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by Ray Ortlund
“Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical and totally focused on physical needs inside the church or on personal needs of the people present. But frontline prayer has three basic traits: a) a request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves, b) a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church, and c) a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory.”
Tim Keller, “Kingdom-centered Prayer,” Redeemer Report, January 2006.
Forgive me of sin in my life and help me to be an over comer. I love You and submit this life that You have given me to Your leadership. Teach me how to be the person You created me to be. I pray for the conviction of Your Holy Spirit if ever I start to get off track and I pray for the desire to change. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen (Miracle Place Church)
| Prayer and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
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Spiritual Resources for use in celebrating the life of the civil rights leader
From Coretta Scott King:
Prayer was a wellspring of strength and inspiration during the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout the movement, we prayed for greater human understanding. We prayed for
the safety of our compatriots in the freedom struggle. We prayed for victory in our nonviolent protests, for brotherhood and sisterhood among people of all races, for reconciliation and the fulfillment of the Beloved Community.
For my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. prayer was a daily source of courage and strength that gave him the ability to carry on in even the darkest hours of our struggle.
I remember one very difficult day when he came home bone-weary from the stress that came with his leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In the middle of that night, he was awakened by a threatening and abusive phone call, one of many we received throughout the movement. On this particular occasion, however, Martin had had enough.
After the call, he got up from bed and made himself some coffee. He began to worry about his family, and all of the burdens that came with our movement weighed heavily on his soul. With his head in his hands, Martin bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud to God: “Lord, I am taking a stand for what I believe is right. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I have nothing left. I have come to the point where I can’t face it alone.
Later he told me, “At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. It seemed as though I could hear a voice saying: ‘Stand up for righteousness; stand up for truth; and God will be at our side forever.’” When Martin stood up from the table, he was imbued with a new sense of confidence, and he was ready to face anything.
–Coretta Scott King from “Standing in the Need of Prayer” as published by The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.
Richard Foster writes that we can be easily intimidated by the prayer warriors of the past…
Many of us…are discouraged rather than challenged by such examples (such as William Carey, Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Fox, etc). Those “giants of the faith” are so far beyond anything we have experienced that we are tempted to despair. But rather than flagellating ourselves for our obvious lack, we should remember that God always meets us were we are and slowly moved us into deeper things. Occasional joggers do not suddenly enter an Olympic marathon. They prepare and train themselves over a period of time, and so should we. When such a progression is followed, we can expect to pray with greater authority and spiritual success a year from now than at present (The Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster, 31-32).
May we be encouraged by this and press on in our prayer life!
John Hyde of India made prayer such a dominant characteristic of his life that he was nicknamed “Praying Hyde”!
Adoniram Judson sought to withdraw sought to withdraw from business and company seven times a day in order to engage in the holy work of prayer. He began at midnight and again at dawn; then at nine. twelve, three, six and nine to secret prayer.
William Penn put it like this on the prayer life of George Fox… 
…Above all he excelled in prayer…the most awful, living, reverend frame I ever felt or beheld, I must say was his prayer”
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Warning: Pray This Prayer at Your Own Risk
Wednesday, 16 November 2011 10:43 AM EST
J. Lee GradyNewsletters - Fire In My Bones
When I said to God, “Here am I, send me,” a real adventure began.
More than 12 years ago I found myself at a church altar in Orlando, Fla. God had been dealing with me about leaving my comfort zone. I had a great job with nice benefits, yet I felt spiritually unfulfilled. I knew there was an amazing adventure in front of me, but I had placed serious limitations on my obedience.
As I buried my head in the carpet in that church, I realized God was requiring unconditional surrender. He wanted me to wave a white flag. I knew what I had to say, but it was difficult to form the words. Finally I coughed them up. I said the same thing the prophet Isaiah prayed long ago: Here I am, send me! (see Is. 6:8.)
“Here am I, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough, the savage pagans of the wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort on earth; send me even to death itself, if it be but in Thy service, and to promote Thy kingdom.” — Missionary David Brainerd
This is what I call a dangerous prayer. It’s risky because God immediately takes you up on it. I believe when you utter these simple words, heaven takes a Polaroid picture of you with your hands up—and an amazing process begins. He closes in on us in order to crush our fears and demolish our selfishness.
When I prayed this prayer in 1998, I immediately had a vision while I was still on the floor. I saw a sea of African faces. I knew I’d be going to Africa, and I was scared to death. I had no idea how I would get there, what I would say or who would pay for the trip. So I swallowed hard and prayed again: Here I am, send me!
Less than two years later I found myself standing on a huge stage in a sports arena in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, speaking to 7,000 pastors. I did not enjoy the bumpy flight across the Sahara, and my knees were knocking when I preached. I felt as if I had been pushed way out on a limb. But even though I was terrified, my fear was mixed with incredible joy. The Lord had overcome my resistance, and He was using me! And since that trip I have ministered in more than 25 other countries.
Grace is so amazing. God not only gives us the power to serve Him; He plants in us the desire to surrender to His will even if we are scared of the consequences. This is what the apostle Paul described when he said: “For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13, NASB).
God has an uncanny way of wooing us into obedience and submission. Our flesh may protest; our fears may paralyze us. But in the end, if we will simply lift our hands in surrender, grace takes over. He gives us power, strength and a willing heart. And the results are supernatural because it is God at work in us.
Jesus taught His disciples to cultivate this willing spirit and to pray this dangerous prayer. He told them: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Luke 10:2).
This is what I call a trick prayer. You pray it at your own risk. When we ask the Lord to send workers into His fields, we are really praying, “Here I am Lord … send Mike … or Chuck … or Barbara.” But the Lord of the Harvest will likely tap you on the shoulder and say, “Well? What about you?”
The church has advanced throughout history because of people who surrendered to God. One of them was the brave David Brainerd (1718-1747), a missionary to American Indians during the First Great Awakening. Although he died of tuberculosis at age 29, his legacy of total consecration lives on in his journal, which was published by his friend Jonathan Edwards.
Brainerd recorded this very dangerous prayer in his diary: “Here am I, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough, the savage pagans of the wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort on earth; send me even to death itself, if it be but in Thy service, and to promote Thy kingdom.”
We rarely hear prayers like that today. Brainerd’s passion would be considered politically incorrect fanaticism today. We don’t promote self-sacrifice; we have a new gospel of self-fulfillment. We don’t talk about carrying a burden for lost people; we ourselves are lost in our comfortable materialism.
I wonder what would happen if all of us prayed Isaiah’s prayer with full sincerity before this year is over. What if you raised your hands and left all your fears, worries, excuses, stipulations, limitations and conditions on heaven’s altar—and invited God to use your life in any way He wants. I dare you to try it.
J. Lee Grady is contributing editor of Charisma. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. His most recent book is 10 Lies Men Believe (Charisma House
The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people.
If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of die first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer!
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon quoted in Everything by Prayer by Fred Hartley, 120)
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