A Christ Awakening And The Struggle Of Prayer

 by David Bryant [extracts]

Chuck Swindoll in his book, The Grace Awakening, makes this observation: "The greatest heresy in the modern evangelical movement is our emphasis on what we should be doing for God rather than on what Christ has done and is getting ready to do for us." In other words, we don’t emphasize the hope grace brings to us. If there is any reason why there may be a struggle with prayer in our lives, it could be that we need much more emphasis on what we may hope, on what God gives us permission to believe, and on how large that hope should be because of who Jesus is as Lord.

 

The Disciples Struggle

 

Remember when the disciples came to the Lord Jesus to ask, "Teach us to pray." My reaction would probably have been at that point to set up a seminar on prayer and tell them what they need to know about prayer, and what they need to do in prayer! But Luke, chapter eleven, says that when the disciples said, "Teach us to pray," what Jesus did was to give them a greater vision of what they were to pray towards–the glorifying of the Father, the advancing of the Kingdom, the uniting of the people of God.

 

Then He gives a parable about a man who knows his next-door neighbour has bread that can feed visitors who have come in the middle of the night and are hungry. This man goes to the one place he knows he has hope for resolving his problem. He is so convinced that this is the answer to his problem, that he will not stop knocking on the neighbour’s door, even when the man inside says, "Leave me alone!" The man keeps knocking. Jesus seems to say: "I commend anyone who comes to God in prayer that same way, because they are not looking at the act of praying any more. They are looking at what they are praying towards–the magnificent hope waiting for those who seek the Lord."

 

In that same chapter, Jesus continues by talking about asking and seeking and knocking. In the Greek, the verbs are in the present tense, so it means keep on asking and seeking and knocking. Furthermore, the Greek word for asking is the word for begging; the Greek word for seeking means going after something hard to get, like digging for a buried treasure; and the Greek word for knocking refers not to just a gentle rap but a pounding on the door.

 

In other words, once we understand what God wants to do, then, as it says in Isaiah 62, we can take no rest. We can give God no rest–until He establishes His people and makes them His praise in all the earth. We keep begging and digging and pounding away. It isn’t about what we need to know or what we need to do. Prayer is basically about what we may hope.

 

A Re-conversion To Christ

 

The struggle of prayer is why we need a great awakening to who Christ is. In a sense we need a re-conversion to Christ among God’s people. This may seem strange to say, but I believe that our evangelical churches are filled with people who need to be re-converted to Christ for all that He is. They need to be brought back to Christ for who He is, for what He imparts, and where He leads. It will be for them, once it happens, an experience that will seem to them as if they were being re-converted to Him. And the end result will be fresh, abounding hope in Christ (Rom. 15:13).