Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Praying for Ministry
Sunday, 28 July 2002
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What would happen…if we actually took prayer seriously?
I don't mean that at all as a facetious remark, because I know many of you do pray… but I'm thinking of something a little different…
Consider some of the great works of God, that have begun with prayer…
For example: In September 1857, Jeremiah Lanphier, started a businessmen's prayer meeting in the upper room of the Dutch Reformed Church Building in Manhattan. In response to his advertisement, only six people out of a population of a million showed up. But the following week there were fourteen, and then twenty-three when it was decided to meet everyday for prayer. By late winter they were filling the Dutch Reformed Church, then the Methodist Church and Episcopal Church on Broadway.
In February and March of 1858, every church and public hall in down town New York was filled. A newspaper editor sent a reporter with horse and buggy racing round the prayer meetings to see how many men were praying. In one hour he could get to only twelve meetings, but he counted 6,100 men attending. Then a landslide of prayer began, which overflowed to the churches in the evenings.
People began to be converted, ten thousand a week in New York City alone. The revival raced up the Hudson river and down the Mohawk, where the Baptists, for example, had so many people to baptize that they went down to the river in the middle of winter, cut a big hole in the ice, and baptized them in the cold water. When Baptists do that they are really on fire!
More than a million people were converted in one year out of a population of thirty million. Then that same revival jumped the Atlantic, appeared in Ulster, Scotland and Wales, then England, parts of Europe, South Africa and South India. It sent mission pioneers to many countries. Effects were felt for forty years Having begun in a movement of prayer, it was sustained by a movement of prayer
In 1904 the great Welsh revival began when a 26 year old ex coal miner, man of prayer, and candidate for the ministry, Evan Roberts was convicted by God (through prayer) to return and speak to the congregation at his home church at Loughor. 17 people responded to Evan's preaching of the Word that first night. The minister asked him to speak each night for the rest of the week, and then another week, and then it broke. The papers of the time reported the main road between Llanelly and Swansea on which the church was located was packed with people trying to get into the church. Shopkeepers closed early to find a place. They reported on the gathering in the church 'a strange meeting which closed at 4.25 in the morning, and even then people did not seem willing to go home.'
The movement went like a tidal wave over Wales, in five months there was a hundred thousand people converted throughout the country.
The social impact was astounding. District councils held emergency meetings to discuss what to do with the police now that they were unemployed.
Drunkenness was cut in half. There was a wave of bankruptcies, but nearly all pubs. There was even a slowdown in the mines, for so many Welsh coal miners were converted and stopped using bad language that the pit ponies couldn't understand what was being said to them.
The revival swept Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, North America, Australasia, Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Chile.
Again, it began and was sustained through a movement of prayer.
We need to be very aware that the prayer that drove these amazing events was not 'ordinary' prayer. These events were all driven by what J. Edwin Orr calls "concerted, united, sustained prayer" - Christians from all over, working and pulling together for one purpose, the gospel of Jesus Christ…
In principle, this is not unlike what we read of in these closing chapters of Romans.
These last two chapters are pretty personal words from Paul. We know his passion for the gospel and how that dominates this letter from the start. So it's no surprise that Paul closes the letter on exactly the same theme.
But gospel ministry, whether it's Paul's or whether it's the great Welsh revival, is never a one-man show, and he parades for us a whole team of people: men, women, young people, old people, spurred on to work together for a common task. In relation to this, I want us to focus on Paul's prayer at the end of chapter 15 - as it's there that we can see something of the type of praying we need to engage if we are be serious about gospel ministry.
The Team
But back to the team of people around Paul for a moment: Here in Romans 15 (and into 16), there are about 33 people mentioned in all, which is a lot of people considering Paul's never even been to the church in Rome yet!
It's a bit of guess work to say who they all were but the main impression is that it's a mixed bag. Men, women, gentile names, Jewish names, people who seem to be slaves, others who seem to have been right up the social hierarchy.
All working together for the task of telling people about Jesus. It's a really encouraging picture - esp. if we see ourselves as being like these people!
But it's in v30-33 that we get a dynamic picture of prayer - and in particular, prayer for the gospel, prayer for ministry.
The power of prayer links all the rest of those people mentioned into the struggles Paul is having. Prayer is the glue that binds every member of the team together.
And clearly we are talking about extraordinary prayer here…
There are four things about this type of prayer that we can glean from this passage:
1. Paul wants this prayer to be earnest, urgent and persistent.
Look at the powerful and emotive language he starts with: "I urge you…". The whole appeal runs something like this: If you truly confess Jesus as Lord, I urge you in his name to pray for me. If you share in the salvation he has bought for you, if you submit to him who has taught us to pray, if you have tasted his redemption and long to see his kingdom extended in the world, then I urge you to pray for me and my ministry. If you know anything of the 'love of the Spirit', then show that love in getting on your knees!
It's a passionate, heartfelt appeal - and a clear appeal to experience. Our passage starts by Paul declaring that he is confident in the Christian maturity of the church at Rome -- now he is banking on it!
Why so passionate? Because he knows that prayer is a struggle (the word 'struggle' v30 lit. 'co-agonise')! Real praying always includes an element of struggle, discipline, work and spiritual agonising against the powers of evil. Insofar as the Roman Christians pray this way for Paul, they are joining with him in his struggle for the gospel - they are part of it!
If we are to see God at work in a mighty way in our ministry here and beyond, we must take to prayer with "earnestness, urgency and persistence". This means a sacrificial commitment to extraordinary prayer, it means us struggling with prayer, it means us doing prayer together above and beyond what we do normally at church and at home.
2. Paul solicits prayer for himself, in connection with his own ministry.
There are two things he asks prayer for in this passage:
a. Paul asks for prayer that he might be rescued from unbelievers in Judea (5:31) Now we know he was on his way to Judea carrying with him a substantial amount of money collected by the churches in Macedonia and Achaia as a gift to the believers in Jerusalem (26). But he knew that despite the gift, he may not be accepted well in Judea.
There were many conservative, unconverted Jews in Jerusalem that thought of Paul as a traitor, bent on the destruction of all that was precious in the old covenant. Many would consider him a blasphemer - and therefore worthy of the death penalty.
Now while our circumstances are somewhat different to Paul, when we pray for missionaries, church planters, pastors and other spiritual leaders, we should pray that those Christian leaders might be rescued from the opposition of outsiders who try to destroy their ministry. That might be physical danger in some places, or it might be a smear campaign in the media against a particular individual minister or pastor.
b. Secondly, Paul asks for prayer that his service in Jerusalem might be acceptable to the saints there (v31) On the surface this seems a little strange, but Paul would have known that virtually all the believers in Jerusalem were Jews, and that some of them would be influenced by those unconverted Jews wanting to get rid of Paul once for all.
Just as we find many Christians influenced today by the non-believing world around us, Paul is realistic and doesn't expect all the Christians in Jerusalem to understand or support all that he has done - and perhaps in particular - his passion for seeing all people (inc gentiles) brought into the Kingdom of God..
And if we are to see God at work in a mighty way in our land, we must commit ourselves to prayer that there will be a concerted effort by all true followers of Jesus to pray for and support gospel ministry. I'm not talking about ecumenism here - I'm meaning the gospel - pure and simple.
We must be praying that God will speak powerfully through ministers of the gospel, we must pray that they would not be distracted from their ministry by worldly or immoral temptations. We must pray that God would raise up more and more people for the work of the gospel.
3. For Paul, prayer for his ministry looks ahead to further ministry.
In v 31-32 Paul features a long range view of his ministry. He's not just focussing on getting through the present situation, but he is looking ahead for more ministry opportunities. We have to see this in the light of the whole of our passage, but to summarise it, he's not just heading off to Rome for some R&R! Rather, he's stated that he wants to preach in virgin territory, and sees the time in Rome as a springboard of opportunity to fresh ground elsewhere for the gospel.
We must, with Paul, take the long view to praying for a mighty work of God - that is, we must pray with persistence, trusting God for the long term, not being impatient, but sticking at it. One of the best ways to do this is by agreeing to meet together to pray, and holding each other accountable to that.
4. Paul and unanswered prayer.
Finally, we come to an issue not directly addressed in this passage, but significant anyway. We have Paul requesting prayer that he will be rescued from those in Judea who disobey the gospel, that his ministry in Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Christians in that city, and in all of this that he may be refreshed in Rome and sent on his way towards more outreach and church planting in Spain.
But we know how things really worked out, because we have the book of Acts! Of the three requests, the second is granted, the first not (Paul was arrested in Jerusalem on the instigation of "unbelievers in Judea"), and as far as we know, he never got to Spain.
He did get to Rome - but not has he envisaged: it was after two years in jail in Caesarea, and a hearing before a corrupt court, he was shipped to Rome, experiencing another shipwreck in the way.
But somehow it's reassuring that some of Paul's prayers are not answered as he would have liked - because, of course, that's our experience! Prayer is not magic, it is not just another power trip for believers, for at it's core, prayer is humble submission to the lordship of Christ, it is an intimate, vital part of a living personal relationship with our wise, good, perfect and patient heavenly father.
He may give us we ask for, he may make us wait, he may decline our requests. He may give us the goal of what we ask for, but by a quite different means.
Part of the whole process of prayer is getting to know God better, part of it learning his mind and will, part of it is tied up with teaching me to wait, or teaching me that my requests are often skewed or my motives selfish.
Just as God's unexpected answer to Paul's prayers was the best possible answer (because it was God's answer!), so his answers to our prayers will always be for his glory and his people's good.
How much has God through Paul, taught us through this letter? What a challenging, but encouraging word this is to us - to see the gospel of Jesus as the centre of all we do.
Are we as passionate as Paul?
Do we have his drive to do what we can to see the gospel move forward? Do we have his commitment to faithful, humble dependence on God for this work - expressed through "concerted, united, sustained prayer"?
I'm not sure that - as a church - we do.
Our commitment to such prayer is patchy and spasmodic. Most of us find 100 other things to do, rather than commit to "concerted, united, sustained prayer".
With the gospel ministry of Lifeworks just one week away, can I urge you to join together in a visible, explicit gathering next Thursday night, to express our utter dependence on God to be at work in and through us, that there might be a mighty harvest for the gospel…
Where we go after that in our prayer life as a church is up to you and the Holy Spirit…
