The Importance of Your Praying

Genesis 20:7 NIV

 Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die."

What is the Big Deal about Prayer?

I have a shirt that across the front has in bold, bright letters, “Pray”.  I enjoy the reaction it stirs.  I usually wear it when I am going to be around a lot of different people.  It would be fun to have a web cam record the response of those who notice it for the first time.  A typical reaction is for a person to glance at the letters, then pause a moment as if trying to grasp the meaning of the word found on my shirt.  Almost always, the woman or man quickly looks away without meeting my eyes.  It is as if I stop being a real person to many, just a walking billboard.  Some smile and tell me they like the shirt, most try to pretend they didn’t see it or me.  I did not realize prayer was controversial, or something that made people uncomfortable.  Perhaps it is now; maybe prayer is no longer recognized as a critical part of being human; not thought to be important to making life better.

It seems odd that there has to be a rationale given for prayer but perhaps one must be given.    Does it really matter if you pray or not?  Is anyone affected by the shortness of your praying or your lack of prayer?  The problem is that you almost never get any feedback on how you pray.  If you diet or don’t, you see how you are doing.  When you send a check to a charity, you get a note back thanking you for the support and perhaps even a report of how much help you provide.  If you save for your retirement, eventually you find out what your disciplined living did for you.  Fail to keep oil in your car and at some point you will find out how important oil is to your car engine.  It is not like that with prayer.  How do you ever find out what your praying did or didn’t do for yourself or others?  You never get a report card.  No one knows how effective your praying is and you probably don’t know either.  Unless you are someone like George Muller who kept rigorous records of his praying and how his prayer requests fared, you probably haven’t a clue about your prayer success rate.  The default setting for most people is that they just don’t pray much for themselves or others because they don’t know why they should.  Is there a reason why you should pray often?  Let us look at this question carefully because it may really matter how much you pray.

The Bible has an intriguing account of prayer that must be considered.  The book of Job is most famous for its report of the terrible suffering of Job and how he tried to understand why God let him face such horror.  Yet it could be argued that the most important point made in the book is not even the narrative of Job and his trials but rather what we are told at the end.  Job had three friends who came to him ostensibly to comfort him but ended up berating Job for imaginary wrongs he had committed.  The friends decided that Job had to have been a terrible sinner for God to make him suffer so much.  More than half the book is a dialogue between Job and his friends; the later accusing Job of secret sins and the former denying the charges and asserting his holiness.  Famously Job pleads for someone to intervene for him, someone to defend him to God.  He insists, “…God has wronged me and drawn his net around me. “ (Job 19:6 NIV)

The final chapters of Job are given over to the Lord’s response to Job’s accusations.  God never explains His actions; He merely makes it clear that He is sovereign Lord over all and that no one rises above Him in authority and power.  God challenges Job to bring his charges directly to Him.  The Lord said to Job:  "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?  Let him who accuses God answer him!"  (Job 40:1-2 NIV)  Job’s response is quick and decided.  Then Job answered the Lord:  "I am unworthy — how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth.  I spoke once, but I have no answer — twice, but I will say no more."  (Job 40:3-5 NIV)  Then we come upon perhaps the most compelling aspect of the entire book…at least as far as we discover the value God gives His people and the part they play in the course of history.

At the conclusion of the book of Job, the Lord turns to Job’s friends and addresses their critique of Job.  After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.  So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.  (Job 42:7-8 NIV)  What an astonishing revelation!  God will wait for someone to pray before He acts.  In this case it is Job.  Consider the implication.  After God’s monologue in which He declares His supreme authority over the universe, He warns Job’s friends that if they do not want to face the consequences of making false accusations against Job, they must depend upon Job to pray for God’s mercy.  Why did God have Job pray for his friends?  Clearly it was because the friends needed Job to pray for them.

This is a stupendous revelation!  God waited for Job to pray before He decided the fate of Job’s three friends.  It is as if you did not want to act until one of your friends gave her opinion.  Or it is more like your father not punishing your brother until you said whether he should or not.  Prayer has a real effect with God and changes the course of human events.  Remember what Jesus said about His people?  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15 NIV)  One characteristic of friendship is that friends influence each other.  They start to think alike as the bond between them strengthens.  Friendship is never a one-way street.  Friendship is by definition the linking of people so that they impact each other through love and loyalty.  If prayer is the way we bond with God, then it seems reasonable that in our prayers, there is a back and forth impact that takes place between us.  As your friend, God cares about what matters to you and He is affected by the way you think and how you feel about things.  We think of God as some isolated independent being who does everything on His own but He isn’t.  Our Lord is your friend and your Father and He loves you as your friend and your Father.   That is why prayer is so important.  God is, in some way that cannot be explained, influenced by you.

Consider the implications of Ephesians 6:18.  And 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. (NIV)  Jude 20 has a similar admonition.  But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. (NIV)  This verse, when considered in its original Greek setting is almost identical to Ephesians 6:18 because it literally directs us to “in the Holy Spirit continually be praying ones”.  To pray “in” the Holy Spirit is like a fish living “in” the ocean or a bird living “in” the atmosphere.  The “in” of being in the Holy Spirit is an “in” of complete immersion, of total envelopment.  The bird absorbs the atmosphere as well as moves within it.  If you pray in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is all about you in your praying.  He is “in” what you pray, the guide to your praying, He is why you pray and the reason you have trust in God as you pray.  When you “pray in the Holy Spirit”, it means that the Holy Spirit is a part of every aspect of your praying.

But how does God our friend want us to pray?  He wants us to pray about anything the Holy Spirit brings to mind but especially He wants us to pray for every single Christian who comes to mind.  Why should we pray so much?  It is because God cares about our opinion of things: He wants to hear what we have to say about others.  In fact He cares so much that He waits for us to pray before He acts.  Job had the same task we have, to bring his concerns about people to God and ask for Him to help them.  How can we know what to pray about for others?  When we are in the Holy Spirit, immersed in Him, thinking with Him and through Him, we will get it right.  Our prayers will match what God wants to do for them.

Without the Holy Spirit directing our thinking as we pray, it is a hit or miss proposition.  Praying becomes irrational and filled with chaos.  The Spirit straightens out our praying, makes it coherent.  We know what we ought to pray and how we should pray because the Holy Spirit makes sense of it for us.  We have the foundation for confident praying in Romans 8, perhaps the most important chapter in the entire Bible.  In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.  (Romans 8:26-27 NIV)

Let this sink in a moment.  On our own we have no idea how to pray.  In our sin weakened state we are incompetent at prayer.  But with the Holy Spirit working within us, we have no limits in prayer, there is no ceiling.  Just think about what you could do for others if you become locked in on the Holy Spirit and were in total sync with God.  You could bring real peace and joy to the world…to those your love.  Imagine the good you could do if you took prayer seriously; if you made it your top priority!  It would not be a stretch to state that the book of James provides us with the greatest encouragement to pray found anywhere in literature.  Consider its implication.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. 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.  (James 5:16-18 NIV)  Elijah was a person just like you with all your faults and weaknesses, with all kinds of idiosyncrasies and quirks just like you.  Yet he could pray and a drought came to pass because of his praying and then after three and a half years the drought ended because of his praying.  That could be you, praying just like Elijah.  You may argue that you aren’t righteous though.  The truth is that because of Christ in you, your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of Elijah and all the other greats of the Old Testament.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7 NIV)  And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ — to the glory and praise of God.  (Philippians 1:9-11 NIV)  It is not a righteousness issue for you when it comes to praying.  It is a willingness issue.  Are you willing to stay close enough to the Holy Spirit that you can make a supernatural difference in your circle of influence when you pray?  Do you through the most powerful tool you have, prayer, want to make the lives of others better.  You can.  You just have to decide if you are willing to put in the effort to pray.

Changing the Environment

Matthew 5:14-16 NIV

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

How Are You Impacting Your World?

The other day I was in a second grade classroom surrounded by children who were asking me questions and wanting help.  Suddenly a little boy next to me asked, “Why do you smell so good?”  I ignored him and kept talking with other children and he asked me again, “Mr. Walkup, why do you smell so good?”  I was so flummoxed by his question that I could give no response to the boy and was a bit dumbfounded for a few moments.  How come he noticed me?  What made him say that I smelled good?  How was I supposed to respond?  Of course you should never be surprised by what little children say whether it is good or bad.  They speak their mind and they are super sensitive to what is going on about them.  Their environment matters profoundly to them and although many of us have grown desensitized, it does to too us also.

Have you given much thought to what impact you make on others?  Not just close family members and friends but but anyone who comes in contact with you?  What part do you play in creating an environment for others?  You can ignore this question and many do.  Unless you are attracted to someone or in trouble or wanting to get something from someone, you may not think about the impact you make on those around you.  Other than pop psychologists who make lots of money teaching people how to influence others, rarely is much thought given to our impact on those about us.  There is however reason to ponder this question and take it seriously.  How do you impact the environment of others?

You have seen this phenomenon.  A strong personality alters the climate of a room and changes the culture of a workplace.  One child can completely change a classroom and one person influences how a worship service goes.  Yet you don’t have to be charismatic or loud or funny or pushy to be felt and impactful.  All you need is Christ living in you to change the world.

The Lord used interesting metaphors to talk about your influence.  "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16 NIV)  The light of the world, a city on a hill; that is what He says you are.  Of course for most, that is a preposterous statement.  Who is like that?  Maybe Beyoncé or Tom Cruise or Stephen Curry!  Do you feel like when you enter a room all eyes are on you, everyone turns to hear what you have to say?  Yet you have to take seriously Jesus’ statements like this because He gives the actual situation rather than what mere appearances seem to indicate.

Now I realize we are talking about the Apostle Peter, the majestic disciple who stood above all the rest until Paul came along but it is pertinent what is discovered in Acts 5: 12 and following.  The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade.  No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.  Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.  As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. (Acts 5: 12-15 NIV) Even the shadow of Peter impacted crowds.  He did not have to say anything or do anything to have a dramatic effect on others.  What if this was the case with you?  Can you imagine your shadow being such a powerful influence?

Remember that Jesus declares that you are a city upon a hill, that you are the light of the world.  This is not just speaking of some great church leader or someone long gone.  He is speaking of you, that you are influential, that you change the way others see things, that when you are present, people are impacted by you being there in profound ways.  What if your shadow was just as influential as Peter’s?  What if your presence was dramatically life altering?  Could you imagine being such a person?

Paul said something that I cannot easily shake and it should make you pause   But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.  For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Corinthians 2:14-16 NIV)   Everywhere you go, the knowledge of Christ permeates those who come in contact with you.  This is not a natural work but supernatural and it takes faith to believe it is so.  You bring Christ to your conversations, to your meetings, to each place that you go.  Now this fragrance of Christ may be faint or it could be strong but it is there nonetheless and you bring it with you. 

Surely we understand at least in theory, if not in practice, that how we live our lives impacts everyone else.  A smile we share, a pat on the back, a warm handshake, something encouraging or complimentary that we say changes the climate of a room.  If we rant or rage, if we criticize, make a sarcastic comment, gossip, lie, pout, we alter the room too.  The power of our personality affects others and we certainly know that is so.  We may not live with that in mind but are aware of it.  If Christ is in you, then His presence, which is supernatural affects everyone who comes in contact with you and there is a ripple effect; one person impacted changes even slightly the next person and so on and how far the effect travels we cannot measure.  If your personality changes the lives of those about you, imagine just how powerfully the personality of the Lord of the Universe living in you impacts those who come in contact with the Christ in you.

We don’t have time to describe the impact demons have in our world today.  The Apostle Paul warned that even those who profess to be Christians would be driven from God by demons and accept the view of life they promote.   The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. (1 Timothy 4:1 NIV)  We know what sorts of brokenness the Gospels tell us demons caused and how Jesus drove demons away from people and they were healed.  How much depression, anxiety, anger, bitterness, and physical suffering is brought on by demons even now?  Is it possible that where you work, at the schools and among your friends, demons are wrecking lives and making people miserable?  Of course it is and if Christ could bring joy and peace to people in His time before He was crucified, what great good might He do today through you?  It is not preposterous to think that Christ in you can heal depression, calm anger, take away anxiety and even make the sick well!  Of course He can!

Our Lord said that to be used by the Father like He was, you must have faith in the Father too.  You must believe that Christ will powerfully work through you if you are available to God to do with as He wishes.  What might Christ do through you?  We cannot say but why would He not use you to bring peace and joy to those He has in your life?  I think that if you want Christ to change the world through your life, it starts with prayer.  James the brother of Jesus said, “And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:15-16 NIV)  Pray for every person you can.  Make sure no sin is strangling your life with Christ and be available to the Father.  You too can release from demonic bondage those Christ has entrusted to your care!

The Fullness of You...Smelling

Genesis 8:20-21

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

How Do You Smell?

Smell has the unique ability to serve as a trigger within the heart.  It registers deeply within us and locates memories long forgotten or buried and drags them to the conscious mind.  The sudden whiff of a pot roast, coffee, a gardenia or a type of perfume can take us back to when we were young.  Scent is important to our relationship with God.  Smell and the use of odors were key parts of how the Israelites were to worship the Lord.  From the use of prescribed concoctions of incense in the Temple to the burning of sheep and goats on the altars, the smell of sacrifices pleased God.  As noted above, God was happy to smell the burnt sacrifices Noah offered following the flood.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man… (Genesis 8: 21a NIV)  The Temple, which was the central location for worship in Israel, at least in the beginning, produced a flood of smells that overwhelmed the nostrils.  The odors of blood, cinnamon, cooking meat, salt and smoking fire pits nearly took one’s breath away.  When Solomon dedicated the Temple, the smoke from cooking sacrifices and burning incense was so thick you could barely see.  Imagine the overworking of salivary glands as one entered into the Temple grounds and the odor of barbecuing beef and mutton reached you.

We find in the Scripture that all the smells of the Temple were to establish in the hearts of God’s people something of critical importance to God.  In Psalm 141:2 we get a hint of what God was doing through all the sacrifices and incense burning.  May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. (NIV)  The connection between all those smells and God’s people praying was intentionally created by the Lord.  In the book of Revelation the link between the two is spelled out for us.  Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.  He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.  And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:6-8 NIV) Then later in Revelation 8: 4 this is reiterated.  The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand. (NIV)

If you went into the Temple, whether just the outer courts or deeper into its center, there were to be two senses that captivated you: sight with the simple beauty of the gold and woodwork and smell with the all the smoke and cooking.  The gold was to remind everyone of the majesty of God but the smells were to stir up within all who came to the Temple the call to prayer.  In speaking of the work God would soon do in bringing non-Jews into His Kingdom, Isaiah the prophet announced, “…these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.  Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." (Isaiah 56:7 NIV)  The smell of the burnt offerings coalesced with the prayers of the people producing a sweet perfume for God.  The house of incense and cooking meat was to be God’s house of prayer and not just for Jews but for all humanity who came to Him.  Jesus’ fury was directed toward those who destroyed that plan.  Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.  "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'" (Matthew 21:12-13 NIV)

What we discover as we turn to the New Testament again is that just as the odor of the incense and the cooking sacrifices represented the prayers of the people and were to be a continual call to prayer, so too we find out that the Temple itself was a representation of something greater than wood and stone.  One of the most misapplied verses in the entire Bible is Paul’s admonition in 2 Corinthians.  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV)  The Temple built in Jerusalem was a foreshadowing of what God would do with all people who came to Him in faith.  They were going to be “houses of prayer”.  Every last one of us are built by God to be a prayer center.  When prayers are not emanating from us like the smell of incense rising into the wind, then we wreck the sanctuary of our lives.  If Christ could beat out the money changers and vendors from the Temple for taking apart the prayer of the place, how much more so does our Lord demand that as the Temple of the Holy Spirit we are to be centers of prayer!

Consider just a couple of examples to make clear how important our praying is to God.  When the ancient king Abimelech mistakenly took Abraham’s wife Sarah into his harem because Abraham had told the king that Sarah was his sister, God’s wrath broke out against Abimelech and his subjects.  The Lord warned Abimelech in a dream that He was about to kill him for taking Sarah from Abraham.  But, God gave Abimelech a chance at life.  “Now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, you may be sure that you and all yours will die." (Genesis 20:7 NIV)  God would wait on deciding Abimelech’s fate until he heard from Abraham in prayer.  Consider the high place of prayer and its exalted status.  The prayer of one man would decide the fate of another.

We see a similar situation in Job.  Job’s friends who were critical of Job and accused him of terrible sinning also found themselves under the wrath of God.  "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7 NIV)   But the Lord was willing to be merciful, depending on how Job responded. “My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.” (Job 42:8b NIV)  If Job prayed for his friends, the Lord would be merciful to them.  Ponder how great a responsibility that is!  One person’s praying determined how God would act.

We have in James 5: 16 the sort of odor we are to produce in this world.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. 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. (James 5:16-18 NIV)  If you are not obsessed with praying for others, then you have no idea who you are in Christ and what He wants you to be.  As the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Lord is a part of your personality and He operates in you and through you.  The more aware you are of God, the more He will pray through you and your prayers will become His prayers.  You are not a righteous person because of what you are on your own.  Your righteousness is the righteousness of Christ which comes to your through Christ crucified and resurrected.  Therefore, the effectiveness of your praying is not dependent upon you but upon God living in you and through you.  You make yourself a sweet odor to God and to all around you by offering prayers to God for every person God brings to your mind night and day.  The smell that God loves above all is the praying of His people and like Job and Abraham, you can change the course of history by praying.