Posted on April 10, 2011 by newhope2010

One of the things we see clearly in God’s Word is a praying church… one in which brethren care for each other and take their concerns to their heavenly Father. James 5.

However, it seems to me that many churches today no longer understand the awesome power of prayer. As the song-writer said, “The world has lost the right of prayer and saints have failed to pray. What loss sustained beyond repair! How blind of heart are they.”

We can learn so much by sitting back and observing sometimes. Instead of prayers which express genuine concern for one another’s well-being and an understanding of the problems and struggles we each face from time to time, so many of the prayers uttered in our churches are shallow, cold, indifferent and meaningless. Rather than confirming our love for others, our prayers so often reveal a church which has little empathy or sympathy for others and a self-righteous smugness which overshadows our proclamation of the gospel and our spoken claim to be the body of Christ.

Instead of having a faith in a God who can do anything, even beyond our wildest dreams, it seems many of our churches no longer even believe that God still listens to our prayers, much less can do the things we ask of Him.

What sorrow God must feel! In so many places, God’s people have become spiritually impotent and powerless. They stand by and watch Satan destroy the very fabric of our families and our faith. Instead of rising up against the accuser of our brethren (Revelation 12:10), they cower in complacency and hopeless negativity, or follow the world in their behaviour and their response to situations which inevitably arise to test us and to challenge our faith.

But occasionally we discover a church that is different…

This morning, following the announcements, the preacher was invited to address the assembly. As he and another senior member of the church stood up before the congregation, they were joined by a third man - a fairly recent convert who had apparently struggled with alcoholism and other sins in his life.

As the preacher began to speak, he told of how much the congregation loved this man, how he had come a long way, and how he was struggling with a habit that needed the prayers of the church. As everyone listened and watched, he asked us to pray with him as he interceded for the brother standing beside him.

Now the preacher is not a particularly eloquent man, but it is many years since I felt such compassion or genuine love for a sinner in a meeting of a church. Sure, I’ve sat in neo-Pentecostal style meetings and heard the “outpouring” of human emotion and the chatter of everyone doing their own thing, but never have I felt a church so in agreement with the prayer of concern that the preacher led this morning.

Like many of us, this brother needed the prayers of his new friends. He needed their thoughts, their feelings, their understanding – and their fervent prayers. The apostle Paul once said, “There hath no temptation taken you but such is common to man”. How incredibly true. Not one of us can stand before God and declare that we have not been tempted in one way or another, or that the temptation put before us by Satan is any different to that faced by many of our brethren before. Nor can any one of us pretend that we are without sin when we think to punish a brother. John 8:7.

And so the preacher prayed that this man would “leave his habit at the foot of the cross today”, for his struggle to put his past behind had seemingly caught up with him and brought him down again.

What an incredibly moving experience! To be in the presence of the Almighty God and to know that each one of us can stumble and fall at any time. But to also know that someone cares enough to stand beside us and take our needs to the Saviour in prayer.

When we forget (or refuse) to pray for a brother in need, we become self-righteous and no different to the Pharisees. And when we take up stones to condemn a brother, especially when we have not heard his story or “walked in his moccasins”, we become judges when there is only one Righteous Judge, our heavenly Father.

Lord, humble us that we can understand not only the failings of others, but more than all, our own failings as we try to serve you in this world. Help us show compassion instead of self-righteousness, and mercy in the place of judgement.

© Bevan Collingwood 2011