is for the world! His gifts are given, irrespective of creed or obedience. The rain falls on the just and unjust alike. The harvests, our health – yes, and the phenomenon of love between the sexes – are part of the Creator’s universal generosity, with no strings attached. Illogically, we have often imagined that personal discipleship ...

Table of contents

• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: An African at Amsterdam
• PART 1: THE LIFE OF PRAYER
• PART 2: THE HEART OF PRAYER
• PART 3: THE WORK OF PRAYER
• Other titles from Christian Focus
• Christian Focus