The Praying Pastor: Infectious Prayer (PT 2)
This is Part 2 of an article on the prayer life of a pastor. Please find Part I for more on the praying pastor.
MAKE PRAYER YOUR PASSION
If we have this privilege of making the invisible God visible, if our perspective is that the mighty God is near, then the passion of prayer should seep like rain water into the nooks and crannies of the dry ground of the congregation.
Let the passion seep first into the pastor’s heart, then the pastor’s family, the church, the city that it might produce some little sprigs of growth!
If you view it as a privilege it will become a passion.
Again Spurgeon, on this passion says, “If there be any man under heaven who was compelled to carry out the precept, “pray without ceasing,” surely it is the Christian minister. He has peculiar temptations, special trials, singular difficulties and remarkable duties, he has to deal with God in awful relationships, with men in mysterious interests. He therefore needs much more grace than the common man and he knows this and as he knows this, he is led to constantly cry to the strong for strength…”
Harriet Tubman, the American abolitionist, was convinced that her leadership was given to her mainly because of a passion for prayer. One observer said, “In truth, I never met any person, of any color who had more confidence…in God. She frequently told me that she talked with God, and he talked with her every day of her life. [S]he had no fear of being arrested... For she said she only ventured where the Lord sent her.” Prayer was her passion. She had the perspective of mighty God and viewed prayer as a privilege. And so must the minister frequently talk with him – and go where the Lord sends him. Make prayer your passion.
MAKE PRAYER A PRIORITY
Do you remember in Acts 6 when the church is growing and some of the widows are being neglected in the provision of food? There is a crisis. The leaders then appointed seven people full of faith and the Holy Spirit to care for the widows.
They did this to preserve a principle. They said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.” Rather, they said, “We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” You have to guard the priority of prayer.
Booker T Washington’s daughter observed this principle of priority in her father’s life.
She says, “We never at home began the day without prayer and we closed the day with prayer in the evening. He read the Bible to us at breakfast every day and prayed; that was never missed. Really he prayed all the time. His faith built Tuskegee,” the school that he founded.
Of this priority, E.M. Bounds writes, “To Christ Jesus prayer occupied no secondary place, but was exacting in paramount, a necessity, a life, the satisfying of a restless yearning and a preparation for heavy responsibilities.”
Your ministry cannot be carried out without prayer. Even Moses’ hands had to be held up by Aaron and Hur. So our arms must be upheld in prayer. Bounds continues, “Pastoral responsibilities are extraordinarily heavy. And not only heavy, but extraordinarily complex - because they deal with people. You must be a person of prayer just to survive in pastoral ministry."
Robert Murray McCheyne once wrote, “When the heart is at rest in Jesus — unseen, unheard by the world — the Spirit comes, and softly fills the believing soul, quickening all, renewing all within.” What a glorious priority!
When prayer is a priority in the minister’s life it becomes infectious in the congregation’s life. People pause to say, “Can I pray for you about that?” They put their hand on someone’s shoulder and pray. The whole tenor of the congregation becomes convinced that God is real and he delights in our prayers!
Prayer is a privilege. The praying pastor takes the perspective that we have a massive all-hearing God and the chance to make the invisible God visible. This passion then shapes the man of God to be a man of prayer and this calling becomes a priority in his life.
The prayers of the praying pastor have an infectious impact on a congregation that deepens them in the vision of God, his mission in the world, the beauty of a local church, the power of the Spirit, the centrality of the Word. When he breathes, the congregation breathes. Prayer is an extraordinary opportunity to connect with the living God that is free, costs nothing, but has a tremendous infectious impact to shape a people into the image of the living God. It is a highly underutilized tool for ministry. We need praying pastors because we need praying congregations.
THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER
So if we need praying pastors what does it look like in the pastors life?
Here are 19 suggestions for the practice of prayer:
Start the morning and close the evening in prayer.
Seek a moment-by-moment dependence on the Lord.
Pray immediately when you feel the slightest burden. Stop. If you are with someone else ask the person immediately if you can pray for them. Put your hand upon them and intercede.
Have geographic prayer mile markers that catapult you into geographically specific prayer. We have prayer tunnel that launches us into prayer anytime we turn onto Lakeshore Drive which is several times a day!
Learn the life of lament. Learn to express your sadness to the Lord.
Pray the psalms. Every day. Take one Psalm and pray the time tested prayers of God's people
Make prayer lists. Write out what you need to pray about. Date them. Return to them.
Be specific in your prayers. What do you need from God? When? Why? When are you hoping to hear an answer by? If it’s not specific then how will you know when he has answered. Many of us are cowards to pray specific prayers. But God delights in specificity. We're afraid that if we pray specifically then we'll know if he doesn't answer us. But you also will not know then if he does answer you.
Take seasons of prayer. Get away for a morning. Walk around as you pray.
Make the need for wisdom an opportunity to memorize and pray James 1:5. And pray it frequently.
When you feel stuck on something in a meeting stop to pray. Check your gut. When a conflict is rising stop to pray.
Meditate on God’s character attribute by attribute in prayer.
Read a book on prayer.
Repent if you are hard hearted.
Put away besetting sins.
Put away your technology. Put your phone away. Shut your computer. Go analog.
Pray your sermon before you preach it. Person by person. Pray your Sunday after. What are the needs? Sunday Blues give you the piercing needs of the congregation. Pray those.
Develop your vision in segments of prayer. Ask God what he wants to do and then layer by layer bring it clearer and clearer in prayer. He wants to lead you.
If someone shares a critical need or crisis in a community group or a Bible study do not press on. Absorb the emotion of the need and stop and pray. No one will be able to move on until you do and every mind will be distracted. But if you pray the person will remember the moment and be comforted and God will hear.
Prayer shapes the pastor and the pastor shapes the church. With the congregation, we “have an illimitable and inexhaustive storehouse of good in God and that [we] can draw on him at all times and for all things without stint.”
And finally, Spurgeon again, “While the unformed minister is revolving on the wheel of preparation, prayer is the tool of the great potter by which he molds the vessel.”
Let God shape you in prayer that you may shape God’s people in prayer. Prayer is infectious.
— Jon Dennis, Chair & Lead for Vision
