Finally... Keep Praying!

One Sunday, the pastor showed up at church with a Band-Aid on his chin. After the service was over, he was standing at the door shaking hands. A man asked him “Pastor, how did you get that cut on your chin?”

The Pastor said “Oh, when I was shaving this morning, I was thinking so much about my sermon, I wasn’t concentrating on what I was doing.”

The man replied “That’s too bad, Pastor. Maybe next Sunday you should try to concentrate on your shaving and cut your sermon instead.”

I have preached a lot of sermons here at Lynbrook over the past seven years. Over 300 Sundays, you have faithfully shown up and I have stepped up to this pulpit to speak. Each sermon is roughly 30 minutes long, which means that it is about 3,000 words. 300 times 3,000 equals 900,000 words. That’s just in sermons! Add to that all the other things I have said from up here, and it is easily over 1 million words.

Now, I’m down to my last two sermons. This week, and August 1 are all I’ve got left. When I was trying to figure out what to say to you, I found myself looking at the places in the NT where Paul, or some other writer, was about to give some final remarks.

There are seven places in the letters of Paul where he says “Finally…” and then gives some closing instructions. I was interested to see just what Paul had to say in those passages. For example…

Ephesians 6:10-11 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

Philippians 3:1 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord!

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

2 Corinthians 13:11 Finally, brothers, good-by.

But there was one “Finally…” passage which really caught my eye, because I believe it holds the key to the future of Lynbrook Baptist Church. It is the passage we read earlier in 2 Thes. 3. Let’s look at it again.

2 Thessalonians 3:1-5 Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.

This “Finally..” passage is about prayer; the church at prayer. Paul is asking - no he’s really commanding - the church at Thessalonica to pray. To pray for him and his ministry. To pray that the Gospel might spread rapidly and be honored. To pray for victory over spiritual enemies and the forces of evil.

The reason that Paul writes so strongly about this to the church at Thessalonica is that he knew something that is still true today: the ministry of prayer is the most essential ministry in the church.

Show me a church that has stopped praying and I will show you a church where it is only a matter of time before the doors are closed and that church disappears. Prayer is the lifeblood of the church.

We often forget that we are in a spiritual battle. There’s a war going on around us. Prayer is our lifeline to headquarters. If the enemy can succeed in cutting off our line of communication, then he has us in the palm of his hand.

In the year 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France. In spite of the fact that France was expecting an attack, when the invasion came, it came as a surprise. The Germans attacked through the Ardennes forest at a place in the line the French thought impossible for tanks and armor to get through. Their whole plan of defence was predicated on their assumption that German armor could not get through the forest.

But get through they did, and once they were through, the German panzers raced along behind the French front lines cutting them off from their headquarters. The French soldiers never had a chance to recover. They could not tell their generals what their situation was, and their generals could not tell them what to do. Their lines of communication had been cut.

In any war, “triple C” targets have the highest priority - command, control, and communication. If you can knock out your enemy’s ability to communicate, you will defeat him. Satan knows this, and that is why he goes after the ministry of prayer in the church. He knows that if he can get us to stop praying, he will defeat us.

Satan knows that prayer generates spiritual strength in a congregation. He knows that a church that is praying is a church that will be much more difficult for him to get into and cause trouble. He knows that the ministry of prayer unleashes spiritual power; that prayer is the key that unlocks the storehouse of God’s blessing. So it’s no wonder that Satan wants to prevent us from praying!

And he will do this any number of ways. He will see to it that your schedule is so crowded that you just don’t have time to show up at the church Prayer Meeting. Or if you do show up, he’ll try to discourage you with the small crowd. He’ll try to get you focusing on all the other people who don’t come to Prayer Meeting, and he’ll try to persuade you to stop coming also. And then, when you do give up, and miss weeks, or months, or even years, he’ll try to convince you that it would be too embarrassing to go back again. Or he’ll try to get you to do something that is a whole lot more spiritually satisfying and refreshing than praying, because prayer can be hard work.

We live in a results-oriented culture. We like immediate results - instant gratification. The ministry of prayer doesn’t promise to deliver that. Prayer goes against the grain of our culture. I know people who have been praying for the same thing for decades, and they haven’t seen an answer to their prayers yet. And all the while they are praying, Satan is whispering in their ear “You’re wasting your time. God isn’t listening. God doesn’t hear you. He doesn’t care about you.”

And we live in a time-oriented culture too. Sociologists tell us that time is becoming the currency of choice in the 90’s. In other words, we’re making our choices on the basis of what will enable us to guard our time and keep it for ourselves. That is why more and more people are willing to pay someone else to do something for them, than to do it themselves. I used to change my own oil. I don’t do that anymore. I just take my car to Jiffy Lube and pay them to do it for me. I trade money for time.

Things like fax machines, microwaves, catalog-shopping with an 800 number and a credit card, and Federal Express next-day delivery have become tremendously popular. Why? Because they save us time. Market researchers have found that we are becoming more and more willing to trade our dollars for time, because time is rapidly overtaking money as the supreme value by which we measure the worth of things.

Now when you apply that cultural yardstick to the ministry of prayer, you see that prayer loses on two counts. Number 1, prayer takes time. It takes time to get together with other Christians to pray. And number 2, what have you got to show for it when you’re done? You have just invested an hour of your time (actually more than that when you consider your travel time) and what have you got to show for it? When you walk out of prayer meeting, you don’t have any guarantee that any of your prayers are going to be answered.

It would be nice if God would give you a claim check after Prayer Meeting; a receipt that you could hold in your hand and use to claim your answered prayers. But he doesn’t do that. As a service industry, God fails dismally.

Have you ever phoned a company’s customer service department and you get put on hold? And you listen to what is supposed to be soothing music, but the longer you listen to the music, the madder you get? And it doesn’t help that every now and then, a cheerful recorded voice tells you “We’re sorry, all our representatives are handling other callers. Please stay on the line to maintain your calling priority.” When you finally do get to talk to a human being, you feel like giving them a piece of your mind about their lousy service!

Yet many times, that is what God does to us. He puts us on hold. (Maybe you’re on hold right now.) He doesn’t get right to us. He doesn’t treat us as though our problem is the most important problem in the world. So it’s no wonder, when it comes to prayer, that many Christians are saying “Why bother? Prayer simply doesn’t seem to be an efficient use of my time.”

But Paul obviously didn’t think that. To him, prayer was so important, that it was the final thing he wanted to remind the church at Thessalonica to do before he signed off his letter.

He knew that prayer produced results. That is why he asked the Thessalonians to pray for him. He knew that their prayers were going to have a decisive impact on his ministry as a messenger of the Gospel.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was one of the greatest preachers who ever lived. Under his ministry, the Metropolitan Tabernacle was a powerful lighthouse of the Gospel in 19th century London, England. Every Sunday, 5,000 people would show up for church - the only reason more didn’t come was that they couldn’t fit in the building. Once a quarter, Spurgeon would ask his regular church members to stay home so that there would be more room for newcomers.

One day, Spurgeon was showing some visitors around the church. After showing them the sanctuary and other rooms in the church, he said “Come, and I’ll show you the heating apparatus.” With that, he quietly opened the door to a large room where over 400 people were on their knees in prayer. Spurgeon knew that the spiritual warmth of the Metropolitan Tabernacle was produced in its prayer meetings.

Every Sunday that Spurgeon got up to preach, he knew that there were a group of deacons meeting in a room beneath the sanctuary, on their knees praying for him all the way through the sermon. It’s no wonder he was a great preacher!

Let me tell you that one of the greatest gifts a church can give its pastor is to pray for him. And I thank God for your prayers for me. There have been many times I have sat in our Prayer Meeting and heard people lift me and my wife and family up before the throne of grace. You will never know how much that has meant to me.

In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul told the church at Corinth that their prayers helped him through a very difficult time in his life. He told the church at Philippi that, because of their prayers on his behalf, his imprisonment was going to turn out for the best.

Never underestimate the value of praying for your pastor.

But similarly, the greatest gift that a pastor can give to his people is to pray for them. I wish I had a dollar for every time one of you came to me and said “Pastor, please pray for me. I need you to pray for me.”

One of the sacred tasks of a pastor that you won’t see written in a job description is that he pray for his people. It’s easy for him to become so wrapped up in the other details of ministry that he neglects the ministry of prayer.

The apostles in the early church understood this priority. In Acts 6, there was a church problem. Some of the widows were being neglected in the distribution of food to the needy. There was a hue and cry, and hard feelings among some of the people in the congregation.

It would have been easy for the apostles to step in and add this administrative problem to their portfolio of responsibilities. But they didn’t. They had the church select seven men who were full of the Spirit and wisdom and they delegated this administrative matter to them. They said “We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

When your next pastor arrives, encourage him to give himself to prayer and the ministry of the Word. Don’t inundate him with administrative duties. Don’t expect him to be the church problem-solver. Just pray for him and encourage him to be a man of prayer and the Word, and you’ll benefit greatly from his leadership.

The prophet Samuel said to King Saul “God forbid that I should sin by failing to pray for you.” That should be the resolve of every pastor for his people.

None of us knows what the future holds for Lynbrook Baptist Church. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s going to depend on whether this church is a praying church. You can have people and programs and preaching, but if you don’t have prayer, then you’re not going to accomplish anything of eternal value.

The late Vince Lombardi was the coach of the Green Bay Packers in the 1960’s. He used to drive his players mercilessly in practice. Offensive guard Jerry Kramer said “Coach Lombardi doesn’t have any favorites. He treats us all the same - like dirt.”

But when the Green Bay Packers took the field, they were champions, because each one of them knew that they had practiced harder and smarter and more thoroughly than any other team they faced. They were champions on Sunday because they had done their hard work during the week.

The same is true of the church. What happens here on any given Sunday is largely shaped by what happens back there in the Rambikur Room on Wednesday night as God’s people pray.

So keep praying, and don’t give up. The church is depending on you, and the next pastor is depending on you, too.