Prayer: No Substitute for Obedience

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Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late—and how little revival has resulted?

 

Considering the volume of prayer that is ascending these days, rivers of revival should be flowing in blessing throughout the land. That no such results are in evidence should not discourage us; rather it should stir us to find out why our prayers are not answered.

Everything has its proper cause in the kingdom of God as well as in the natural world. The reason for God’s obvious refusal to send revival may lie deep, but surely not too deep to discover.

 

I believe our problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying; and it simply will not work.

 

A church, for instance, follows its traditions without much thought about whether they are scriptural or not. Or it surrenders to pressure from public opinion and falls in with popular trends which carry it far from the New Testament pattern. Then the leaders notice a lack of spiritual power among the people and become concerned about it. What to do? How can they achieve that revitalization of spirit they need so badly? How can they bring down refreshing showers to quicken their fainting souls?

 

The answer is all ready for them. The books tell them how—pray! The passing evangelist confirms what the books have said—pray! The word is echoed back and forth, growing in volume until it becomes a roar—pray! So the pastor calls his people to prayer. Days and nights are spent begging God to be merciful and send revival upon His people. The tide of feeling runs high and it looks for a while as if the revival might be on the way. But it fails to arrive and the zeal for prayer begins to flag. Soon the church is back where it was before, and a numb discouragement settles over everyone. What has gone wrong?

 

Simply this: Neither the leaders nor the people have made any effort to obey the Word of God. They felt that their only weakness was failure to pray, when actually in a score of ways they were falling short in the vital matter of obedience. “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). Prayer is never an acceptable substitute for obedience. The sovereign Lord accepts no offering from His creatures that is not accompanied by obedience. To pray for revival while ignoring or actually flouting the plain precept laid down in the Scriptures is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble.

 

It has been quite overlooked in recent times that the faith of Christ is an absolute arbiter. It preempts the whole redeemed personality and seizes upon the individual to the exclusion of all other claims. Or more accurately, it makes every legitimate claim on the Christian’s life conditional, and without hesitation decides the place each claim shall have in the total scheme. The act of committal to Christ in salvation releases the believing man from the penalty of sin, but it does not release him from the obligation to obey the words of Christ. Rather it brings him under the joyous necessity to obey.

 

Look at the epistles of the New Testament and notice how largely they are given over to what is erroneously called “hortatory” matter. By dividing the epistles into “doctrinal” and “hortatory” passages, we have relieved ourselves of any necessity to obey. The doctrinal passages require from us nothing except that we believe them. The so-called hortatory passages are harmless enough, for the very word by which they are described declares them to be words of advice and encouragement rather than commandments to be obeyed. This is a palpable error.

 

The exhortations in the epistles are to be understood as apostolic injunctions carrying the weight of mandatory charges from the Head of the Church. They are intended to be obeyed, not weighed as bits of good advice which we are at liberty to accept or reject as we will.

 

If we would have God’s blessing upon us, we must begin to obey. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience. God will not accept praying in lieu of obeying. We only deceive ourselves when we try to make the substitution.

 

A:W Tozer

From: Of God and men

Vietnam: Pressure to recant faith

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In violation of Vietnam’s new religion policy, authorities in Lao Cai Province in Vietnam’s far north are pressuring new Christians among the Hmong minority to recant their faith and to re-establish ancestral altars, according to area church leaders.

 

Local authorities have warned that on Sunday (Nov. 23) they will come in force to Ban Gia Commune and Lu Siu Tung village, Bac Ha district, where the Christians reside, but they did not say what they would do.

 

When the authorities in Bac Ha district in Vietnam’s Northwest Mountainous Region discovered that villagers had converted to Christianity and discarded their altars, they sent “work teams’ to the area to apply pressure.

 

Earlier this month they sent seven high officials – including Ban Gia Deputy Commune Chief Thao Seo Pao, district Police Chief A. Cuong and district Security Chief A. Son – to try to convince the converts that the government considered becoming a Christian a very serious offense.

 

Christian leaders in the area said threats included being cut off from any government services. When this failed to deter the new Christians, they said, the officials threatened to drive the Christians from their homes and fields, harm them physically and put them in prison.

 

Network

Gospel of Prayer 02

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Desperate Prayer

 

God makes all His best people in loneliness. Do you know what the secret of praying is? Praying in secret. “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door…” (Matt. 6:6). You can’t show off when the door’s shut and nobody’s there. You can’t display your gifts. You can impress others, but you can’t impress God.

 

1 Samuel 1:1-15 gives an account of the yearly trip Elkanah and his wife, Hannah, made to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice to the Lord. During this time, Hannah had been distressed that she was not able to bear a son for her husband. This passage of Scripture gives quite a descriptive account of her time in prayer concerning the barrenness of her womb. It says that Hannah wept. More than this, she wept until she was sore. She poured out her soul before the Lord. Her heart was grieving; she was bitter of soul, provoked, and of a sorrowful spirit.

 

Now that’s a pretty good list of afflictions – sorrow, hardship, and everything else that came upon this woman. But the key to the whole situation is that she was a praying woman. In verse 20 it says that she reaped her reward. “And it came about in due time, after Hannah had conceived, that she gave birth to a son; and she named him Samuel, saying, ‘Because I have asked him of the Lord.’”

 

Now I say very often – and people don’t like it – that God doesn’t answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer! Your prayer life denotes how much you depend on your own ability, and how much you really believe in your heart when you sing, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling….” The more self- confidence you have, the less you pray. The less self-confidence you have, the more you have to pray.

 

What does the Scripture say? It says that God takes the lowly, the things that are not. Paul says in I Corinthians 1:28 that God takes the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh should glory in His presence. We need a bunch of “are nots” today.

Iraq: Fleeing Christians face new hardship in Turkey

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As renewed violence in Mosul halts return, refugees wait in Turkish legal limbo.

 

In 99-percent Muslim Turkey, most Iraqi refugees are not Muslims. A middle-aged Iraqi refugee in Istanbul who fled Mosul five months ago said the only hope for his fellow expatriates is for Western countries to open their doors to Christian Iraqi refugees.

 

“We don’t have hope,” he said. “If these doors aren’t opened, we will be killed.”

 

Weeks after the mass exodus of Mosul Christians to surrounding villages, Turkey and other nations, around one-third of families have returned. But those returning Christians were shaken again on Wednesday (Nov. 12), when Islamic militants stormed into the house of two Syrian Catholic sisters, Lamia’a Sabih and Wala’a Saloha, killing them and severely injuring their mother. They then bombed their house and detonated a second explosive when police arrived, which killed three more.

 

The Christian family had recently returned after having fled Mosul. Many believe this attack will deter other Christians from returning to Mosul, and there are reports of Christians again leaving the area.

Network

Pakistan: Christians acquitted

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Dear Friends and Intercessors,

Greetings in His Precious name, He who always answers our prayers.

 

Dr Robin Sardar, who was falsely implicated in a blasphemy case, FIR # 149/2008, dated 04-05-2008, offence under section.295 C – Pakistan penal code, has been miraculously acquitted vide order dated Nov.1, 2008 by Mr Ahmad Khan Maiken, additional session judge Hafizabad,and is released from Gujranwala prison on Nov, 4, 2008.

 

God gave me the courage to plead his case, with his grace we got him honourably acquitted. Thank you for all your prayers.

 

Shalom,

Ezra Shujaat

Advocate

High Courts, Pakistan

Recovering realities 03

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Praying forth a recovering of the realities of the cross of Christ

The realm of prophetic stature

 

03.

 

”Ye are my witnesses.” Isa 43:10.

Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses – a living testimony, showing forth the crucified life.

 

Christian men and women, young and old, as individuals and as committed companies will herein find the greatest and most tangible challenge produced for days ahead. All our praying should reflect this vocational purpose, finding form and expression before God in a manner which would provide access for the Holy Spirit into all parts of our common reality to establish and consolidate a living testimony.

The revelation of the crucified life, a life lived before God, in God, the life which comes from God, tells every man about the great divide between the two realities, between what is marked by the presence of God and a life solely based on human resources and its repeated affronts and attacks on fellow men.

 

The kind of prayer and intercession which lifts the Church into its role as bearer of a heavenly testimony dares to prioritize the revelation of the Lamb, prioritize the mind of Christ. A life lived before God is filled, even fulfilled, by reflections of the eternal glory – which is the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world, a sacrifice securing the essence of godliness. The strength to live a godly, God-fearing, life may in all parts and at all times be gathered from the work of the Cross.

 

God is a God of justice; blessed are all they that wait for him. God is indeed God at the end of times – He judges the cause of the poor and needy, is not this to know hem? Blessed are all they that wait for him. A restoration, a full recovering lies ready for them that has learned to wait for him – a waiting which is crucifixion, a crucifying which is as real as any other.

 

The final restoration includes deliverance from the necessity to assert oneself, to vindicate ones own cause, to secure position and reputation – the practical value of the cross of Christ becomes more that evident in this realm of human affairs.

The wisdom of God will in all its parts be determined and defined by the cross of Christ. The wisdom of God is brought to the forefront and demonstrated by the Lamb, by the Son who gives his life as the final sacrifice of reconciliation, by the Son who offers each and every man to take part in his sacrificial life. This wisdom is God’s testimony in a praying community where every member share this view – it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me.

 

Lars Widerberg