By Brian Norman
“It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46).
Prayer is a central part of who we as Christians are. Nothing else says more about WHO we trust and deify than WHO we pray to, and how MUCH we pray to them. There are a buffet of good ideas regarding how to instigate revival and church growth, many of them with some degree of merit. Yet none compare or have any power, absent of prayer behind and beneath them.
It has been said, “Where there is much prayer there is much power” (unnamed). Absent of a personal prayer revival on the part of a church’s members there can be no real Biblical revival and subsequent Biblical results in that congregation. Oh, but when we pray! Prayer changes our situations, and it changes us in our situations. Nothing else brings renewing, reviving, hope, faith and fresh vision like a good ol’ praying through, followed up with a daily, consistent diet of prayer. E.M. Bounds said, “Prayer projects faith on God, and God on the world.”
Before Adam could be commissioned with the mission to reach his world, he had to be “blessed” (Gen. 1:28). Can we expect any less in order to reach ours? If we are to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” we have to already be blessed before we begin (Gen. 1:28).
What better place is there to be blessed and stay blessed than prayer?
With that in mind, let us begin 2015 with our own personal prayer revival, and ask the same of those who labor with us and that we have the privilege to lead. For only in prayer can something be birthed in us and in our midst that will radically change our world. Absent of it, we are at best going through the motions, finding ourselves guilty of “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5). Let it not be said of any Apostolic.
Brian Norman is a full-time International Evangelist. His experience includes pastoring and planting churches in America and overseas. www.GlobalEvangelism.org Ph: (636)544-0627