Why Wouldn’t We Pray?

Prayer lights the match that lights the fuse to release the explosive power of God in the affairs of men.  Prayer must become the essence of our Christian life (38).  We must “catch prayer.”  Jesus was first and foremost an intercessor. The disciples caught prayer from Jesus (39). Prayer is not for just a select few. “Intercession is everyone’s ministry, just as worshiping and witnessing are.” The lack of intercession  appalls God (Ezekiel 22:30)?

Here are a few  of many possible reasons why a person wouldn’t seek God’s help:

1. Ignorance 

Believers have the privilege of tapping into the power of prayer. When we  come to Christ for salvation, but many believers live far beneath their privileges. It’s as if God has prepared a huge banquet, and we’re off in a corner somewhere eating a bologna sandwich!”  Some of us just don’t understand the royal privilege as we shall see.

Prayer is a privilege

Because of Christ’s victory on the cross, we are invited to come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help us in our times of need (Hebrews 4:16). In addition, we’ve been given the privilege of prayer in Jesus’ name (John 14:13-17). A new closeness to God is possible. 

Prayer taps the Bounty

in the Endowment of

Christ.

 

We are heirs of an inheritance traceable to Christ—a wealth of treasures  is willed to us (Hebrews 9:16-17). When Christ died He left an expressed will and testament.

Keller thinks it is possible to be rich and live poor. Don’t live your life with a high degree of phoniness, hollowness, and inauthenticity.  Instead, embrace the understanding that our inheritance actually changes who we are and how we live (p. 167).

We are rich in Christ

so let’s not live poor.

To illustrate, Keller suggests that we imagine that we get a notice that someone has left us some money, but for various reasons, we assume it is a very modest amount. We get busy and don’t get around even to checking on it for quite a while.

Eventually, we do so and are thunderstruck to discover it was a fortune, and we had not been doing anything with it. We were actually rich but had been living poor. This is what Paul in Ephesians 3:14, 16-19, wants his Christian friends to avoid, and only by an encounter with God in prayer can they avoid it (p. 168).  A second reason people may avoid praying might be the hardness of prayer.

“Prayer involves discerning, wrestling, resting, pulling down, rooting out, warfare, reconciliation, agreement and watching.” It’s hard work. Satan gets stirred up but he doesn’t resist those who do not pray. Those of us who endure and pray in a disciplined  and determined way, eventually move from  duty to delight. The pursuit of God in prayer eventually bears fruit, because God seeks for us to worship him (John 4:23).  That’s what makes prayer  so “infinitely rich and wondrous.”

The enemy’s wiles and schemes can immobilize even the strongest Christian. No part of the full armor of God  should  be neglected. Fully clothe yourself in the body armor of the Spirit (Eph.6:12-13). Then our lives will be “marked by confidence and power in the midst of our weakness, and the fruit of the Spirit” (Chan).

Why? Because “Greater is the one living inside of me, than he that is living in the world…” (1 John 4:4). So keep praying everywhere (1 Timothy 2:8), about everything, and doing so, we involve God in our lives. Prayer is never inappropriate” (Small, Prayer: The Heart of It All, 91).

If you don’t believe God can help you; you must believe you can handle everything by yourself. Simply put, you’re self-sufficient. There are some who don’t ask for God’s help because they believe He can’t or won’t give it. Consequently, there is a God vacuum in their life and ministry; a vacuum that will eventually be exposed. Thinking you can make it on your own seems very arrogant. God is attracted to weakness, not pride.

 If you believe that once God decides what He is going to do, and there is nothing we can do to change His mind, then you do not believe in the power of intercession.  Think Abraham.  In Genesis 18, Abraham pleads with God over Sodom, and Lot and his family were spared, except of course, for his wife who disobeyed and turned into a pillar of salt. What if Abraham had given up? What if he had just said, “Well, you win some and lose some?”  Abraham’s intercession was life and death.

Perhaps you’re ready to give up. Someone asked me today, “David, do you feel like giving up?”  Then she challenged, “When you feel like giving up, look up!  One prayer can save a life! I really want to encourage you, that no matter what you, or a loved one, is going through, keep praying, keep believing! Quit every excuse.  Because one prayer can save a life!”