The Modern Cancer

Prayerlessness is the cancer of modern Christendom. Shallow, short-lived, instant, and irreverent prayer. Yet for many, to be able to say a touching monologue before people is already prayer. But prayer is single-mindedly directed to God and to God alone. Often we are found to gather with people who are both strangers and allergic to waiting and being still before the Lord. I remember the prayer meetings I have had with two brothers in the early hours between midnight and morning, long after the leader has finished leading the prayer the other two would still continue for another hour with their face on the floor. Inversely, I say this to my shame, when I slid into sin a decade after, personal prayer was erased from my life, and replaced with the false, shallow, and poweless facade of public or group prayer. I would pray with friends, but shortly after would be snoring. My prayerless years were fraught with short-temper, fear, depression, lack of vision, lack of desire for fellowship and the word, without discernent, pride, anger, apathy, unkindness, and filthiness. Yet in spite of all this I still prayed before people, but not before God. 

It is true that we can proceed with our programs, have a pleasant ministry, perform intellectual preaching, expound extensive theology, and all sorts of seemingly fruitful ascent into the spiritual, without prayer. The end result being our needs are proclaimed before men. This is the prayer that is common today: we pray to God and ask from men. And when men provide what we ask then we thank God for answering, but we hold ourselves accountable to men; the real ones who answered. But we will say, 'God moved them.' But how do you know God did, if you had not asked? We cater to men because we fear losing the support. Yet the glaring disconnection is swept under the rug, the process is repeated, and is finally administered to be how the way things go. It is then irreverently branded with the label of Christianity, which is then propagated and taught. The absence of power is accepted without question. And the people pat themselves on the back. This is not praying to God but begging from men. Elijah prayed to God and God answered. 

"Praying to God, but asking from men." It is easier to ask from men than to pray to God. We can also say, it is easier not to pray than to bear the burden of waiting on God. Little praying is worse than no praying, for it is nothing more than a delusion, an ointment for the conscience. A lie. 

E.M. Bounds writes:
The superficial results of many a ministry, the deadness of others, are to be found in the lack of praying. No ministry can succeed without much praying, and this praying must be fundamental, ever abiding, ever increasing. The text, the sermon, should be the result of prayer. The study should be bathed in prayer, all its duties so impregnated with prayer, its whole spirit the spirit of prayer. 

God's true preachers have been distinguished by one great feature: they were men of prayer. Differing often in many things, they have always had a common center. They may have started from different points, and travelled by different roads, but they converged to one point: they were one in prayer. God to them was the center of attraction and prayer was the path that led to God. These men prayed  occasionally, not a little at regular or at odd times; but they so prayed that their prayers entered into the shape of their characters; they so prayed as to affect their own lives and the lives of others; they so prayed as to make the history of the Church and influence the current of the times. They spent much time in prayer, not because they marked the shadow of the dial or the hands on the clock, but because it was to them so momentous and engaging a business that they could scarcely give over.  

Prayer was to them what it was to Paul, a striving with earnest effort of soul;  what it was to Jacob, a wrestling and prevailing; what it was to Christ, "strong crying and tears." They "prayed always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance." "The effectual, fervent prayer" has been the mightiest weapon of God's mightiest soldiers. The statement in regard to Elijah - that he "was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit" - comprehends all prophets and preachers who have moved their generation for God, and shows the instrument by which they worked their wonders. 

The little value we put on prayer is evident from the little time we give to it. Let us pray.