Prayer: Our Weapon and Shield against God's enemies

Through the last week, I was given the task to listen and review audio sermons on prayer for our fellowship group on Friday evening. The job is to search for a sermon that fits in to the current theme of the fellowship group. Well I started of really, truly and seriously searching. I used the research skills gained from years spent in the academic institution and applied it to serving God.... or so I thought.

How misguided was I? Was I not searching for sermons on prayer? Then surely I should pray harder and not relying on my feeble human efforts. Don't get me wrong, I did pray before that, and I still believe we need to do some serious work, as a preacher said, we've got to put some legs into prayer. What I felt after my first attempt at finding the "right sermon" was a sense of unworthiness. The more I listened, the more I felt I knew nothing of the power of prayer, and I had very little assurance that God heard my prayers, because I spend more time worrying about what to pray, than actually praying. And so, all my prayers at the start of my search were for nought. How could I expect God to answer them, when I don't truly believe that God heard my prayers, let alone answered them?

Too often, we say prayers like reciting the notes for a presentation. We give the information, without actually revealing if we believe the information. We tell God our list of needs, wants, fears, but we do not express our true emotional desires.

Imagine this: There is a great story to be told one day by a certain speaker. You are ready to listen. You wait patiently with much eagerness for this long awaited event. The speaker begins. You sink in your seat in disappointment. Why? The speaker merely reads from the book, without much expression. Oh sometimes he will raise or quieten his voice, but that was about it. It was not a story telling session at all. It was a regurgitation of the words printed on paper. The speaker or should I say, reader, was not interested at all to be there. He had not desire to invest his emotions into it. He was merely invited to do a jobm and he did it accordingly. Your mind switched off.

I can see that I am guilty of being like the speaker/reader when I say my prayers. That was it, I simply say it like I am fulfilling some obligation. I had no understanding of what prayer is, and how prayer has the power to move mountains. And so, I was hardly assured that God heard and will answer my prayers.

I finally let go of my "control freak" attitude on finding the right prayer, and sought that God will lead me to one. Actually God had already led me to it, but I had not considered it as the right sermon to share because of multiple reasons and not one of those reasons was that the mesaage was weak. On the contrary, the message was clear, meaty and certainly what everybody needs. The sermon? "Prayer: I will pray with the spirit and with the understanding also" by John Bunyan. (We listened to Part 1 of 4 of Bunyan's treatise on Prayer

You can listen to it on SermonAudio.com. Here's an extract from Bunyan's message:

PRAYER is an ORDINANCE of God, and that to be used both in public and private; yea, such an ordinance as brings those that have the spirit of supplication into great familiarity with God; and is also so prevalent in action, that it getteth of God, both for the person that prayeth, and for them that are prayed for, great things. It is the opener of the heart of God, and a means by which the soul, though empty, is filled. By prayer the Christian can open his heart to God, as to a friend, and obtain fresh testimony of God’s friendship to him. I might spend many words in distinguishing between public and private prayer; as also between that in the heart, and that with the vocal voice. Something also might be spoken to distinguish between the gifts and graces of prayer; but eschewing this method, my business shall be at this time only to show you the very heart of prayer, without which, all your lifting up, both of hands, and eyes, and voices, will be to no purpose at all. “I will pray with the Spirit.”