Observational mishaps

I was listening to Leonard Ravenhill at work today and I was struck by something: We don't pray enough.

For those who don't know, Leonard Ravenhill was a pentecostal preacher and evangelist, beginning before WWII and continued in the US until the 80's. In every message I have heard by him, he continually challenges the modern church to strive to be more along the biblical model in Acts. His stories of the early years of his ministry in Great Britain are inspiring.

He spoke of prayer and how they would spend hours in late night prayer meetings. He talked about how they would pray continuously, together. He talked about how they would look forward to and relish the time they spent praying to the wee hours of the morning. Why do we not do this? Why do we not have more people sacrificing an extra hour of sleep to go to the 6:30 prayer meeting? Why do we not get excited about coming together and praying for even an hour? Can you even fathom praying for two? Three?

How can we expect God to do great things through us if we aren't willing to sacrifice the time and energy to seek him for what he wants? We already know he wants people to know him. How can we expect to be at all effective if we ourselves don't have anything beyond and intellectual knowledge of God? Do you know him personally? Do you pray?

We in the evangelical world have a tendency to hear words like "revival" and blow it off as this crazy idea that those charismatics talk about. God doesn't move like that anymore. Yet I hear us pray small prayers about the spirit sweeping the city. Why not pray big prayers and pray them like we really believe it? We need to be praying more! The early church DEVOTED themselves to prayer as well as fellowship, teaching and the breaking of bread. How can I expect God to move in my life and through it if I'm just giving him a few minutes in the morning. As one man once said (I believe it was Luther), "I have so much to do today that I must first spend four hours in prayer in order to get it all done." Four hours? That's a lot of prayer. Yet the one that we follow, that was nothing.

Here is what I propose: Every other Saturday, we open up a home to pray. I'll suggest mine. We get together at seven and we pray as long as the Spirit moves us. Maybe it's an hour. Maybe it's for three. Maybe the only reason we stop is so that we can go to church the next morning. I don't know how it will go, but I think we need to focus on prayer and then go DO it. This is especially true for those of us in Symbio. We lack zeal. How else can we expect to gain it?

Yeah, I'm fired up.