Pensees: I can’t believe it! I want to pray!

I can’t believe it! I want to pray!

It was Wednesday night. My family and I were on our way to the midweek prayer meeting at our church. As we were about to approach the Prayer Zone (a spot on the road that marks where we begin to pray as a family for the upcoming services before arriving at the meeting place), I almost involuntarily blurted out, “I don’t blame people for not coming to the prayer meeting. It bores me.” Not the most appropriate attitude for the pastor of the church, the leader of the saints, and the faithful cajoler of those who do not make regular appearances to the “sweet hour of prayer.” But it was the truth.

I used to endure prayer meeting. I knew it was right. I knew that the church needed to pray. And I appreciated the faithful who came. I even had a deeply seeded conviction that prayer was (or should be anyway) the engine that drove our assembly. I believed in prayer. In fact, it was partly because every Christian instinct in me cried out, “Lord, teach us to pray” that I so disliked prayer meeting. If it was the engine that drove our church, if it was one of the core activities of the biblical church, why –oh, why! – was it such a downer?

Perhaps I’m too transparent. But I remember even telling my congregation that Wednesday night was the most depressing night of the week for me. Even as I urged them to come! We have always had an unusually committed congregation, but we normally only ran between 30 to 50 percent of our Sunday morning group for the midweek prayer meeting. The majority of the faithful Sunday crowd couldn’t make it for some reason. (I suspect I know: they disliked it as much as I did. Only, not being leaders, they had no compelling reason to go.)

Today things are different at MSBC. Now the norm is 70 to 80 percent of our Sunday morning group. And that accounts for a consistently growing Sunday morning attendance. Wednesday night prayer meeting is now the highlight of my week. I usually return home fired up to prepare for the Lord’s Day, eager to plunge into the studies through which I had been slugging through Monday and Tuesday, and rejoicing with a clean feeling, a spiritual cleanness from having been with the saints in the Word and in prayer.

What happened?

Our prayer meeting was becoming more like an organ recital: pray for so-and-so’s heart, what’s-his-face’s liver, and the pancreas of a friend of a friend of a friend. Moving stuff. I had actually begun to think cynically that Bible colleges ought to include an anatomy/biology class for wanna-be pastors. I was praying for stuff that I couldn’t even understand. And sometimes I thought we needed a medical translator to interpret the requests. (I never tolerated “unspokens.” The best way to pray for unspokens, I think, is to not speak. And then how does one know that an unspoken has been answered? Do we offer unspoken praise?) Anyway, after the little Bible study, we’d break into small groups and each one would conscientiously read through the list of names. But finally I had enough of organ recitals.

We did something radical. We simplified.

I almost felt like I was cheating the first night. I had read through Ephesians for preparation, but that was all. As we sat in a circle I said, “We need to commit ourselves to praying prayers that everyone can in good conscience say ‘amen’ too. We must be of one mind in our corporate prayer. The saints (plural) in Acts 4 lifted their voice (singular) to the Lord in prayer. So tonight I am going to read Ephesians – ALL SIX CHAPTERS! – without comment. After I have read the letter from the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, I would like us to discern timeless prayer requests that we can pray for our congregation sitting here in the year 2004.”

We read Ephesians. It took less than twenty minutes. I then asked for prayer requests:

1. Let’s pray that our children obey their parents in the Lord. “Sounds good,” I said, “Does everyone here believe that they can say a hearty amen to this request?” They all nodded.
2. Let’s pray that our husbands would love their wives even as Christ loved the church. “Amen.”
3. Let’s pray that we would be kind to one another, and forgiving. “Amen.”
4. Let’s pray that we would do the good works for which we have been created. “Amen.”

And so it went. Twenty requests in all. Obvious requests. Requests that we knew were the mind of Christ. And then I told the small group of believers that night that I wanted every one of them to pray, praying only from our requests, and that I would like everyone else to verbally assent to the prayer by saying, “Amen” at the conclusion of each prayer. That is radical for Midwestern Baptists. But they did. And thus we have been doing ever since.

One pastor of another denomination asked one of our elders, “How in the world do you get such a large percentage of your congregation to return for prayer meeting?” Our elder shrugged his shoulders and said, “We just read the Bible.”

Reading the Bible is right. The longest book that we have read without breaking into segments was the book of Hebrews. Other books we have read many times. Ephesians is one of them. The pastoral epistles are very relevant and important to the local church. There are many requests that apply to MSBC in 1 Timothy. It does a pastor’s heart good to hear his people pray publicly for the leadership of the church that it would be blameless, etc. It is sweet to hear the verbal affirmations of the congregants.

We change up. We break into groups more often now that we are a significantly larger group. Often we take personal requests at the end of the prayer meeting so that the believers can take them home to pray over them at home. But the one thing that rarely changes is the extended public reading of the Word and the commitment to pray prayers that matter corporately. Gone are my feelings of guilt that I haven’t prepared something. Just this past week we read Ephesians again and one of the men in the church told me that he came to the midweek with the weight of the world’s filth and burden on his heart and after less than twenty minutes of reading from the Holy Scriptures was revitalized, convicted, and cleansed. That’s more than I hear about my sermons!

The saints love it. They know they are praying in one mind. They know that they are praying the mind of Christ. They know the requests are going to be answered.

And certainly those requests are being answered.

God is gracious to us. His Word is so precious, so powerful, so purifying.

I can’t wait until Wednesday night.

(Following is a list of prayer requests from 1 Thessalonians)

Pleading with God what We Know His Will to be For Us from 1 Thessalonians

1. Let us pray that MSBC’s ministry would be a “work of faith and labor of love [with] steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:3).

2. Let us pray that MSBC’s gospel ministry (particularly as it is delivered by its ministers) would be “in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1:5).

3. Let us pray that the members of MSBC would be “imitators of [the apostles] and the Lord Jesus Christ” in that
a. We are able to receive the Word “in much affliction”
b. Though afflicted, because we are receiving the Word, we have “great joy in the Holy Spirit” (1:6)

4. Let us pray that we will “turn from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from Heaven” (1:10)

5. Let us pray that MSBC’s ministry (particularly as it is delivered by its ministers) would be “not to please men, but to please God who tests our hearts” (2:4).

6. Let us pray that the conduct of MSBC’s leadership would be “holy and righteous and blameless toward the believers” (2:10).

7. Let’s pray that the hearers of the Word at MSBC would accept it not as the word of men, “but as it really is, the word of God” (1:13).

8. Let’s pray that the Word of God would work in the hearts of believers here (1:13).

9. Let us pray for protection from the Tempter (3:5).

10. Let us pray that the Lord will make us “to increase and abound in love for one another and for all” (3:12; 4:9-10 “more and more”).

11. Let us pray that the Lord will “establish our hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (3:13).

12. Let us ask God to continue growing and learning “more and more” (4:2).

13. Let us pray for our sanctification (4:3).

14. Let us pray for moral purity (4:3).

15. Let us pray for self-control (4:4).

16. Let us pray that the members of MSBC would be provided for to “mind their own affairs, and to work with their own hands, dependent on no one” (4:11,12).

17. Let us pray that we would learn how to encourage each other with the truths of the Second Coming (4:16-18).

18. Let us pray that we will be sober, alert, and awake in this darkened world (5:6-11)

19. Let’s pray that MSBC would respect the men who labor among them, esteeming them highly in love because of their work” (5:12-13)

20. Let’s pray that we would be “at peace among ourselves” (5:13).

21. Let’s pray that we will be able to “admonish the idle” (5:14)

22. Let’s pray that we will encourage the fainthearted and help the weak (5:14).

23. Let’s pray that we be forgiving (5:15).

24. Let us ask God to prevent us from quenching the Spirit (5:19)

25. Let us pray to hold fast to all that is good (5:20)