When a baby is born, one of the first vital signs of life is that he breathes, maybe even cries.
When the Lord sent Ananias to seek out Saul, the arch-persecutor of Christians, but now a Christian himself, He reassured Ananias by telling him: “Behold, he is praying” (Acts 9:11)
This was the first sign of life.
For many, the first sign of new-born life in a believer is that he prays.
And then, cries. “You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’” (Rom 8:15)
That is the cry of a child of God. The cry of adoption.
That cry is a sign of life – life in the Spirit. For “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.” (Rom 8:9)
Life in the Spirit is true life; apart from the Spirit we are dead. “To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Rom 8:6)
C.H. Spurgeon said: “If prayer be the 
Christian’s vital breath, how can he leave off praying?” – a sentiment echoed my many another godly preacher since the conversion of Saul.
Sixty years before Spurgeon, James Montgomery expressed it in a few simple, yet profound, verses:
Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,
The Christian’s native air;
His watchword at the gates of death;
He enters rest with prayer.
O Thou, by whom we come to God,
The Life, the Truth, the Way,
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod—
Lord, teach us how to pray.
Not long ago I wrote a post: PT4K (“Praying Together For The Kingdom”) in which I commented on the many references to corporate prayer in the Book of Acts – 1:24, 2:42, 4:24-30, 12:5,12, 13:2,3, 14:23, 16:25, 20:36, 21:5 etc.
Also, note the many exhortations to churches to engage in corporate prayer in Paul’s epistles.
Prayer: The Lungs of God’s People
This was the title of an address we were privileged to hear when Michael Prodigalidad spoke at our church camp, on “Healthy Church Life”.
We were looking at the range of corporate activities of church life listed in Acts 2:42: “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
Concerning prayer Michael also noted the many references to corporate prayer in the life of the early church in the Book of Acts; then asked: “What does such prayer look like?”
“It is continuous; it’s in every place; it is in season, it is out of season, it’s in every season. It’s not simply tacked on, it’s not seen as inconvenient, or peripheral. It’s a regular habit.”
He then asked: “If that is what it looks like in the Book of Acts, why is it that, that’s not, generally speaking, what we see in churches today.”
He noted that on many church websites it is very hard to find churches talking about prayer. “There are many ‘programs’ in churches, there’s lots of things about what they do to interact with the community, I’m very thankful they say the Word of God is very important, they’re very welcoming, they always say we are ‘a diverse community’ – all these buzz words, it’s like evangelical bingo on a website… But one of the words I rarely find, and struggle to find, is any mention of prayer.”
He noted how: “If we were going to have a car wash, or some sort of community engagement activity (eg. a barbeque), in most churches you might get some people come to that (not all); if you said we were going to have a special evangelistic outreach to invite our family and friends, people might re-double their efforts for that.
“But if the church was to say we are just going to spend a couple of hours in prayer – we don’t have a guest preacher, we don’t have an international guest preaching for us; we might have some scripture, but we are going to spend the majority of the time just praying – how popular do you think that would be?”
Michael then outlined three of the Challenges to Prayer Today.
And then gave three solutions to Overcoming those Challenges, viz:
Challenges to Prayer Today
1. A Wrong View of God
In Reformed circles we have a very strong view on the sovereignty of God. But there is great danger at times that we can so view God in a sovereign way that becomes a bit fatalistic.
We can think: Why pray, when God has already decreed everything from the foundation of the world?
We can become a bit hypercalvinistic, not only when it comes to evangelism, but also when it comes to prayer.
God has decreed all that will come to pass. But He has also decreed that we are to be a people of prayer and we ought to pray according to His will.
Don’t hide behind God’s sovereignty and say, “Because God’s sovereign, I don’t need to pray.”
No, the correct approach is: Because God is sovereign we ought to pray. Because God invites us to pray; He says, “come to Me and pray.”
Or we can become discouraged because God doesn’t answer the specific matter we are praying for the way we want Him to. Maybe it’s health, or work, or a relationship. And we hold God accountable for that one thing.
But because God wants us to learn patience, that one thing doesn’t happen on the time scale that we have ordained is good and reasonable and right.
So we’re discouraged, we’re despondent.
2. A Wrong View of Ourselves
We might pray for the “big things”; but for smaller matters we think, “It’s O.K., I’ve got this”.
Eg. It is hard to pray genuinely, “give us this day our daily bread” when we have such an abundance of things, including fridges to preserve our food for the future.
Or not praying for surgery if it’s “just a day operation; after all it’s not open heart surgery.”
But God is sovereign over all things; not just the “big” things.
What we pray for reflects our theology of who God is and what He is interested in.
God does not struggle with our prayer requests. God is a great God; He has got ample band-width for our greatest needs, and for our smallest things.
And remember: God has a way of correcting over-confidence in self, and under-reliance on Him. Difficult times and dark providences will come, that thrust us upon God for prayer.
3. A Wrong View of Time
We are so busy. We think, wrongly, that sometimes we are too busy even to pray.
But who is too busy to breathe? If we do not breathe, we die.
Unfortunately, some of us believe that prayer is an optional extra for the believer. A nicety that, yes, we ought to do more of… But then the tyranny of the urgent displaces that which is most important.
Prayer is not like “free diving” – where a diver holds his breath for as long as he can to dive as deep as he can… which many do not survive, or they become permanently incapacitated.
Prayer is more like hard hat diving. It might be a bit inconvenient at times; but there is safety, there is life, we are always connected.
Don’t go free-diving: “Let’s see how many days in the week we can hold our breath, not speaking to our God, not interceding, not adoring Him.”
No. Be connected. As awkward as it might look. Breathe deeply and recognise your complete dependence on the Father.
Overcoming Challenges and Encouraging Prayer
1. Be thankful
The early church prayed, not out of mere necessity, but because they saw answers to prayer. That encouraged them.
Do you see answers to prayer? Are you thankful?
Try starting a church prayer meeting with thanksgiving – first for our spiritual blessings, then our temporal blessings.
Share how God has answered your prayers with others.
If we would but open our eyes to all the blessings we have in Christ Jesus, our doubts about who God is would fade away.
2. Reflect on the character of our God
Reflect on who God is, consider His wisdom. Eg. if His answer for us might be to wait for something better.
Consider His care for us; He is a good God. He is a God of love, and kindness.
That’s the Father we come to in prayer. It is much easier to approach this God if we know Him deeply and intimately. We can look back and say, “He has done me well. Great is His faithfulness.”
Think of times when God didn’t give you what you wanted; but now you reflect on it, what God gave was so much better. This keeps before us that God knows better than what we do.
3. Pray together
It is vital to the life of the church, not only that we pray for each other, but with each other.
The corporate prayer meeting is an important time in the life of a church.
It is a time when we pace one another; we learn from one another, we encourage each other.
Consider setting aside an entire afternoon for prayer.
Start “out there”, praying for missions around the world, then for other churches. Then for ministries in the life of the church, gospel opportunities in the local community.
Then for each other’s needs, for thanksgiving. And praise.
So often the response at such times has been: “That went by so quickly. We didn’t get to pray for everything. When’s the next time like this?”
Prayer is a great privilege.
Spurgeon described the prayer meeting as the powerhouse of the church: the engine room, the boiler room.
Is your church prayer meeting like a large fire with lots of energy?
We can labour hard, we can labour 24/7; we can tag-team; we can use all our skills, we can be as earnest, and as diligent, and well-meaning as we are – but, “unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain who build it.” (Psa 127:1)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is something of an enigma; all shades of Christianity seem to be able to claim him as their champion.
But, leaving aside his shortcomings, he does seem to have been genuinely converted.
Stuart Coulton, in the recent SMBC NEWS had this to say:
Bonhoeffer had not always been a Christian. In fact, before he was finally converted he had already been awarded a doctorate in theology, pastored a German speaking congregation in Barcelona and was lecturing in theology at the University in Berlin.
Bonhoeffer wrote that up until the time of his conversion in the early nineteen thirties, he had been driven by ambition. In many ways he was turning the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something for personal advantage.
Then God intervened and the theologian, pastor and lecturer was converted.
What outward signs did people see of his conversion?
You would imagine that a pastor and theologian would already, at least externally, have his devotional life in order.
Were there any outward signs that Dietrich’s relationship with God had changed?
Bonhoeffer’s students noticed that he began to pray!
Bonhoeffer admitted that before his conversion he had never, or rarely, prayed! But from his conversion, prayer became a feature of his life.
When he gathered those students whom he was training for ministry, against the backdrop of Hitler and Hitler’s attempts to subdue the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer insisted that they pray.
Surprisingly to us, this caused considerable strife among the student body. He set in place a daily 30 minute time for Bible meditation and prayer. The theological students were appalled.
Some complained they didn’t know what to do in the 30 minutes. Some fell asleep. Others wrote sermons. One even took the time to quietly smoke his pipe!
They accused Bonhoeffer of being a legalist.
To which Bonhoeffer replied,
“How can it be legalistic for a Christian to learn to pray?
That is the very thing they must learn to do.”