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The Commentary

Pray on!

Pray on!

Facing many challenges at this time, from both outside and inside the church, what are Christians meant to do?

Jesus showed his disciples ‘that they should always pray and not give up’.

Sunday School

My family recently bought me an iPod. This introduced me to the wonderful world of downloading sermons via the internet. So I heard a lecture by Sinclair Ferguson (60 years old this year) given to students training in ministry. Sinclair is one of the best theologians of our day. He spoke about his life. Raised in Scotland, his mother and father were not churchgoers, but sent him to Sunday School. He was a bright boy and, partly because of that, he confesses that he was one of the naughtiest boys in the class. ‘If there was anyone I never believed would become a Christian’, he later overheard someone saying, ‘it was Sinclair Ferguson’.

Yet at the age of 14 he found Christ. Reflecting on his pathway to Christ, Sinclair’s testimony is: ‘I was not saved, but people were praying for me’. Prayer is so important. Prayer can see the naughtiest child in the Sunday School become a world-class Christian leader. So pray on!

Horace and Tom

Many Christians pray for unsaved relatives. There was a lovely answer to such prayer for a family in our own congregation not long ago. Katy had been praying for her granddad Horace to find Christ for years. Now he was 100 years old and dying in hospital. Katy wrote a letter and included a little gospel tract explaining Jesus’s words: ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest’. It was through this that granddad finally came to the Lord and confessed: ‘I know Jesus has been so good to me’. At one level we wonder at the patience of God, prepared to wait 100 years for a man to turn to him. At another level it teaches those who are praying for relatives to keep praying to the last. Who knows what God might do?

Recently, the Rev. Tom’s wife in a poor part of Kenya was in line for a teaching job. However, it seemed a bribe was necessary to secure the post. But, encouraged by missionary friends, Tom refused and instead we all prayed. She passed the interview. Prayer is powerful. Under God prayer is stronger than a corrupt officialdom. So pray on!

Pray against false prophets and leaders in the church. Pray for the gospel.

Two of the Trinity

The importance of prayer is underlined to us by what the New Testament tells us about two members of the holy Trinity. Of God the Son, the Lord Jesus, we learn that he ‘is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us’ (Romans 8.34). Further, of the Holy Spirit, Paul tells us: ‘The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express’ (Romans 8.26). (How reassuring it is for sick Christians who feel too weak to pray for themselves to know that God the Holy Spirit is praying for them.)

But the point not to miss is this. If even two persons of the Godhead give themselves to intercede with the Father, then so should we — especially when the situation is urgent. Note the words of Richard Bewes, who had such a great ministry at All Souls in London: ‘The work of God cannot be undertaken without prevailing intercessory prayer. Indeed we must go further and insist that prayer actually is the work’.

John Benton