“It’s My Job”

1 Timothy 2:1-7

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

September 19, 2004

The sun was lowering and the air was like an oven when the stranger rode into town.
With every step his horse kicked up little puffs of dust from the dry, powdery street.
No one had seen the likes of him before. He was a stranger to these parts.
No one knew for sure what to make of him.
Leather creaked as he slid out of the saddle.
The ground shook as the big man’s boots hit the street.
He hitched his horse to the rail, looked around, stepped up on the wooden sidewalk and headed toward the saloon.
When his lengthening shadow spilled through the swinging doors a hush fell over the crowd.
The bartender stopped pouring. The dealer stopped shuffling. The bargirls stopped smooching. Even the piano fell silent.
Chairs creaked, and necks craned as every eye tried to catch a glimpse of the stranger.
The stranger stopped and spoke for the first time, "Got any praying people around here?"
Those were the first words that Francis Asbury spoke when he rode into a new town. "Got any praying people around here?"

That’s how the Methodist Church became the largest and most influential Christian denomination of the 19th and early 20th century. They knew that revival came when Christians prayed.

And we are living in a time and a place that is in need of spiritual revival—I submit that without prayerful revival, St. Paul’s will cease to exist by the time that our second graders graduate high school.  We need to raise up leaders.

Pray? But we’re busy. Of course, we’re busy.  We do all kinds of good things. But how often do we get together just to pray?  How often do we seek God’s vision for our lives and our church? Who leads prayer?

But who’s job is it to pray?

Quite often, when I go to family gatherings and such, I am the “official prayer.”

It’s my job.

During joys and concerns, I lead in prayer, but how many of us actually take these prayer requests and joys home with them and prayer through them during the week?

C. H. Spurgeon was one of the most popular and successful preachers and teachers of pastors of Victorian England. His Metropolitan Tabernacle drew thousands each Sunday. Often hundreds would stand outside in the street hoping to catch a bit of the Baptist preacher’s message. One day a group of young seminary students came to visit the church they had heard so much about. When they entered the huge building, they were met by a gray bearded gentleman they took to be the janitor. He offered to lead them on a tour through the facilities and answer any questions they had.

They walked through the sanctuary, stood in the pulpit, and looked down from the balcony. When they had seen just about everything and asked every conceivable question they could come up with, the old gentleman asked a strange question, “Would you like to see what heats this church?” They weren’t really that interested in touring the coal cellar and furnace room. But just to humor their host, they followed. They went down a narrow stairway to an area beneath the pulpit. As the gentleman opened the door, he said, “Behind this door is the secret of this great church. Everything that happens upstairs starts down here. This is where the fire in the pulpit begins.”

The old man, actually Spurgeon himself, opened the door to reveal several dozen people on their knees in fervent prayer. The great preacher would always insist that the secret of any church, big or small, was the prayers of the people. It was Spurgeon who said, “I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.”

My job is to lay the foundation for prayer becoming the unquestioned heart and center of our church. I know that most of you pray, but I believe we could pray more. I want prayer to become so much a natural part of our life as a church that it is our first response to anything, not our last resort once we have tried everything else. That is what Paul is telling Timothy in today’s passage.

In chapter 1, Paul offers a bit of his own testimony and outlines the seriousness of the doctrinal challenges facing the church. Chapter 2 begins his instructions for how to handle the situation. “I urge, then, first of all,” he begins. What follows is the top priority.
That is what we need to see first, before we look at anything else, that the text says, “First of all!” For the church of Jesus Christ prayer is not a luxury, an option if we are not too busy, or what we do when all else fails. It is first of all!

Jesus knew that prayer was first. You need to simply read the Gospels to realize that he prayed often and before every critical juncture in his ministry and life. The early church considered prayer a priority. Nearly every important event in the early church was preceded by prayer meetings. Did Jesus and his apostles know something that we need to know?

So prayer comes first. The text uses four different terms for prayer. All four are related, but each has a different shade of meaning. We can learn something from each. Together they reveal the nature of prayer and the proper attitude of prayer. The first term is “requests” or “supplications.” This term would have been used for bringing needs or wants before a king or higher authority. The second is “prayers”—the most common term for praying. It simply means asking. These two words remind us that prayer is coming before the King of Heaven and asking. Prayer is not the same as talking to ourselves, thinking positive thoughts, or wishing real hard. It is asking of the living God.

D. L. Moody was visiting Scotland in the late 1800’s when he asked a group of children, “What is prayer?” To his amazement, hands went up everywhere. He asked a young boy in the front row to answer the question. He youngster stood and responded, “Prayer is an offering up our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.” I want to be in that kid’s confirmation class!
I don’t think we can do much better than that answer for a definition of prayer.

The next two words in the list, “intercessions” and “thanksgivings” offer insight into the proper attitude of prayer. Intercession refers to asking in behalf of another. Serious prayer is unselfish prayer. The highest form of prayer is going before God for others. “Thanksgiving” is always involved because unless we are grateful we likely don’t understand whom we are talking to. That’s why we ask for joys along with prayer requests. The very fact that our God offers us an audience before his throne is reason enough for thanksgiving.

Next Paul provides a prayer list. Who do you pray for? Almost always a church’s prayer list reads like the admission list at the hospital. No listen, there is nothing wrong with praying for the sick, the shut-ins and the sorrowing. We should never leave them out. But if that is the primary focus of our praying then we are missing a big part of what God has made available for us.

Note who Paul puts on our prayer list. First is—everyone! It is the word for human beings—anthropos. Who are we to pray for? There is no limit. We can pray for people around the world.
Prayer ought to be a big part of our philosophy of missions. As a church we should be praying regularly and fervently for every missionary we know of. We should pray for the people the missionaries are trying to reach and the nations in which they serve. We have adopted a sister church in Lithuania, and we need to pray for them.

Paul says pray for everyone. Are there any limits to that? We can certainly pray for our friends. We naturally pray for our families. But Jesus said to pray for our enemies as well. That puts a whole new slant on praying. Almost always there are plenty of hurts and pains and mistakes to pray for on that list. Who might you put in this category?
We should pray for the courage to reach out to those enemies and offer forgiveness and healing.

We can pray for all the people in this church. What would it mean to be praying regularly for every single person in this congregation—from the staff,  Sunday School teachers, the workers in various capacities, to young families and children, to older people and shut-ins? We should pray for college students away from home for the first time. We should be lifting up any from the congregation who are in the military or who have moved to other places to work. Obviously, we should pray for members who have fallen away for whatever reason. And of course, we should pray for new believers who are just taking those first baby steps of the Christian life.

Some congregations organize prayer agendas so that every member of the congregation is prayed for by others on regular basis. What would it mean for you to know that you are being prayed for? What would it mean to a new or prospective member if they knew that being part of this church meant they would be prayed for by name on a regular basis? Pray for one another.

After people in general, note the specific topic for prayer that Paul calls for—for kings and those in authority. This is especially significant when you realize that Paul’s readers did not live in a Christian nation or anything that even came close. Almost all of their rulers were totally pagan unbelievers who often subjected Christians to horrible persecution.

Now I ask you-- if Paul could say that to first century readers living in Ephesus, don’t you think American Christians should be praying for our governmental leaders, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, whether you like the leaders or not? I mean praying for God’s blessing on their personal lives and their families’ lives. Praying that they will be effective and capable leaders.

Lastly, consider the reason Paul cites for such praying. Prayer is connected with God’s passion for the lost. That is why we pray the way we do so that we can live the way we do. We are walking billboards for the greatness and goodness of our God. Eternity is at stake in our praying.

We need to be a praying people.  We need to pray, really pray, for the leaders of this church, myself included.  We need prayer warriors to lead prayer groups.

And we need to pray for the lost.

Jeremiah- the summer is over, are the people not saved? No.

If not, then we need to pray.  But whose job is it? My job? No, it’s our job!

1 Timothy- For this I was appointed a herald and a prophet.

It is for this reason that Christ spilled his blood for you.