The Priority of Prayer

I invite you to take your Bibles along with me, and we’ll turn to 1 Peter chapter 4. And our focus this morning is just on one verse, the seventh verse: “The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.”

The paragraph here, which begins at the seventh verse and runs through to his conclusion in verse 11, might simply be entitled “The Practical Demands of Christian Discipleship” or “What’s Involved in Living as a Member of God’s People.” And as you scan this paragraph, you discover that the characteristics of the people of God are to be as follows: one, that we would be marked by prayerfulness, as verse 7 makes clear; secondly, in verse 8, that we would be marked by a strenuous, initiative-taking love; in verse 9, that we would be characterized by genuine hospitality that gives without grumbling about the fact; and then, in verse 10, that we would be those who are exercising spiritual gifts in order that others may be blessed; and then, in verse 11, that we should be a people whose focus is upon God and his glory and that he might be magnified in all that we do.

Now, we’ll come to these various practicalities in the coming days. But for this morning, we want our attention to be on the instruction which Peter provides here on this matter of prayer. Actually, all he says is that we should pray, and what we’re going to do once we’ve set this in context is just look at six principles of prayerfulness.

The End Is Near

Now, notice, first of all, that the way in which Peter introduces these urgencies of the Christian life is with a simple sentence: “The end of all things is near.” From the very beginning of his letter, Peter has been making it clear that the fulfillment of the believer’s calling and destiny in the Lord Jesus Christ does not lie in this life, but rather, it lies beyond this life—beyond death and beyond this present world order. And as early as 1:5, he was already pointing the believers on to heaven as those “who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time”—so that we say it often, but it’s true and it’s worthy of reminder: that for the Christian, the best is always yet to be; that we are not ultimately creatures of this time-space capsule but that we have already been made citizens of a heavenly order and that we are looking forward to that great consummation of what God has for us when we see him and we’re made like him.

That’s why in 1:7 he says of trials and of grief and of the suffering which is part of life—he says we can look at these as those who “have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” And so we might sing another Andraé Crouch song this morning—not simply “My Tribute,” but we might sing, “Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King.” There’ll be “no more crying there,” “no more dying there; we[’re] going to see the King.”[1] Peter had listened to Jesus explain this. Peter had been there as Christ was caught up in the ascension, out of their sight. Peter had been present when the angel said, “Men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? Don’t you know that this same Jesus who was taken up from you will come again in like manner as you have seen him go?”[2] And how that strengthened Peter’s heart as he looked out on all that the future would bring!

And it is, in Scripture, a truth, and a vital truth, to remind those of us who perhaps have become a little bit weary, perhaps a little bit disconsolate, perhaps like the lady who spoke to me just yesterday and said, “My husband was told that he has a maximum of twelve months to live, but we are holding on to this wonderful truth: that eternity is reality, and one day we will see Jesus.” That is worthy of an amen. And so Peter drives this home at the very beginning of this practical instruction, making it plain that the return of Jesus Christ is not some rarified doctrine for those who like to fiddle around with crystal balls and elaborate charts, but the return of Jesus Christ is pragmatic, and it’s vital, and it impacts the very fact that we have to go back to work tomorrow morning. And so he is saying, “I want you to notice that the end of all things is near.” The consummation of the age is taught in Scripture as always impending—always that notion of “perhaps today,” always that dimension of the return of Jesus Christ.

And so, as the consummation of the age is thought of as impending, the benefit of the truth is manifold. Let me tell you three benefits of realizing that Christ is coming back. First of all, “The end of all things is near” should shake us out of our complacency. Christ is coming. That will radically alter everything for us; and therefore, there is no place for simply, complacently going through our casual Christian encounters. Secondly, “the end of all things is near”; therefore, it calls us to purity. We’ve been discovering that 1 John: “[He] who has this hope [with]in him purifies himself, [even] as he is pure.”[3] And thirdly, “The end of all things is near” confronts us with the very essence of eternity: that eternity is not something just way out there, but there is a sense in which eternity is right here. As you walk through your days, there is an imperceivable curtain right beside you. And on the day that you die, all you do is you step through that curtain into the realm of eternity. We tend to think of eternity as somewhere in a circle, in a planet somewhere, away out there. But it’s not. It’s right here. There is only a thread which holds us as creatures of time. And in a moment, we’ll be in eternity.

“The end of all things is near.” It’s true in terms of the return of Christ, it’s true in terms of wrapping up the age, and it’s true in light of the fact that none of us knows how many more hours we have left to breathe. This may be the last morning worship service you ever attend, at which I ever preach. And that reality remains in Scripture not to scare people but to bring clarity to our thinking so that we might be about the business of practical Christian discipleship.

Readiness is the evidence of watchfulness, not our ability to articulate our view.

Now, Peter is merely doing what Jesus told him to do, and that is to proclaim the true grace of God and help those who are hearing it to stand fast in it. He is simply reiterating what he had heard as the instruction of Jesus, and not least of all in this respect. Turn with me, just for a moment, to underscore this, to the twelfth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, and listen to the words of Jesus concerning the phrase “The end of all things is at hand.” Luke 12:35: Jesus said, “[I want you to] be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men”—here comes the simile—“like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.” If you’re doing anything behind the door you shouldn’t be doing, you hope that you’ve got some delay tactic written into the system somewhere so that you don’t have to open the door immediately. When Jesus Christ returns, will the door be immediately opened because he will find us about his business?

Verse 37: “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night”—in other words, if he doesn’t come in the first watch of the night, the time that they expected him to come, and at the time when the one or two are beginning to say, “Ach, why don’t we chuck it? Why don’t we go to sleep? Why don’t we forget it? Maybe he won’t show up after all.” So he says it’ll be good for them when the master finds them watching when he comes. Secondly, it’ll be especially good if he finds them watching even in the second or third watch of the night.

“But understand this.” He changes the picture: “If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would [have not] let his house be broken into.” Application: “You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” Sure, we need to learn the signs of the times. Sure, we need to keep our eyes on what’s going on around us. Sure, we need to read our newspapers in light of our Bibles rather than the other way around. But at the end of the day, this is the word of Jesus: readiness is the evidence of watchfulness, not our ability to articulate our view of the returning, coming King—namely, Jesus. The watchful Christian is the ready Christian. The watchful believer is the one who can swing the door open immediately and say, “Walk right in.”

You know what it’s like when you’re at your house, and you say, “This is one of these days that I hope nobody comes unexpectedly”? Wives usually say that more than others—you know, because you didn’t put the newspaper the way it’s supposed to be, and it’s all over the place. If you read the newspaper like me, it’s a major event, and it goes everywhere. And then you see the car lights coming up the driveway and fastening on your front window, and then you’re immediately dispatched: “Gather that stuff up! Get this. Get that. Get… Action stations! Red alert!” “Why?” “Because I’m going to have to open the door.”

Jesus is coming. Will your door swing back immediately? If he’d come any day of this week, could you have swung the door to welcome him? When you were out with your girlfriend, guys, could he have come at any time? As you did your business dealings, could he have walked right into the meeting? For in that moment that we do not expect him, the Son of Man will come. And this is what Peter uses as the impetus for the practical directives which he now gives.

Prayerfulness

As Christians, he says, we cannot allow our minds to be befuddled and dazed by drowsiness, but if the proximity of the return of Jesus is to move us, then we are to be moved to sobriety. And that’s what the next phrase is all about: “Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled.” Believers must not lose their mental or their moral equilibrium. I think probably in the King James Version, although I didn’t check, it probably uses the phrase “be … sober.” And it certainly may be applied to the whole question of drink, but it means far more than that. It means that and besides. Christians are not those who are to be under the influences of these things. Why? Because the door is going to swing back. Why? Because the Lord is coming. Why? Because we need to be alert, and we need to be awake, and all our faculties need to be under control “so that you can…”

Now, imagine we were just having this written on an overhead projector for us, and the word hadn’t come yet. And Peter was writing it like this in his day, and he says, “Now, the end of all things is near. I want you to be clear minded. I want you to be self-controlled so that you can” what? Fill in the missing word. “Okay, folks, what do you think it is?” he might say to us.

And so our hands would go up.

“Witness!”

“Good, but not right.”

“Worship!”

“Fine, but not right.”

“Fellowship! Learn! Give! Plan! Organize! Teach! Preach! Mobilize!” And so we would go.

And eventually somebody would get it: “Pray!” shouts someone from the back.

“Exactly,” said Peter as he filled it in.

Priority number one: prayerfulness in the lives of the people of God. This is such a truism to us now that it’s almost impossible to preach without thinking everybody knows all this stuff. But the thing, loved ones, is, I know a lot of it as well, but I find it so hard to do. And maybe God might help us in the realm of the doing.

Perhaps, you know, Peter was recalling, as he wrote this phrase, the experience that he shared, along with his colleagues, recorded for us in Mark 14, as Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane went to pray, and how he came back, and, in Mark 14:37, “he returned to his disciples,” Mark records,

and found them sleeping. “Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he … found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did[n’t] know what to say to him.

Let’s hope that for the average church in the Western world, Jesus comes back on a Sunday morning, eh? Let’s hope he doesn’t come back to one of our prayer meetings. “Couldn’t you watch?” They didn’t know what to say. And

returning the third time, he said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

Is there a correlation between Peter’s response to Jesus, Jesus’ words to him? “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” He got the warning. Two more opportunities. Still he flunked. And in verse 66 of the same chapter of Mark: “While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came by. [And] when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked closely at him. ‘You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus,’ she said.” And Peter said, “Like fun I was!” Jesus had already told him how to do the job. He says, “You watch, and you pray, so that when temptation comes, you won’t fall.”

So much of what we say and do about prayer gets clouded by all kinds of preoccupations. People are concerned about whether you pray standing up, whether you pray sitting down, whether you close your eyes, open your eyes—what do you do with your eyes? And I want to read to you one of my favorite poems in this regard, ’cause I haven’t read it for a while, and I think it’s funny. It goes like this:

“The proper way for … man to pray,”
 Said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
“… The only proper attitude
 Is down upon his knees.”

“[Nay], I should say the way to pray,”
 Said Rev. Dr. Wise,
“Is standing straight with outstretched arms
 [with] rapt and upturned eyes.”

“Oh, no; no, no,” said Elder [Snow],
 “Such posture is too proud:
A man should pray with eyes fast closed
 And head contritely bowed.”

“It seems to me his hands should be
 Austerely clasped in front,
With both thumbs pointing [to] the ground,”
 Said Rev. Dr. Blunt.

“Las’ year I fell in Hodgkin’s well
 Head first,” said [Cyril] Brown,
“With both my heels a-stickin’ up,
 My head a-[pointing] down;

“And I [done prayed] right then an’ there—
 Best prayer I ever said,
The prayingest prayer I ever prayed,
 A-standing on [me] head.”[4]

So don’t let’s start all the nonsense about the wheres and the whats and the ifs and the whens, and seven thirty, one thirty, two thirty, nine. Forget all of that for the moment! Forget all that stuff! Forget structure—all structure this morning—as it relates to our church. Forget all that! This has nothing to do with that. Forget that. And come with an open heart to these six principles, as I must do—as devastating as anything you might consider. They’re in your bulletin. We’re going to go through them quickly. And if we don’t quite finish this up this morning, then I feel that maybe God would have us come back to some of the practicalities of it as we return again tonight. It wouldn’t do us any harm to stay the day in the matter of prayer and be able to help and encourage one another with some of these things.

So, the general principles concerning the prayer that we are to pray because the Lord is coming and, in light of that, because we’re remaining alert and awake.

The Expression of Our Relationship to God

First of all, prayer is the principal expression of our relationship to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the one area of our spiritual life that is the key expression of the fact that we belong to God? It is, loved ones—if you think carefully and consider your Bible properly—the matter of prayer.

As Jesus taught his disciples about the Spirit’s ministry—John 14—he explained to them. “This is what is going to happen,” he said: “My Father will love him”—that is, “the one who obeys me”[5]—“my Father will love him, and we will come to him and [we will] make our home with him.”[6] Isn’t that what we look forward to in marriage? Isn’t that what the engaged couple long for? That they might be able to move beyond the realm of simply talking on the telephone, of simply seeing one another every so often as time allows and affords, and eventually coming to the day of their union with one another and being brought to live right in the same house, with no father-in-law to tell them, “It’s time to leave now, Johnny boy,” or “You’ll have to go home now, Carol”; with nobody out with a torch looking for them in the shrubbery behind the house. No, no! Now they’re brought into communion with one another, and they love it! They love it!

Prayer is the principal expression of our relationship to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus says that’s what is going to happen to the man or the woman who lives in obedience to him, who comes in repentance and in faith. He’s not introduced to some austere, legalistic framework of life. He’s introduced to a dimension of the Spirit’s ministry that changes everything. And they will be able to talk at any time, and they will be able to share anything, and they will be able to hear answers to their deepest longings and to hear their response to their most trivial requests.

One of our group this morning, as we prayed this morning, right out of his mouth he said, “Thank you, Father, for adopting us into your family.” That’s it! Romans 8. The wonder of it, that we have been adopted into the family of God, whereby we’re able to cry, “Abba, Father!”[7] Your children play in your neighborhood, don’t they? And you drive down the street, dad. And as you come home, there may be a big crowd in your yard of all kinds of bits and pieces of humanity. And all of those children may address you in one way or another. But only your very own children may, in reality, say, “Hi, Dad!” And the “Hi, Dad” is the expression—the key expression—of their relationship with you as their father. And so the principal expression of the fact that God is our Father this morning is in our ability and our willingness and our love and our enjoyment to come to him and say, “Hi, Dad”—to share our hearts, to share our fears, to share our hopes, to share our dreams, to share our burdens, share our love, etc., etc.

But principle number one is this: prayer is the principal expression of your relationship to God in Jesus Christ. If we, being earthly, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our heavenly Father give good things to those of us who take the time to come and ask him?[8]

The Principal Area of Attack

Secondly—and it follows from the first logically, I trust—since our relationship to God through prayer is the key to everything, it’s therefore the principal area of attack upon our Christian lives. It’s the principal area of attack!

Think it out. Think of all the things that you and I are able to do with relative ease—the things that in ourselves we can muster enough courage for, the things that we can be diligent about, our attendance upon certain functions and opportunities. And ask yourself the question: Why is it… Why is it that, in the matter of prayer, we have such difficulty, if we’re honest? And the answer is right here: that “Satan dreads nothing but prayer.” So said Samuel Chadwick. Therefore, he attacks us in the matter of prayer.

At the end of Ephesians 6, as Paul has given the armor to the believing church, he says, “Now I want you take up your weapons. Once you’ve got your helmet on,” he says: “take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit in all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”[9] Now, notice his next phrase; it’s very similar to Peter’s: “With this in mind,” he says, “be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”[10]

Now, recognizing this, the apostles launched the church in that way. The apostles said in Acts 6, “You know, there’s so much going on around here that we’re going to have to prioritize our time and our commitment. Therefore, we will give ourselves to two things: to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.”[11] Let it be underscored this morning that in the darkness of the days in which we live, the Evil One is not afraid of the battle cries of a church that is moribund due to a lack of prayer. He does not care when the army of God shows up on the field of battle devoid of the weaponry which its Commanding Officer has both used and supplied.

The bottom line: The devil doesn’t care about big churches as much as he cares about praying churches. The devil doesn’t care about prominent Christians as much as he cares about praying Christians. The devil doesn’t care about pastors who can talk; he cares about pastors who can pray. The devil doesn’t care about programs that are slick; he cares about programs that are grounded in prayer. And so we can go unscathed through many of our days, wondering why it is and what we’re doing right, and it may in actual fact be because of what we’re failing to do. For his greatest and chiefest attacks come to a praying people and to praying individuals.

It’s sheer craziness to pray only when we feel like it. For how often do we really feel like it?

Now, we need to recognize that, and we need to pray for one another in this respect and pray for those who are in leadership over us, because there are peculiar challenges which confront those in leadership. The Evil One would love to bring down, and loves to bring down, those who are encouraging others to watchfulness. What a tragedy it was to return to the same camp this year and to discover that the young couple who were the key couple involved in family ministries—in the preparing of the young couples at this camp for the nurturing of their love for one another, and their commitment to each other, and the rearing of their children, and family principles… Sue walked along the beach, and she met the wife walking the beach alone. And as they sat on the beach and talked, the wife told how her husband had got up one morning and sent her a lawyer’s letter and told her everything was over and done with. But last year, I sat under his instruction so that I might better learn how to love my wife and raise my children.

Let’s make no mistake about it, dear ones: the principal area of attack is going to come in the realm where power is unleashed. And power is unleashed not through talking to one another but through coming and interceding with God. How can I, this morning, turn my disappointments—how can you turn your disappointments—into opportunities to prove God? The answer is in prayer. How can we see the indifferent heart turned in openness to God, to the receiving of his truth? The answer is prayer. How can we counter the limitations of our human nature? The answer is in prayer.

A Matter of Priority

Now, that then brings us to the third principle, and simply this—and we’ve said it before, and I’ll make very little comment on it: prayer is not a glandular condition; it is a matter of priority.

I had the privilege this week of listening for two days to Elisabeth Elliot, the widow of Jim Elliot. What a privilege that was! And how realistic her perspective on Christian living, and how helpful, as she pointed out that so many areas of the Christian life have to do with the exercise of our will first and then the enabling of the Spirit of God to do that which we have purposed to do—rather than the other way around! Rather than waiting for some divine afflatus to take us up and cast us into prayerfulness. We must be about the matter of prayer and then discover that the Spirit of God comes and breathes, as it were, and fans into a flame and fills out the sails of our vessel. How, otherwise, would Epaphras have prayed so convincingly for the believers in the Colossae valley, as Paul is able to write to them at the end of Colossians? And he says, “Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings.” Now, what about Epaphras? Here we’re told, “He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in … the will of God, mature and fully assured.”[12] His wrestling was about the activity of his will, not waiting until he felt like it.

It’s sheer craziness, you know, to pray only when we feel like it. For how often do we really feel like it? Of all the things you feel like in a day, how often do you feel a prayer coming on? “Excuse me, I feel a prayer coming on.” Of all the things we feel in a day! That’s not to say we don’t ever feel the urge to pray. Of course we do! But in terms of a regular, consistent pattern of behavior, it’s not in the top five, is it? Therefore, the only way we’ll ever pray is if we make a commitment to pray. It’s as straightforward as that. No one ever became a praying Christian without a commitment of heart and mind and will and body and strength and spirit to the task at hand. And we ought to help ourselves to maintain the priority of prayer by reminding ourselves that the reason we find it so difficult to do exactly what we’re saying this morning is an indication of its key importance in the spiritual battle. The very fact that we find it difficult to do what we’re saying is because principle number two is actually true.

A Contradiction in Terms

Now, my purpose this morning is not to send us all crawling up the aisles out of here, bemoaning the fact, saying, “Oh man, I didn’t pray enough. I’m a terrible person. I didn’t pray.” Rather, it is to say: let’s get up this morning and individually make renewed commitments in the matter of prayerfulness.

For example, principle number four: to recognize that a prayerless Christian is a contradiction in terms, just in the same way as someone who says he loves his dad but never spends time with him, doesn’t want to talk to him, doesn’t like to hang out with him, doesn’t want to hear from him, never reads the letters when he sends them, and never returns his telephone calls. But he always sends him a Father’s Day card! “Dear Dad: It’s 364 days since I spoke with you. Just want you to know how much I love you, how much I value your counsel,” da-da, da-da. The father may as well trash it in a can. It’s not true. For the son who loves the Father will be much in prayer.

The hymn writer says, “And he who knows the worth of prayer will wish but to be often there.”[13] So the prayerless Christian is “a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.”[14]

Fundamental, Not Supplemental

Fifthly, penultimately, a principle we’ve noted before: if prayer is meager, it’s because we consider it supplemental and not fundamental. In other words, it’s viewed as the spire of the church; it’s not viewed as the foundation of the church. You can knock the spire off and still have the building. You can’t blow the foundations out and still have a building. And we need, this morning, to be analyzing where we are and what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, because as we noted all from the very beginning, at least in my time with you here, a work which is not founded upon prayer can never stand ultimately. And if in my life prayer is meager, it’s because I regard it as a supplement and not fundamental.

Time and Trouble

Finally, a meaningful ministry in prayer will never be achieved without taking time and trouble. That’s what Peter is saying here in 1 Peter [4:7]. He says, “You’re going to have to be clear minded. You’re going to have to be self-controlled. You’re going to have to be about the business of setting up your days in such a way that you can give time to this.”[15] When Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:7, he says, “[I want you to] train yourself to be godly”—or, as Phillips paraphrases it, “[I want you to] take time and trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit.”

Somebody of old said, “When I go to pray, I find [my heart is] loth to go to God, and when it is with him, so loth to stay.”[16] “When I go to pray, I find [my heart is] loth to go to God, and [once] with him, [it is] loth to stay.” That was an honest man. For Jesus, prayer was not a reluctant addendum to his days. It was a fundamental necessity. That’s why Peter, at the very commencement of these practical exhortations, puts prayer as number one.

When David Watson, as a young curate, took the church that the Anglicans gave to him in York thirty years ago now—they gave him a church that was going to be obsolete within a matter of six months. They figured it would be a good place for him to start. The roof was leaking; it was hundreds of years old. And the leaking roof was simply a symbol of the disaster zone of the church. There were a few folks left, not many. They had a debt that was a considerable number of thousands of pounds. And so they took David Watson, and they said, “Hey, go and experiment up there for a wee while, and we’ll shut the church down, and then we’ll send you somewhere nicer.”

Imagine the surprise of the congregation when David Watson came in and announced that everything in the church was canceled except two things for the foreseeable future, and that was the teaching of the Scriptures and the prayers of God’s people. There were only about seventeen people left, and that blew 50 percent of them right out the door there and then, because they were used to having their sewing bees and their cards and their whist drives and all their rigmarole. And he said, “No, we’ll chuck all that for the time being.” He said, “We’re going to...” I forget; it was so much time in praying, so much time in giving, and so much time in thanksgiving.

It’s a long story, loved ones, but I think you’ve heard me tell before of how myself and a couple of my friends used to drive thirty-five miles on a Sunday night to go to this derelict church, where, unless you arrived forty-five minutes before the commencement of the evening service, you watched it on closed-circuit television. And the bishop used to come around and say, “My, my, my! What a wonder David Watson has worked in this place.” And David Watson used to say, “No, no, no. What a wonder almighty God has worked in this place.” They just stayed alert. They stayed self-controlled, so that first they might pray. For we can do more than pray after we’ve prayed, but not until.[17] Therein lies the challenge of this morning’s study.

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[1] Andraé Crouch, “Soon and Very Soon” (1976).

[2] Acts 1:11 (paraphrased).

[3] 1 John 3:3 (NIV 1984).

[4] Sam Walter Foss, “The Prayer of Cyrus Brown,” in Dreams in Homespun (Boston: Lathrop, Lee & Shepard, 1897), 64–65.

[5] John 14:23 (paraphrased).

[6] John 14:23 (NIV 1984).

[7] See Romans 8:15.

[8] See Matthew 7:11; Luke 11:13.

[9] Ephesians 6:17–18 (paraphrased).

[10] Ephesians 6:18 (NIV 1984).

[11] Acts 6:2–4 (paraphrased).

[12] Colossians 4:12 (NIV 1984).

[13] William Cowper, “Exhortation to Prayer” (1779). Lyrics lightly altered.

[14] Kris Kristofferson “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” (1971).

[15] 1 Peter 4:7 (paraphrased).

[16] John Bunyan, I Will Pray with the Spirit (1663), chap. 2.

[17] S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1904), 16.