Learning to Pray Fervently

Dannah Gresh: Are you making time for prayer? Here’s Leslie Bennett. 

Leslie Bennett: Would I pray differently if I knew that Jesus was coming back next week or next month? Would I pray with more urgency and fervency? Would you?

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for April 28, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh along with our host, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of Seeking Him.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We're talking about prayer most of this month here on Revive Our Hearts. I know I need this fresh emphasis in my own life. Do you feel like there is standing in the way of your prayer life? Is something keeping you from drawing close to the Lord in authenic, passionate prayer? Yesterday we heard from my longtime friend and Revive Our Hearts staff member Leslie Bennett about four important obstacles that keep us from powerful prayer. She talked about the me-centered prayer, the earthly-centered prayer, the dirty hands prayer, and the zippy prayer. If you missed those, you can find them at ReviveOurHearts.com or on the Revive Our Hearts app, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Leslie is back with us again today picking up with two more obstacles to powerful prayer.

Leslie: Number five: “kitty cat prayers.”

Some of us tend to approach the Lord rather timidly, “God if You have time, I know You’re busy,” so many people are praying. And, “Here I am, and it’s me again. I know I’ve already talked to You about this, but I am back. And if You think You can help me Lord . . .” What? 

That reminds me of the father of the mute son that was having convulsions in Mark 9. He had asked the disciples if they could cast out this demon that was causing him to be mute and to have these convulsions, and the disciples had no success with that. But when the dad saw Jesus, he went to Jesus. His prayer request started out like this, “If You can do anything, have compassion and help us.” To which Jesus’ reply to the man probably looking at the man like I’m looking at you right now. "You’ve got to be kidding me. If I can help? If I have compassion? Can I help you?"

He replied, “If you can, all things are possible for the one who believes.” 

And so, the dad begged Jesus. You remember the next thing he did? He said, “I believe, help my unbelief.” And Jesus did. That’s what we need to do, “Father I believe, help my unbelief.” And be bold in our prayers. 

During His earthly ministry, Jesus called the people a faithless generation. I wonder what He would call our generation? I wonder if He would call us faithless?

Ladies, we pray in the name of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who does not purr like a soft kitty cat. He roars! Amen? Let’s start to pray like it. 

Nothing is too hard for Him. Believe what He said in His Word. Come into His presence with boldness and confidence in His power. What impossible prayers are you praying that only God can answer?

Well, in the fall of 2019, my daughter McCauley and her husband had been married for several years, and they deeply desired a child. They were infertile. They had been to fertility counseling. She had gone through a lot of treatment. She was not having a menstrual period. And not having a menstrual period, you can’t get pregnant. Nothing that they had tried was working. 

And so, they decided that they were done. It was just too emotional; it was just too hard. You know, Heaven rules, right? Heaven rules. So they said, “We’re not seeking any more treatment. We’re just going to step back, and we’re just going pray. That’s all we’re going to do; we’re going to pray.” 

And so, in her time with the Lord, because she is a woman who abides. And in her time with the Lord, this was in like fall. But she was praying with the Lord, and the Lord impressed upon her heart to pray for a miracle baby. 

Well, that’s kind of terrifying in a way. Pray for a miracle baby? You want me to pray for a miracle baby? She heard Him because she listens and she abides. 

And so, she took some time, and she kept coming back to the Lord. Because you need to discern that, is that from the Lord or is that just my wishful thinking, or where is that coming from? 

So, she kept going back to the Lord. Lord, is this what You’re asking me? She spoke with her husband about it. They prayed about it, and they believed that that was truly from the Lord, to pray for a Christmas miracle. 

Well, I want you to know my daughter was still not having a menstrual period. She’s physically unable to get pregnant and to give birth to a child. But on Christmas morning, in faith, she had bought a pregnancy test and had it in the cabinet. 

She thought on Christmas morning, “Honey, let’s just see. He’s the God of the impossible. So, together they huddled in the bathroom. They took the pregnancy test, and they were pregnant . . . . on Christmas morning. 

God is the God of the impossible. Ladies, I want you to pray impossible prayers in your life, because if God can do that for my daughter, who physically could not bear a child, He can do that for whatever it is that your heart is yearning to see Him do. 

Let’s believe Him and ask Him for the impossible. 

Well, we’ve considered the me-centered prayers, the earthly-centered prayers, the dirty hands prayers, the zippy prayers, and the kitty cat prayers. Now, the last one is kind of the most lengthy of them all. The sixth obstacle of powerful praying is your lazy prayer.

You see, prayer is hard work, we have to put our hands to the plow and not give up. In Colossians 4:12, Paul tells us about his friend Epaphras, who was as Scripture says, “ . . . struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.”

Other translations of that is “always struggles,” or “always striving earnestly,” or “laboring fervently.” That phrase comes from a Greek word which is a picture of how the early Olympic athletes competed to win. They competed with one goal in mind, and the only goal that they had was to win. So, they wrestled, they struggled, they labored fervently to win. 

The first century Christians were taught by Paul for God’s kingdom to advance, they must labor through prayer in the presence of a powerful and holy God. And Epaphras is held up as that model for fervent prayer and fervent intercession. 

If anything, the past two years has taught me personally . . . I believe in the twenty-first century church that we have become a people who give a lot of lip service to the importance of prayer but our lifestyle doesn’t match up. We haven’t gotten this right, ladies. But there is time to get it right, because the Bible says we have not because we ask not. What could be more clear than that?

E.M. Bounds wrote this, “The Church upon its knees would bring heaven upon earth.” The Church upon its knees would bring heaven upon earth. E.M. Bounds also said, “If the Devil can get the Church to withdraw from prayer by believing reasonable excuses, the Church is under his dominion.” 

Wow that strikes me right through the heart. So, when we’re not disturbed when a few days or weeks pass without time in the Word or prayer, it’s because we’ve forgotten that it absolutely matters. We have fallen for the lie that prayer isn’t as important as other stuff. 

The Enemy wants us to believe that prayer accomplishes little, and that it’s an add-on to our faith. Just think, what if we had stopped praying for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and quit praying against abortion? Praise God for that answer to prayer! 

So, listen, let’s not be too hard on ourselves though. One reason we lack powerful prayer is because we don’t have a plan. So, would you be willing to take one small step to get with other believers to pray? Here is how God has shown me to do this, and I hope it will be helpful to some of you. 

Listen, a year ago I had a real burden for my church. We were going through a challenging time. I just felt like I knew that I was not praying for my church the way I should be. Like many churches, our church was having a very difficult time with COVID. It had taken its toll on us. I wasn’t seeing that the church members were living up to their responsibility to be bathing the church in prayer.

Our leaders, our pastors, and our staff, and frankly as a congregation I wasn’t aware of anyone that was praying for the fire of God to fall on us. 

So, I got together with a couple of friends and shared my burden with them, and they quickly agreed. And my one friend, Shannon, who is super action oriented . . . I just love her. She went straight to the pastor and said, “Pastor, the women want to get together and pray on Sunday morning, what do you think?”

He was thrilled. He was overjoyed. He gave his blessing. None of had any extra time to add one more thing to our schedule, right? So, we had to come up with a simple plan. What that ended up being for us is that we would meet for thirty minutes in-between the two worship services at our church. That’s all. Thirty minutes. We don’t share any prayer requests, because we’re all reading the church e-news and the worship bulletin. We know what’s going on. We know what’s happening. We can sense how the Spirit is directing our pastor through the way that he is preaching. And so what we do is we take the sermon text, and we pray from the sermon text, and we boldly go before the throne of grace and we intercede fervently and boldly for our church. 

We pray big kingdom prayers, the kind of prayers that bathe our church in God’s priorities. We cry out for Him to revive His Church and to send a spiritual awakening in our lifetime. 

Now, most Sundays, five or six women show up. Some mommas even bring their daughters and I absolutely love that. Even some young ones as well as some teens. But here’s what I know, it doesn’t have to be a big group to yield big results. 

Another friend of mine, Holly, and her family happened to be away from church about the time we started this prayer group. They were gone for a long time, like nine months or so. And when they came back, she said something to me very interesting. She said, “I can’t explain it, but our church is different. What’s been going on? It has changed dramatically while our family has been away.”

And what had happened when we started this prayer time, not only were we suffering from COVID, but had several (and this is not a huge church) key staff members left all about the same time. And when she came back, we had rehired all of the staff members and pastors we needed and some new positions. Now, that ladies, can be attributed to many different things, but one of them is the power of prayer! Amen? Amen!

The power of prayer; it’s dramatic what God has been doing. So, I could have the mindset of why bother five or six women for only thirty minutes, but friends, God, by His Spirit, what He can do in thirty minutes is not what His followers can do in thirty years!

Have a plan, pursue intimacy with Jesus alone and with other believers. Prayer is costly. It requires sacrifice; it’s inconvenient; it’s hard work. Prayer is strapping on combat boots and going out the door into battle when you would rather stay home because you’re tired. Prayer is admitting we’re helpless without God. Prayer is asking God to do only what He can. 

The times are urgent. I was reading in Joel recently about the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus to judge the world, when the lost will be perished, and I came under a spirit of conviction. Would I live differently if I knew that Jesus was coming tomorrow? Would I pray differently if I knew that Jesus was coming back next week or next month? Would I pray with more urgency and fervency? Would you?

In Luke 11:5–8, after Jesus gave the pattern for prayer, which we call the Lord’s Prayer, He went on to teach a modern-day parable that illustrates how we are to pray. I’m going to put the modern-day spin on it. He called it a parable, and I’m going to put the modern-day spin on it for you. 

So, this comes from Luke 11 verses 5–8. So, imagine with me girls, it’s just been one of those days. The kids, or it could be the grandkids, spill blue Kool-Aid all over the white rug, and then they were playing on your white couch after eating strawberries and accidently threw up all of this red gunk. You lost the car keys so you were late to your doctor’s appointment, so they canceled you. Your husband woke up sick. The toilet overflowed. You threw out your back picking up the wailing two-year-old. Do I need to go on further with this, or are you getting the picture? It’s just a normal day for a woman, right?

By 8 p.m. everyone in the household is like, “We’re putting this day to bed. No more of this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It’s over, we’re all going to bed, 8 o’clock, lights out.” 

And at midnight there’s a knock at the door. Well, you barely hear it, because you’re pretty much in the deep sleep mode—comatose would be the right word to use here. You’re comatose at this point, but the knock keeps getting louder. No matter how many times you turn over, the knock keeps getting louder, and you can’t ignore it. 

So, finally you shout out, “Go away! We’re asleep” (knocking) “Go away! We’ve got COVID!” But instead of going away, your neighbor just hollers and pounds on the door even more. “You must give me three loaves of bread for my visitor who just showed up, and I haven’t been to the grocery store in a week.” 

Ugh! Oh my word, this neighbor really has got a lot of nerve. No matter what you do, you put the pillow over your head, and you still can’t block it out. So, you get up out of bed, just to get rid of her. You stumble in the dark, and you go the pantry and just get whatever you can, just whatever you can sweep up in your hands. You go to the back door, you open the door, you throw it at her, and then you slam the door, and you go back to bed. 

Well, Jesus explains this parable. He says that even though the grumpy person wouldn’t wake up for a friend, she will eventually get up because of her neighbor’s shameless, boldness, persistence, and audacity. She will give her whatever she asks. 

So, how much more? How much more will our loving Father respond to our audacious prayers when we use the Lord’s Prayer as our pattern? And then Jesus goes on further to teach that we can be absolutely confident when we pray. And I am going to read that to you from Luke 11:9–13. This is what comes right after that. 

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Praise the Lord!

So, did you catch that? It goes on to say (and I am going to skip over verse 11), “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

So, don’t miss that verse, because that verse is saying that we are expanding our capacity for the Holy Spirit when we are in prayer. 

Jesus is calling us to passionate, confident prayer. Like when Jacob wrestled with the angel, and Hannah mumbled her longing, her pleas for a child, and when Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death. 

There will be times when we are discouraged about prayer. And that’s why it’s essential that we’re not always praying alone on our own. Find a partner or a group to pray with. 

And I am absolutely convinced of this that there are some works of God that He reserves until His people seek Him fervently together in prayer. Anybody else would agree with me on that? The Church has weakened its power because it has forfeited it’s power to pray together. 

If you only take one thing away from this session, I hope it will be the necessity of gathering with believers to seek the Lord fervently and on a regular basis. 

Pray together, whatever it takes, do it. Maybe it’s even online, we have that capability now. But let the prayer meeting arise from the dust. There is no substitute. If you don’t have someone like that in your life, just pray and ask God. He will answer that prayer, and He will connect you with someone else who has that same burden, and then wait on Him to act. 

 

Well in Acts 1:14, note the “one accord” prayer. It says, “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer.” Could it be that we are having so much division and disunity in the Church that we have stopped praying together? Bowing shoulder to shoulder in prayer, there’s something about that.

When we do that with our brothers and sisters, that goes a long way to mending the hurt in our hearts and our disagreement. 

The early Church modeled and assumed Christians would unite in prayer. If you read Acts 1 and 2, you’ll see the spiritual momentum that results for united prayer. United prayer is appealing to God and united prayer harnesses the potency of prayer. 

Nancy: Yes. It is so important to gather with other believers and seek the Lord in prayer. That's been a burden on my heart since the ministry first began—that God would raise up praying women, joining their hearts and hands around the world to cry out to the Lord on behalf of our families, our churches, our nations and our world.

Leslie Bennett has been showing us how we can have a thriving prayer life. We’ve been listening to the second part of her breakout session from our True Woman conference last fall. If you missed the first part, be sure to go back and listen on the Revive Our Hearts app or at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

Also, be sure to tune in to our weekend program, Revive Our Hearts Weekend, for more from Leslie and others on powerful intercession. 

Dannah: That’s right. In that breakout session, Leslie was joined by some friends who all shared some tips for having a lifestyle of prayer. We’ll hear from Nicole Furno, Becky Ellerman, and Joy McClain on the upcoming edition of Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Nancy: It’s heard on many of our same radio stations, or you can also catch the Revive Our Hearts Weekend podcast wherever you get your podcasts, or at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Dannah: We’ve been talking about prayer all month here at Revive Our Hearts because we know it is a key part of our relationship with God. To help you make prayer more of a pattern in your life, I want to invite you to check out our new resource this month—Finding the Words to Pray. It’s a book with fifty Scriptures to help guide your prayers. This beautiful book is one you’ll keep opening in any and every season of prayer. Put it on your coffee table as an encouraging reminder or consider gifting it to a friend. This book is yours when you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. 

Visit Revive Our Hearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Be sure to request your copy of Finding the Words to Pray. 

Everything we do in this ministry is to help women find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Or as our Spanish-speaking friends say, “libertad, plenitud, y abundancia en Cristo.” (That's my best attempt at Spanish!) Join us next week to hear an exciting report from the recent True Woman conference in Mexico. It’s also the ten-year anniversary of our Spanish-language program Aviva Nuestros Corazones. We can’t wait to tell you about how God is moving in Latin America. Now to close us in prayer, here’s Nancy.

Nancy: And oh Father, thank You for the incredible privilege of prayer. I don’t know why we don’t use it more—I don’t know why I don’t use it more—but I’m so grateful that You are in heaven hearing and answering our prayers and that Christ is seated at Your right hand interceding on our behalf. So Lord, I do pray that You would raise us up to be praying people, women praying together around the world and appealing to You, beseeching You, interceding on behalf of those we love and those that You want to bring into Your Kingdom. Lord, would You make us women and men of prayer? May You be glorified, may You be pleased to pour out Your Spirit in a fresh way in our day, as we pray in Your name and with thanksgiving, amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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