Prayer Meeting 17/5/2022

Our Lack Of Sustaining A Prayer Life

Well, at the last prayer meeting we talked of the ‘Flesh’s Unwillingness To Desire Prayer’. Where we spoke about our procrastination and much from the heavenly doctor Richard Sibbes. Tonight I want talk about ‘Our Lack Of Sustaining A Prayer Life’. I know well all suffer from that, where we start well, we do our bit, especially when we are at a prayer meeting or just after one, but do we sustain it?

Tonight’s reading is from the ‘Piercing Heaven Puritan Prayers’, page 200. This prayer is entitled: ‘Help Me Cry, Lord’, by the 17th century puritan Richard Alleine. If I were to call it a name for myself, I would call it ‘I’m Not Broken Yet’:

I mourn Lord and I lament. I weep but it is because I cannot mourn or lament the way I should. If I could mourn as I ought, I would be comforted. If I could weep, I would rejoice. If I could sigh, I would sing and if I could lament, I would live, but I die. I die in my heart, and my heart dies within me because I cannot cry. I cry Lord but not for sin. I cry, I beg for tears for sin. I cry Lord, my calamities cry, my bones cry, my soul cries, my sin cries Lord for a broken heart. But look, I am not broken yet. The rocks tear apart, the earth quakes, the heaven drops, the clouds weep, the sun will blush, the moon be ashamed, the foundation of the earth will tremble at the presence of the Lord, but this heart neither breaks nor trembles. If only I have a broken heart. If I did, You would have Your way in my heart. What would be impossible if my heart was indeed tender? Work would be easy, pains would be a pleasure, my burdens would be light. Neither the commands nor the cross would be severe, nothing would be hard to accept. Sin, where are you? Fear, come and plough up this rock. Where are you love? Come and thaw this ice, come and warm this deep lump, come and enlarge this poverty stricken spirit. Then I will run in the way of Your commandments, I will accept all that is Yours but Your yoke and Your cross. I accept You Lord, Your love and whatever You will. Lord if you love, let me love You. I will seek until I can see; let me see until I can love. What do I have here Lord? My all is with You, my help, my hope, my treasure. My life is hidden with Christ in god. Yet this is all nothing to me while my heart is not with you. Take it Lord, take it up where my treasure is, there let my heart be also.

Amen

Turn with me now to Job 27:8-10, in fact I’m going to read from verse 2 to give a tiny bit of context.

Job 27:2-7

² “As God lives, who has taken away my justice, And the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter, ³ As long as my breath is in me, And the breath of God in my nostrils, ⁴ My lips will not speak wickedness, Nor my tongue utter deceit. ⁵ Far be it from me That I should say you are right; Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. ⁶ My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go; My heart shall not reproach me as long as I live. ⁷ “May my enemy be like the wicked, And he who rises up against me like the unrighteous.

Job is in the most tough of persecution, satanic attacks, the man has lost almost everything, yet he is holding fast to prayer and worship, and trust. Not just in good times but in all seasons. In verse 8-10 job then challenges his so called friends, and in turn all of us, in our seeking and continued devotion.

Job 27:8-10

⁸ For what is the hope of the hypocrite, Though he may gain much, If God takes away his life? ⁹ Will God hear his cry When trouble comes upon him? ¹⁰ Will he delight himself in the Almighty? Will he always call on God?

Will he always call on God? - Now there is a challenge. The purpose here in these prayer meetings is not to help you to just get emotional and learn how to say good prayers. The purpose is to challenge us all to be people of prayer, people who are devoted to prayer, no matter whether we are at a prayer meeting, or in the car, or at home.

It’s easy to get someone to pray, it’s easy to equip people to pray. It’s another thing to become a person of prayer. Johnathan Edwards, the great 18th century revival preacher, who many say is the greatest philosophical theologian - Edwards states that the lack of prayer should ‘shock our peace’, but in order to not be convicted, we touch it ever so slightly after our initial devotion, to trick ourselves into faking our commitment.

Edwards writes:

We may continue to attend prayer meetings as long as we live, yet may never truly call on the name of the Lord. They are present only for the sake of their credit. They may be present at prayer meetings but have no prayer life of their own.

This meeting is not your prayer life. We need to have the spirit to pray, by that I mean the deep desire. One of the reasons people stop praying is that they have had their desires met, their hopes met, their flesh satisfied. Why then pray? - I’m full and I have need for nothing. Revelation chapter 3 tells us of the church in Laodicea, the lukewarm church. The reason they are lukewarm it tells us in verse 17 is:

Revelation 3:17

¹⁷ Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—

They have their carnal needs met, and therefore have forgotten who they really are and who rescued them. One of the worst things we can do for people is give them all the things that they lack, by that I mean esteem them, give them the worldly things they crave, because when they get them, they often totally neglect the things of God. Mollycoddling, pampering, giving in to the needy demands, all cause people to go lukewarm. Of course, if you can only pray when in deep trouble, then that is a devotion issue in itself. However, we never help by giving people their fleshy desires, or by becoming their crutch.

Those who usually have waves of mood swings are very much people who have no need for things when they feel loved and accepted. They only seek God when man and the world hasn’t given them what they desire. When their wishes have been granted or supplied, they seek Him not.

What leads us to pursue man and the things of the flesh? - Temptation. And what did Jesus tell us to do to avoid temptation? ‘Watch and pray, lest you fall into temptation.’ (Matthew 26:41) As he said to the disciples in the garden. Temptation to what? To seek the flesh, to allow that to cover our thoughts and pursuits. We can even, in those times where we feel satisfied and loved, call other people to commitment.

Edwards says:

They can find out ways to solve objections against their own hope, when they can find none in the like case for their neighbours.

How true is it that? - When we think we are okay, when we feel we have put a bit of commitment in, or feel satisfied or loved, how we seem to hold people to a commitment that we can’t obtain either. Oh how little does the believer pray who has no grace for others who fail, when they are feeling okay. Or even when they themselves are in the pit.

Pastor Jeff Kingswood in quoting C.S. Lewis:

It is easy to condemn others, especially on the sins we think we would not commit.

Yet we commit other sins and feel no conviction, or are able to deny it. If indeed you hold such value for it that you dare to hold people to that such standard, why then do you not yourself do so?

Edwards closes his first sermon of two by saying:

Why do you retain that hope which by evident experience you find poisons you.

He then says something that actually first made me laugh out loud, not in a humorous way, but in an astounded by the truth it way. He says:

If your own experience of the nature and tendency of your hope won’t convince you of your falseness of it, what will?

What Edwards is saying is: If you can convince yourself that you’re better then what you are, if you can justify your level of commitment at times, if you can within yourself do just enough to get by and show up enough to look the part; if that way of living, if those actions are not enough to convict you of your own hypocrisy and being fake, then nothing will. If you can keep lying to yourself, then no one else will be able to bring devotion to your life.

Amen

Before I pray for you I want to share just one thing, or two but they join. In Arnold Dallimore’s two volume biography on George Whitefield, he does touch on the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was 19 when he was called to New Park Street Chapel London. He was given a six month trial. But Spurgeon said: ‘that’s too long - give me only three months, as the congregation might not like me’.

The church seated 1200 and it had 232 at that time. So around 10% capacity. When he died 38 years later, and obviously moved to the Metropolitan Tabernacle, which held 5000, there were 5311 members. During his whole time they had overall members of over 14000. When asked the secret to his success he said: ‘My people pray for me’.

Amen, let us pray.