How Then Shall We Pray? -- Tim Phillips
"Pray without ceasing." ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:17
"What is prayer? Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies." This is how the Westminster Larger Catechism defines prayer (WLC Q. 178). As Presbyterians, we would look at prayer as a means of grace (WLC Q. 154). As Christians, prayer should be one of the most fundamental aspects of our faith. It is a true communing with God, and it is only possible because of the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are believers in Jesus Christ, we will want to pray.
Prayer meetings for the church have fallen on hard times recently, but this is nothing new. I recently came across an address from over a century ago by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Only a Prayer Meeting." In it, Spurgeon expresses some of the concerns that are echoed in our day:
It is good for us to draw nigh unto God in prayer, and specially good to makeup a great congregation for such a purpose. We have attended little prayer-meetings of four or five, and we have been glad to be there, for we had the promise of our Lord's presence; but our minds are grieved to see so little attention given to united prayer by many of our churches. ... Brethren, we shall never see much change for the better in our churches in general till the prayer-meeting occupies a higher place in the esteem of Christians. To mix it up with the week-night lecture, and really make an end of it, is a sad sign of declension.1
The gathering of those early believers in Acts 1 was, of course only a prayer meeting, and that is Spurgeon's point: "How could we expect a blessing if we were too idle to ask for it? How could we look for a Pentecost if we never met with one accord, in one place, to wait upon the Lord?" Whether it is individual and family prayers in the home, corporate prayers on the Lord's Day, or the mid-week meeting, the gathering of God's people in prayer is something we do not want to neglect (or fail to emphasize). My 17 years as a minister have taught me that people will generally show up for a Bible study, but not much when it's "only a prayer meeting" (probably the way some might feel in reading a blog post that is "only about prayer"!!!). If our churches are going to benefit, if they are going to be alive and healthy and growing, we must not neglect such times of prayer.
But what shall we pray about? This is often a problem for even devoted Christians. Martin Luther's barber famously asked him for help in prayer, to which Luther obliged by writing a little booklet A Simple Way to Pray. What was this simple way? Basically, it was to pray through the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed. Not in a rote, repetitious manner, but by using each of the parts as a guide to direct us in how we might approach God in prayer.2
Terry Johnson also has a helpful guide in prayer, found in his book Leading in Worship. Even though it appears in a section on the pastoral prayer during the worship service, I do believe this is a helpful guide in instructing Christians how to pray biblically. He writes:
The ‘pastoral’ prayer should be a prayer of confession of sin, thanksgiving for pardon, and intercession. The intercessions may follow the five-fold outline employed in Scripture and the early church: i) civil authorities (1 Tim 2:1-2); ii) Christian ministry and missions (Mt 9:36-38); iii) salvation of all men (1 Tim 2:1, 3-4); iv) sanctification of the saints (Eph 6:18; Phil 1:9-11; Col 1:9-12, cf. Eph 1:15-23; v) the afflicted (2 Cor 1:3-4, 11; Jas 5:13-18).3
These five different categories of biblical petitions (civil rulers, Christian ministry, salvation of the lost, building up of Christians, and the sick and suffering), when joined with prayers of adoration, confession, and thanksgiving, will surely give us a simple way to order our prayers and encourage us to spend more time in prayer with the Lord.
One of the petitions I sometimes hear in prayer is for God to send revival (Johnson even includes that in one of his sample pastoral prayers). It has pleased God, at various times in history, to send His Holy Spirit in powerful and unexpected ways to awaken His people from their unhealthy spiritual slumber. Such genuine times of revival cannot be scheduled and are utterly dependent on the graciousness of God, but if we wish Him to do so in our sleepy and anxious age, we must be a people of prayer. The corporate prayer meeting has largely been lost and forgotten by too many of our churches, or replaced with something else more "meaningful." But if we do not pray, what do we expect to see? Let us come to the Lord in prayer and encourage our churches to come together in prayer. Let us be of one mind in devoting ourselves to prayer like those early believers (Acts 1:14), and then trust in the Lord and wait to see what He will do.