ARE WE PREPARED
TO PRAY THE PRICE TO SEE GOD MOVE IN OUR NATION?

by Stuart Robinson. At the time of writing this article The Rev Dr
Stuart Robinson was the Senior Pastor at the Blackburn Baptist Church
in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Luke 11:1 Lord teach us to
pray

Introduction

In 1952 Albert Einstein was asked by a Princeton doctoral student
what was left in the world for original dissertation research?
Einstein replied, ‘Find out about prayer’. English preacher Sidlow
Baxter, when he was eightyfive years of age, said, ‘I have pastored
only three churches in my more than sixty years of ministry. We had
revival in every one. And not one of them came as a result of my
preaching. They came as a result of the membership entering into a
covenant to pray until revival came. And it did come, every time’
(Willhite 1988:111).

Chaplain of the United States Senate, Richard Halverson, advised
that we really don’t have any alternatives to prayer. He says, ‘You
can organise until you are exhausted. You can plan, program and
subsidise all your plans. But if you fail to pray, it is a waste of
time. Prayer is not optional. It is mandatory. Not to pray is to
disobey God’ (Bryant 1984:39). Roy Pointer, after extensive research
in Baptist churches in the United Kingdom, arrived at the conclusion
that wherever there was positive growth, there was one recurring
factor: they were all praying churches.

In the United States of America, at Larry Lea’s Church on the Rock
in Rockwall, Texas, numerical growth was from 13 people in 1980 to
11,000 people by 1988. When he was asked about such amazing growth,
he said ‘I didn’t start a church I started a prayer meeting’. When
David Shibley, the minister responsible for prayer in that church was
asked the secret of the church, he said, ‘The evangelistic program of
our church is the daily prayer meeting. Every morning, Monday through
Friday, we meet at 5.00 am to pray. If we see the harvest of
conversions fall off for more than a week, we see that as a spiritual
red alert and seek the Lord’ (Shibley 1985:7).

In Korea, where the church has grown from almost zero to a
projected 50% of the entire population in this century alone, Pastor
Paul Yonggi Cho attributes his church’s conversion rate of 12,000
people per month as primarily due to ceaseless prayer. In Korea it is
normal for church members to go to bed early so they can arise at
4.00 am to participate in united prayer. It is normal for them to
pray all through Friday nights. It is normal to go out to prayer
retreats. Cho says that any church might see this sort of phenomenal
growth if they are prepared to ‘pray the price,’ to ‘pray and obey.’

Cho was once asked by a local pastor why was it that Cho’s church
membership was 750,000 and his was only 3,000 when he was better
educated, preached better sermons and even had a foreign wife? Cho
inquired, ‘How much do you pray?’ The pastor said, ‘Thirty minutes a
day.’ To which Cho replied, ‘There is your answer. I pray from three
to five hours per day.’ In America one survey has shown that pastors
on average pray 22 minutes per day. In mainline churches, it is less
than that. In Japan they pray 44 minutes a day, Korea 90 minutes a
day, and China 120 minutes a day. It’s not surprising that the growth
rate of churches in those countries is directly proportional to the
amount of time pastors are spending in prayer.

Growth a Supernatural Process

The church is a living organism. It is God’s creation with Jesus
Christ as its head (Colossians 1:18). From Him life flows (John
14:6). We have a responsibility to cooperate with God (1Corinthians
3:6). We know that unless the Lord builds the house we labour in vain
(Psalm 127:1). The transfer of a soul from the kingdom of darkness to
that of light is a spiritual, supernatural process (Colossians 1:14).
It is the Father who draws (John 6:44). It is the Holy Spirit who
convicts (John 16:811). He causes confession to be made (1
Corinthians 12:3). He completes conversion (Titus 3:5). It is the
Holy Spirit who also strengthens and empowers (Ephesians 3:16). He
guides into truth (John 16:16). He gives spiritual gifts which
promote unity (1 Corinthians 12:25), building up the church (1
Corinthians 14:12), thus avoiding disunity and strife which stunt
growth.

This is fundamental spiritual truth accepted and believed by all
Christians. However, the degree to which we are convinced that all
real growth is ultimately a supernatural process and are prepared to
act upon that belief, will be directly reflected in the priority that
we give to corporate and personal prayer in the life of the church.
It is only when we begin to see that nothing that matters will occur
except in answer to prayer that prayer will become more than an
optional program for the faithful few, and instead it will become the
driving force of our churches. Obviously God wants our pastors, other
leaders and His people to recognise that only He can do extraordinary
things. When we accept that simple premise, we may begin to pray.

In the Bible

The battle which Joshua won, as recorded in Exodus 17:813, was not
so dependent upon what he and his troops were doing down on the
plain. It was directly dependent upon Moses’ prayerful intercession
from on top of a nearby hill, with the support of Aaron and Hur. In
the Old Testament, not counting the Psalms, there are 77 explicit
references to prayer. The pace quickens in the New Testament. There
are 94 references alone which relate directly to Jesus and prayer.
The apostles picked up this theme and practice.

So Paul says, ‘Pray continually, for this is God’s will for you’
(1 Thessalonians 5:16). Peter urges believers to be ‘clear minded and
self controlled’ so that they can pray (1 Peter 4:7). James declares
that prayer is ‘powerful and effective’ (James 5:16). John assures us
that ‘God hears and answers’ (1 John 5:15). In the book of Acts there
are 36 references to the church growing. Fiftyeight percent (i.e. 21
of those instances) are within the context of prayer. We would all
love to see growth in every church in the world like it was at
Pentecost and immediately thereafter. The key to what happened there
is found in Acts 1:14 when it says: ‘They were all joined together
constantly in prayer.’

They were all joined together one mind, one purpose, one accord.
That is the prerequisite for effectiveness. Then, they were all
joined together constantly in prayer. The word used there means to be
‘busily engaged in, to be devoted to, to persist in adhering to a
thing, to intently attend to it.’ And it is in the form of a present
participle. It means that the practice was continued ceaselessly. The
same word and part of speech is used in Acts 2:42: ‘They devoted
themselves… to prayer.’ Over in Colossians 4:2, Paul uses the same
word again in the imperative form: ‘Devote yourselves to prayer.’
Most significant expansion movements of the church through its
history took up that imperative.

In history

When we read the biographies of William Carey, Adoniram Judson,
David Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, or whomever, the initiating thrust
of the work of their lives began in prayer encounters. About a
century ago, John R. Mott led an extraordinary movement which became
known as the Student Christian Movement. It was based amongst college
and university students. It supplied 20,000 career missionaries in
the space of thirty years. John Mott said that the source of this
amazing awakening lay in united intercessory prayer. It wasn’t just
that these missionaries were recruited and sent out in prayer; their
work was also sustained through prayer.

Hudson Taylor told a story of a missionary couple who were in
charge of ten stations. They wrote to their home secretary confessing
their absolute lack of progress, and they urged the secretary to find
intercessors for each station. After a while, in seven of those
stations, opposition melted, spiritual revival broke out and the
churches grew strongly. But in three there was no change. When they
returned home on their next furlough, the secretary cleared up the
mystery. He had succeeded in getting intercessors for only seven of
the ten stations. S. D. Gordon (1983:40) concludes, ‘The greatest
thing anyone can do for God and man is to pray.’

Luther, Calvin, Knox, Latimer, Finney, Moody, all the `greats of
God’ practised prayer and fasting to enhance ministry effectiveness.
John Wesley was so impressed by such precedents that he would not
even ordain a person to ministry unless he agreed to fast at least
until 4.00 pm each Wednesday and Friday. Yonggi Cho (1984:103) says,
‘Normally I teach new believers to fast for three days. Once they
have become accustomed to threeday fasts, they will be able to fast
for a period of seven days. Then they will move to tenday fasts. Some
have even gone for forty days.’

These people seem to have latched onto something which we here in
Australia hardly know anything about. We are so busy, so active. We
try so hard to get something good up and running. But it doesn’t seem
to grow much, or permanently change many lives. Why? Is it that the
ground in Australia is too hard? Compared with other times and
places, this could hardly be so. For example, back in the 18th
century things didn’t look good.

Eighteenth century

France was working through its bloody revolution, as terroristic
as any of our modern era. America had declared its Rights of Man in
1776. Voltaire was preaching that the church was only a system of
oppression for the human spirit. Karl Marx would later agree. A new
morality had arisen. Amongst both sexes in all ranks of society,
Christianity was held in almost universal contempt. Demonic forces
seemed to have been unleashed to drive the church out of existence.
In many places it was almost down and out. Preachers and people would
be pelted with stones and coal in places in England if they dared to
testify to Jesus Christ in public.

But even before those satanic forces collaborated to confound and
confuse, it appears that the Holy Spirit had prepared His defence,
like a plot out of some Peretti novel. In the 1740s, John Erskine of
Edinburgh published a pamphlet encouraging people to pray for
Scotland and elsewhere. Over in America, the challenge was picked up
by Jonathan Edwards, who wrote a treatise called, ‘A Humble Attempt
to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in
Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement
of Christ’s Kingdom.’

For forty years, John Erskine orchestrated what became a Concert
of Prayer through voluminous correspondence around the world. In the
face of apparent social, political and moral deterioration, he
persisted. And then the Lord of the universe stepped in and took
over. On Christmas day 1781, at St. Just Church in Cornwall, at 3.00
am, intercessors met to sing and pray. The heavens opened at last and
they knew it. They prayed through until 9.00 am and regathered on
Christmas evening. Throughout January and February, the movement
continued. By March 1782 they were praying until midnight. No
significant preachers were involved just people praying and the Holy
Spirit responding.

Two years later in 1784, when 83year old John Wesley visited that
area, he wrote, ‘This country is all on fire and the flame is
spreading from village to village.’ And spread it did. The chapel
which George Whitefield had built decades previously in Tottenham
Court Road had to be enlarged to seat 5,000 people the largest in the
world at that time. Baptist churches in North Hampton, Leicester, and
the Midlands, set aside regular nights devoted to the drumbeat of
prayer for revival. Methodists and Anglicans joined in.

Matthew Henry wrote, ‘When God intends great mercy for His people,
He first sets them praying.’ Across the country prayer meetings were
networking for revival. A passion for evangelism arose. Converts were
being won not through the regular services of the churches, but at
the prayer meetings! Some were held at 5.00 am, some at midnight.
Some preChristians were drawn by dreams and visions. Some came to
scoff but were thrown to the ground under the power of the Holy
Spirit. Sometimes there was noise and confusion; sometimes stillness
and solemnity. But always there was that ceaseless outpouring of the
Holy Spirit. Whole denominations doubled, tripled and quadrupled in
the next few years. It swept out from England to Wales, Scotland,
United States, Canada and to some Third World countries.

Social Impact

The social impact of reformed lives was incredible. William
Wilberforce, William Pitt, Edmund Bourke, and Charles Fox, all
touched by this movement, worked ceaselessly for the abolition of the
slave trade in 1807. William Buxton worked on for the emancipation of
all slaves in the British Empire and saw it happen in 1834. John
Howard and Elizabeth Fry gave their lives to radically reform the
prison system. Florence Nightingale founded modern nursing. Ashley
Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, came to the rescue of the
working poor to end their sixteenhour, sevendayaweek work grind. He
worked to stop exploitation of women and children in coal mines, the
suffocation of boys as sweeps in chimneys. He established public
parks and gymnasia, gardens, public libraries, night schools and
choral societies.

The Christian Socialist Movement, which became the British Trade
Union movement, was birthed. The Royal Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals was formed to protect animals. There was amazing
growth in churches, and an astounding change in society came about
because for forty years a man prayed and worked, seeing the
establishment of thousands of similar prayer meetings, all united in
calling on God for revival. Missionary societies were established.

William Carey was one who got swept up in that movement. We speak
of him as the ‘father of modern missions’. The environment of his
situation was that he was a member of a ministers’ revival prayer
group which had been meeting for two years in Northampton in 1784-86.
It was in 1786 he shared his vision of God’s desire to see the
heathen won for the Lord. He went on to establish what later became
known as the Baptist Missionary Society. In 1795 the London
Missionary Society was formed. In 1796 the Scottish Missionary
Society was established, and later still the Church Missionary
Society of the Anglicans was commenced.

Nineteenth century

The prayer movement had a tremendous impact, but waned until the
middle of the 19th century. Then God started something up in Canada,
and the necessity to pray was picked up in New York. A quiet man
called Jeremiah Lanphier had been appointed by the Dutch Reformed
Church as a missionary to the central business district. Because the
church was in decline and the life of the city was somewhat similar,
he didn’t know what to do. He was a layman. He called a prayer
meeting in the city to be held at noon each Wednesday. Its first
meeting was on the 23rd September 1857.

Eventually, five other men turned up. Two weeks later, they
decided to move to a daily schedule of prayer. Within six months,
10,000 men were gathering to pray and that movement spread across
America. Surprise, surprise! Within two years there were one million
new believers added to the church. The movement swept out to touch
England, Scotland, Wales and Ulster. Ireland was as tough a nut to
crack as any. But when news reached Ireland of what was happening in
America, James McQuilkan gathered three young men to meet for prayer
in the Kells schoolhouse on March 14, 1859. They prayed and prayed
for revival. Within a couple of months a similar prayer meeting was
launched in Belfast. By September 21, 20,000 people assembled to pray
for the whole of Ireland. It was later estimated that 100,000
converts resulted directly from these prayer movements in Ireland. It
has also been estimated that in the years 185960, some 1,150,000
people were added to the church, wherever concerts of prayer were in
operation.

Twentieth century

Many would be aware of the Welsh Revival this century. It
commenced in October 1904. It was spontaneous and was characterised
by simultaneous, lengthy prayer meetings. In the first two months,
70,000 people came to the Lord. In 1905 in London alone, the
Wesleyan Methodists increased from their base membership of 54,785
by an additional 50,021 people. Coming closer in time and nearer to
Australia, in the Enga churches in Papua New Guinea there was a
desperate spiritual state 20 years ago. To redress the situation,
people there committed themselves to pray.

Prayer meetings began amongst pastors, missionaries and Bible
College students. It spread out to the villages. In some villages,
groups of people agreed to pray together every day until God sent new
life to the church. On 15 September 1973, without any prior
indication, simultaneously, spontaneously, in village after village
as pastors stood to deliver their normal Sunday morning messages, the
Holy Spirit descended bringing conviction, confession, repentance and
revival.

Normal work stopped as people in their thousands hurried to
special meetings. Prayer groups met daily, morning and evening.
Thousands of Christians were restored and thousands of pagans were
converted. Whole villages became Christian, and the church grew not
only in size but in maturity. In the Philippines in the 1980s, as a
result of some people attending an international prayer conference in
Korea, 200 missionaries of the Philippine Missionary Fellowship each
organised prayer group meetings daily at 7.00 pm to pray for the
growth of the church. They report that within a couple of years this
directly resulted in the formation of 310 new churches.

Spectacular growth is occurring in Argentina. Jose Luis Vasquez
saw his church explode from 600 to 4,500 with a constituency of
10,000 members in five years following a visit from Carlos
Annacondia. Hector Gimenez started his church from zero in 1983. His
congregation now numbers 70,000. Omar Cabrera started his church in
1972 with 15 members. There is now a combined membership of 90,000
members.

Peter Wagner, who is intensely investigating what lies behind such
effective ministry, has arrived at the conclusion that powerful
intercessory prayer is the chief weapon. Much of it is happening in a
Pentecostal, charismatic environment. But the structure or doctrine
is not the essential thing. Walter Hollenweger, a prolific researcher
into Pentecostalism said that for them, from the earliest
Pentecostals onwards, it was more important to pray than to organise
(1972:29). Wherever that principle is invoked, amazing things happen.

In 1982 Christians in East Germany started to form small groups of
ten to twelve persons, committed to meet to pray for peace. By
October 1989, 50,000 people were involved in Monday night prayer
meetings. In 1990, when those praying people moved quietly into the
streets, their numbers quickly swelled to 300,000 and ‘the wall came
tumbling down.’ In Cuba in 1990, an Assemblies of God pastor whose
congregation never exceeded 100 people meeting once a week suddenly
found himself conducting 12 services per day for 7,000 people. They
started queuing at 2.00 am and even broke down the doors just to get
into the prayer meetings.

Asked to explain these phenomena, Cuban Christians say ‘it has
come because we have paid the price. We have suffered for the Gospel
and we have prayed for many, many years’ (O’Connor 1990:79). When a
group known as the Overseas Missionary Society saw that after 25
years of work in India all they could report was 2,000 believers in
25 churches, they adopted a new strategy. In their homelands they
recruited 1,000 people committed to pray for the work in India for
just 15 minutes per day. Within a few years the church exploded to
73,000 members in 550 churches.

Will we ‘pray the price’?

Today there is great pressure from many directions in our society
to work harder, to become smarter, to produce results, or to be moved
aside. The church in many western countries is in danger of absorbing
this mentality into its own attitudes and practices, forgetting that
in the divinehuman endeavour, success comes not by might nor by power
but by a gracious release of God’s Holy Spirit (Zechariah 4:6).

Years ago, R. A. Torrey (1974:190) said, ‘We live in a day
characterised by the multiplication of man’s machinery and the
diminution of God’s power. The great cry of our day is work, work,
work! Organise, organise, organise! Give us some new society! Tell us
some new methods! Devise some new machinery! But the great need of
our day is prayer, more prayer and better prayer.’ Friends, in the
church in the west we now have the most up to date, state of the art
technology available to communicate the Gospel. Yet comparatively
little seems to be happening in so many countries.

In terms of the growth and mission of our churches, could it be
that whilst the world has learned to communicate with robots on Mars,
in sections of the church we have forgotten to communicate with the
Lord of the earth? If that is so, then our best course of action is
to stand again with the company of the first disciples and, like
them, return to the Head of the church Jesus Christ and say ‘Lord,
teach us to pray’ (Luke 11:1).

References

www.pastornet.net.au/renewal/journal1/robinson.html
David Bryant
(1984) Concerts of Prayer. Ventura, California: Ventura.

Paul Y Cho (1984) Prayer: Key to Revival. Waco, Texas: Word.

S D Gordon (1983) ‘Prayer, the greatest thing,’ Australia’s New
Day, April, 40.

Walter J Hollenwager (1972) The Pentecostals. Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Augsburg.

Greg O’Connor (1990) ‘Miracles in Cuba,’ New Day, May.

David Shibley (1985) Let’s Pray in the Harvest. Rockwall, Texas:
Church on the Rock.

R A Torrey (1974) The Power of Prayer. Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Zondervan.

Bob J Whillhite (1988) Why Pray? Altamonte Springs, Florida:
Creation House.

(c) Stuart Robinson. First published by the Australian Baptist
Missionary Society, 1992.
Used by permission.

Reproduction is allowed as long as the copyright remains intact
with the text.

Source: Rev Dr Stuart
Robinson

http://www.ausprayernet.org.au/

July 2010