A Spiritual Autopsy - part II

A Spiritual Autopsy - part II

A reduction of prayer. You could say that all the rest of the symptoms fall under the umbrella of the reduction of God’s Word, however it is beneficial to cull some out for inspection and conviction. The culture in which we live is a fast-paced lifestyle which works to enjoy pleasure and strives for success and financial reward. The invention of the Daytimer was a revelation of just how jam packed our schedules are and how little time we have for other things. Church gets a few hours during the week, but often those hours subliminally soothe our consciences and seem to excuse us from some personal spiritual responsibilities.

Prayer is difficult, and deep and penetrating prayer is spiritual labor. If it was easy everyone would be a prayer devotee. Prayer was one of the cornerstone’s of the early church, and it was during a prayer gathering that the Holy Spirit fell on the 120 in the upper room. The prayer about which I speak is not just a “Polly want a cracker” prayer or a bless Aunt Martha prayer. This is a reduction of deep and penetrating prayer that transforms the one praying and beseeches the power of God.

Most local churches do not have a church wide prayer gathering, and if they do it is usually accompanied by a laundry list of what we want God to do for us. Our generation knows nothing of a prayer gathering in which the presence and power of God falls upon believers in such a way that they are literally changed from glory to glory. Those prayer gatherings elevate faith into a dimension that honors God and brings a peace and joy into the hearts of men and women.

When you are engaged in unfettered prayer it seems as if your requests are residual when compared to the revelations of the Lord Jesus graciously afforded you through this divine instrument of grace and relationship. It is practical, but it is most certainly a great and glorious mystery. The Spirit working through us ever so gently pulls back the veil to God Himself and allows us to enter into the limitless expanse of His eternal throne room. What grace! What mystery! What glory!

This does not come through a perfunctory practice that is almost ignored in the modern church. The western church desires innovation and membership rolls and mailing lists and sound systems and polished music programs, but rarely does a pastor get so broken, so contrite, and so overwhelmed by the Spirit’s conviction that he leads his flock on a journey into prayer that moves into uncharted waters. I am convinced the Spirit is looking for a people who will seek God with abandon and with a relentless thirst that can only be quenched by more and more trips to the prayer closet.

But schedules and games and eating and telephones and money call aggressively for our time and thereby rob us and God of the glory due His name. What treasures we miss because our prayer lives are so meager and our prayers are so self centered! And in the end, we live lives void of His presence and power, and the only testimony of His life changing power must be through our original conversion experience. But how has God change you today? And if He has not, why?

And when a people are dead spiritually, their only hope is revival. And the door to any revival begins and ends with prayer. Genuine spiritual revival does not come with one or two prayer meetings. This kind of prayer is a labor of love, but make no mistake, it is laborious. Most people will never even get a vision for such things, and those that do will rarely pay the high price that seeks that Pearl of Great Price. If someone told us that Jesus was going to appear in the flesh in a certain city park, and if we believed it, who among us would watch football instead? But when we are promised His presence in the spirit we are much less energized about that. Why? Because we are lazy and we do not actually believe it. And we have grown up in an ecclesiastical system which has never made prayer a centerpiece of following Christ. Do not smoke or drink or curse and other moral directives are the core of our discipleship system.

But we have concocted a religion that lives as if there is no God but the God of our doctrine. Many unbelievers adhere to a form of morality, but what separates us from them? Prayer is an outward manifestation that God is alive and available to those who diligently seek Him. The first disciples did not ask Jesus to teach them how to preach or how to picket or how to change the government.

Lk.11:1 - And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

But when a church looks to call a pastor, they look at his resume, they assess his church growth statistics, and they go to hear him preach. But how often do they research his prayer ministry and how he led his flock in times of prayer? The church has adopted the patterns of the world, even in calling their shephereds.

It is most definitely true that if we desire to pray once again, we will have to forget what we have learned and begin afresh. And instead of elaborate conferences on prayer, we will have to pray in order to allow the Spirit to teach us how to pray. One can only imagine the glory in such a pursuit.