God Loves… Himself

In the previous newsletter we started looking at Daniel 9:3-6. In that text (given a few paragraphs below) we noted that Daniel gave his attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and in fact true prayer can only happen when our focus is on God to seek Him. If our attention is on ourselves, we are praying to ourselves just like the Pharisee did in Luke 18:10-13:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’

It is chilling to think of the ramifications of this. The Pharisee was using the word “God” but was praying to himself. Why was he praying to himself? Because he was focused on himself or his attention was on himself. The tax collector, however, was focused on God. It might be argued that the tax collector was also focused on himself because he saw his sin and was crying out for mercy. On the other hand, however, a true sight of sin only comes from a sight of God. If the tax collector was truly broken for his sin, then he saw his sin in the light of the glory of God and his attention was on God. To truly see sin our eyes must not be on self but on God. If we truly have our eyes on God then our sin is seen as a far more hideous thing than if we see it in the light of self.

What we must see in this is that true prayer has its focus and attention on God. Prayer for other people must in some way be with a focus on God or we are idolaters in our prayers. The Great Commandment reaches to our prayers and all things; it is not to be left at the door of the prayer closet. The focus of our minds and our hearts must be on God. A child in school can be said to pay attention if s/he listens to the teacher enough to regurgitate some information. But for a human being to pay attention to the living God in this way the heart must be engaged and God must be the attention of our love as well. If we give God our attention with our minds and our hearts are not attending in love, then we are doing nothing but giving lip service to God and bringing up an idol into His presence with the things we love. We can pray for a church, a person, an evangelistic program, another nation or any other thing and have it be idolatry because it is not out of love for God. We cannot give our attention to religious things and think that alone is love for God. That is what the Pharisees did. If we are to give our true attention to God He must be the real object of our love and what we pray for must be out of a true love for Him.

In prayer the desires and loves of the heart is what we truly seek. If our “love” is for another person, we may seek God for that person. But here is a tricky point that deceives us. We can seek God for that other person and that can be idolatry on our part. If we “love” the person and seek their benefit more than we are seeking God, we are seeking what we truly love and that is the other person. Instead of seeking God for another person, we must seek God first in our prayers for other people. If we seek God for another person and our real love and desire is for the other person, then we are seeking them more than God. That is idolatry. This is a brutally hard teaching, but that does not make it false. What we give our real attention to in prayer is our real desire. What we love the most is what our real intention is about. It is not true prayer to seek God for the sake of another human being if we don’t love God first and foremost. We are to seek God for Himself and the other human being for Himself as well.

Daniel 9:3 So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. 4 I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed and said, “Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 5 we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. 6 “Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.

Daniel gave his attention to the Lord God to seek Him. Here is the sign of a great heart. It seeks God for Himself and His glory. The literal words for “gave my attention” is “I set my face.” Daniel set his face toward God and it was not toward himself or nor any other. His focus was set on God. The fact that Daniel set his face toward God and so sought God rather than himself as the Pharisee in Luke 18 did is seen in the way he sought God. He did not just turn his face toward God momentarily, but he set his face toward God which shows the intent and resolve of the heart in love and desire to have God. He sought God in prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. When we reach the end of our own strength and grow weary of religion, we will either stop doing the externals or we will set our faces to seek the Lord. The heart that is sick of the world and religious things is a heart that is set on God and is going to seek Him regardless of what happens to it.

Our souls can grow famished as we work and work on our buildings, projects, programs and all the “Christian” things we do that in reality can and often do keep us from a sight of the glory of God. We can be so busy with “Christian” things that we miss the glory of God in Christ. We can become so busy doing things for Christ (in our minds) that we forget all about the true Christ. We can be so busy talking about something we term as Christ that it hides the true Christ from us. We can become so busy teaching our theology and focusing on getting the dots in the right places that we forget the God of the theology. We are so busy thinking we are serving and defending God that we are serving and defending ourselves with His name attached. We can become so busy trying to grow and do church that we forget the Head of the church in reality and serve ourselves thinking we are doing it for Him.

Much can be done in the name of religion without our setting our faces to seek God Himself. Much can be done in the name of seeking God without our setting our faces to seek God. Much can be done in the area of external morality without our setting our faces to a true seeking of God. Evangelism can be done without our setting our faces to seek God. If evangelism is done in an effort to grow a church rather than to manifest the glory of God, then it is not done with our faces set to seek God out of true love. Evangelism has replaced a true seeking of God in many places. We have placed evangelism on such a high pedestal that we automatically think we are serving God if we do it. Evangelism can be done out of nothing more than self-love without our setting our faces to seek God.

It is utterly vital for churches to get to the very deepest intent of their hearts so prayer and all things will be done from hearts that are set on seeking God for Himself and not things. Regardless of the devotion, commitment, and religious ardor that we have, unless our faces are set on seeking God from the heart, we are not seeking God in our duties. Two important words from the NAS translation are very important to understanding this. “So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.” Daniel tells us that he is going to seek the Lord God by prayer. In other words, the way one seeks God is by prayer. So prayer was the primary means that he was seeking God. He was going to seek God by prayer but with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. The latter things were methods he was using in his prayer to seek the Lord. They were not ways to seek the Lord themselves, but they were ways Daniel used to seek the Lord in prayer. We can fast and use sackcloth for differing reasons, as indeed many Israelites did, but Daniel used them as a means of seeking the Lord in prayer.

The Word of God is teaching us in this prayer of Daniel that we are to set our faces to seek Him in prayer. We are not to seek other things as ways to please God, but we are to seek God Himself in prayer. Prayer is how God is to be sought. Unless we are seeking God in our prayers, we are seeking ourselves in some way. We should also notice that prayer is a broader term than supplication. Supplication is to ask of God. Other parts of prayer would be confession and worship. Prayer is the way that the soul seeks God. Supplication is simply one part of prayer that asks God for things to help it seek Him. What else would a supplication ask for if it is part of a prayer that is seeking God? Fasting is not some meritorious act that we do in an effort to get God to do something, but it is an act of humbling the soul before God in order to focus the attention on God rather than earthly things. When fasting is done in truth it is the soul setting aside what is important for the body in order to sharpen its attention and focus on God who is its true desire. It is a humbling act that shows its utter dependence on God rather than food. Ezra 8:21 shows this: “Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our possessions.” Here we see a fast proclaimed for the purpose of humbling themselves before God in order to seek from Him. The reason is given in v. 22. They did not want to dishonor God in what they did. They fasted in order to seek the Lord for His own glory. True prayer may seek things from God, but it will be seeking Him and His glory. Unless we seek God Himself, we are not in prayer which includes worship. Without seeking the glory of God primarily in prayer, we are seeking an idol. It is vital to set our faces to seek Him and use such things as fasting to focus our attention. We must truly pray.

In the last newsletter we looked at the need for local churches to see the Great Commission as more than just evangelism. In fact, if evangelism is done apart from the whole idea of the Great Commission it is simply disobedience to God as a whole. A partial obedience is not true obedience. It is just easier on self to give people information about Jesus than to deal with their hearts and be concerned about what Jesus really said in the Great Commission. It is easier to talk people into an external prayer of words and then into the baptismal tank so we can add a number to the tally than it is to deal with the hearts or people in reality. Jesus told His disciples that unless they were turned and became like a little child they would not enter the kingdom. He did not tell them to pray a prayer and be baptized. He told Nicodemus that he must be born again (from above) or he would not enter the kingdom. He told the rich young ruler that he must sell all that he had and give it to the poor. In other words, Jesus did not look for people to follow Him by giving them easy things to do. Instead He told people to do things that they could not do so that they would have to trust in God alone rather than themselves. Jesus was hard on His followers and made great demands on them because He loved them and wanted them to be truly holy. When the professing church makes things easy, it is not being like Christ at all but has invented its own form of love.

The path of true Christianity is not one that is practiced much in our day and the reason is that it is not easy. The path of true Christianity is not found in the path of great music and of popular preaching, but it will only be found by those with broken hearts who spend time seeking the Lord in prayer. We must not make a mistake about this at this point but rather realize that true Christianity is not what is popular in our day. We use the Bible to fulfill our own ways and lusts of ease and comfort rather than to deny self and seek the Lord. We use the Bible to support a God that is man-centered. We use the Bible to support all sorts of morality and church projects while we ignore what Christ has really commanded us in the Great Commission. He commanded us to make disciples of Christ who actually do and observe all that He commands. Instead we settle for a form of Christianity where the most mature are at best lukewarm and the lost are said to be in grace regardless. The Bible knows nothing of a grace that does not change the hearts, desires, loves, and therefore the lives of human beings.

Part of being a disciple of Christ is to pray as Christ prayed. The professing Church will not actually be seeking Christ as long as it does not pray as Christ prayed. While we ordinarily do not think of the Great Commission as commanding us to pray, Matthew 28:20 teaches this: “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Jesus taught His disciples how to pray and He commanded them to pray. If we are going to be in obedience to the Great Commission, we must teach people to pray and then provoke them to pray. After all, the command is to get them to do or observe all that He commanded and not just learn information about what He commanded. If people are not praying at all, then they are not disciples of Christ and we should not consider them as disciples of Christ. That means we should not consider ourselves as fulfilling the Great Commission in their regard. People must be taught to pray and then they must become prayers for them and ourselves to fulfill the Great Commission as Christ commanded.

In reality prayer is hard work and even something that is beyond the power of the natural man. Prayer is not just someone leaning back or getting on their knees and asking God for a few things for themselves. We cannot imagine that when Jesus prayed all night He simply had a longer list of things to ask God to do than those who have shorter prayers. Instead, what we must understand about prayer is that prayer changes us rather than God. It is entirely wicked to think that we inform God or can get God to change His mind and do our will in prayer. Our very prayers are wickedness if have such a little god to pray to. Our prayers are wickedness if we think we are praying when we just go to God with a list of things that He should do for us if He wants our respect or service. Prayer is seeking the face of God Himself (His presence) and tasting of His beauty and glory. Prayer is how a soul that desires to be like God seeks God. Prayer is the soul desiring to behold His glory so that it will be transformed into His glory from one degree of glory to another. Prayer is when the soul that is broken from its pride and emptied of self beseeches the Lord Almighty to change its heart to be like Him and to change its love to where the glory of love for God will shine through it. Prayer is when the soul leaves itself and enters into communion with the living God and shares in the love that God has for Himself. Prayer is the soul delighting in the beauty and glory of God so much that it forgets itself and is lost in Him. Prayer is the soul that is simply lost in God and desires His glory rather than its own selfish desires. If these things are true, then the professing Church is virtually prayerless.

Many weeks were taken to show that the professing Church is under the judgment of God. While the outward things may appear good, the spiritual state of the professing Church is at a very low degree. When one thinks that things cannot get worse, they do anyway. The face of God is turned from us and His hand is turned against us. If the professing Church will not turn from seeking itself in numbers, offerings, programs, and all sorts of activities to seeking the Lord in prayer, the downward fall into the pit will continue. The professing Church will never find God in its busyness and excitement, but only in lowly and repentant hearts as it seeks God for Himself. God does not dwell with any heart or group of hearts unless it is broken and contrite (Isaiah 57:15). God will not dwell with a group of people that do not have broken and contrite hearts. He will not dwell with a group of people no matter how busy they are and how much they are growing if they do not really have broken and contrite hearts. Until the hearts of the people are broken and contrite His face will remain turned. It is not until they get bigger or until they get more things going that His face will turn, but their hearts must be broken before He will dwell in their souls.

The book of Daniel gives us a picture of what the hearts of ministers and the people should be like if they are going to seek the face of the Lord in reality rather than just give lip service to prayer. The verses that I will give below are verses that show us what our hearts are to be like if we are to seek the Lord for Himself in truth and love.

Daniel 9:3-6 – “So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed and said, ‘Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.'”

Leonard Ravenhill told his son late in life that many young men were coming to him wanting him to pray for them and to receive his mantle. He told his son that while many wanted his mantle, none wanted his sackcloth and ashes. Many want to be known as prayer warriors and many want to have the name or perhaps some power, but how many want to truly seek the Lord? It is costly to seek God Himself. To seek God Himself we must deny self and take up our cross and follow Christ. While many are trying to make some perversion of Christianity easier and easier to attract large numbers, the Word of God knows of no such thing. The Word of God tells us that it will cost us our very selves if we are going to seek the Lord. Our Lord taught us that we can only have one master at a time and we will only seek one highest love. We cannot seek the Lord for ourselves and seek Him for His own sake at the same time. Self must be denied if we are going to truly pray and seek the Lord. There are no shortcuts to true prayer. It will cost us much inward pain and the denial of self as the center of our lives, loves, desires, and as our goal. How can we say we are praying to God in a way that is seeking Him when self is our true love and our real goal is our own honor? Jesus told us with great and frightening clarity that this cannot be: “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God” (John 5:44). How can we believe if we seek glory from others in prayer and at church and are not seeking the very glory of God? We cannot truly believe if we seek our own glory rather than God Himself. True prayer is not obtained by easiness and a focus on programs and things. It is only obtained by broken hearts and the work of God in them.

We must look at this passage of Daniel with a desire to have our hearts instructed rather than just trying to find a few tips on how to do things a little better. Daniel says that he gave his attention to the Lord God. Nice words, but these are words of great impact if we will look at them. Daniel’s attention was to the Lord God. It was not on how he felt and on how things were going about this and that, he gave his attention to the Lord. His focus was on God Himself. True prayer will only happen if we are focused on the Lord Himself. True prayer will not happen if we are focused on ourselves and on other human beings. We must see what Daniel’s heart when he prayed and then we will learn a lot about true prayer. His attention was on God and this was seen in the fact that he fasted with sackcloth and ashes. He sought God in discomfort rather than in comfort. He sought God for Himself rather than seeking God for self. He understood that true prayer is costly to self and set out to deny self in order to seek God. The professing Church will not truly pray until these things are done. True prayer costs the esteem of the world, of religious people, and persecution because it demands a heart that does not seek those things. Until our hearts are broken like Daniel’s to desire God at all costs, we will not pray and we will not be seeking the true God.

The professing Church in America and beyond must be awakened to several things if it is going to seek God in truth. With the great rallying cry of the Great Commission, the professing Church has turned from seeking God to seeking itself with the name of God attached to it and with texts of Scripture that sound like they are commanding it to do what it is doing. The Great Commission is being used to justify all sorts of activities and financial expenditures in the name of evangelism. There are concerts and events that specialize in entertainment and all with the justification of evangelism. We are met with all sorts of reasons with the main idea of “if we can only save one soul.” The Great Commission is given as a text to justify all sorts and manners of so-called church growth methodologies. After all, surely if we are getting more people in the door and supporting our ministries we are carrying out the Great Commission. Professions of faith and baptismal numbers are given to support that idea in the name of the Great Commission. Many mission trips are taken by many in order to simply get people to repeat a prayer. One South African pastor recently reported that a man had prayed a prayer eight times after several mission trips by well-meaning Americans and wondered if there was anything more to Christianity than that.

What the Great Commission really teaches is very important for the Church. Evangelism is not even mentioned in it. We must wrestle with that as a fact and then with what it means. Do we ever read in the Gospels of Jesus doing evangelism? What we see Jesus doing is preaching the Kingdom (Matthew 4:17, 23; 5:3; 24:14). In teaching Nicodemus He told him that he must be born again to even see or enter the kingdom. We must remember that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. When Matthew 28:18 records Jesus telling the disciples that all authority had been given to Him in heaven and on earth, we must realize that Jesus is telling us that He is the supreme King. It is not just that He had some manner of rule on earth, but that He was the Supreme Ruler (Adonai of the Old Testament as in Psalm 110:1) of both heaven and earth. “The LORD says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for your feet.” In that text (Psalm 110:1) “LORD” is YAHWEH and “Lord” is Adonai. This is speaking of Christ. He also was and is the One spoken of in Daniel 7: “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. 14 “And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.” The Great Commission is Christ declaration that all authority was given to Him and then telling us how all peoples and nations are to serve Him.

What we must realize is that Jesus Christ is not just Lord in some nice way, He is the absolute sovereign of the universe and all beings owe complete and total obedience to Him. All beings owe complete submission to Him in all ways. When Jesus told His disciples that all authority in heaven and earth had been given to Him, He did not mean for His people to go out and beg others to honor Jesus by making Him lord of their lives. Jesus Christ is Lord of all whether we submit in love to Him or not. We must have this Lord change our hearts in order to love and obey Him rather than do Him a favor and allow Him to instruct us. He did not mean for His people to go out and beg others to save themselves or that He is wringing His hands hoping they will make a right decision or say a prayer. He commanded His disciples to go out and make true followers (disciples) of Him. It is very true that evangelism must take place in order for a person to become a follower of Christ, but it is also true that there is no true evangelism that takes place apart from those evangelized becoming a true follower of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel has many aspects to it, but one forgotten aspect is that Jesus Christ reigns and rules. Sinners are in bondage to and under the authority of the kingdom of darkness. Sinners are slaves to sin and the supreme sinner that we call “the devil.” Sinners need a King to overpower the kingdom of darkness and translate them to the kingdom of the Beloved and the kingdom of light and grace (Col 1:13). The Lord Jesus Christ does not just ask people to do themselves a favor and bow to Him, He commands all men everywhere to repent of their sin and their sins (Acts 17:30). Sin is lawlessness (I John 3:4) and all sin is an act of rebellion against the sovereign ruler and supreme Lawmaker of the universe. When a sinner is truly converted or is translated from one kingdom to another, that sinner’s debts are paid (debts are paid at the cross), the sinner is bought (redeemed) from slavery, and then the sinner is given the perfect credit of Christ’s righteousness credited to his or her account. The sinner is given a new heart and a new identification and so is a new creature in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17). In this new kingdom the sinner has a new Father and a new Lord. In this kingdom the sinner has this Lord in his or her heart and lives in the spiritual kingdom controlled and ruled by grace. The Gospel of Jesus Christ must include this or it is not the true Gospel.

The Great Commission, then, must guide what the professing Church does. It is easy to go out and get people to make self-centered decisions and pray self-centered prayers since no one really wants to go to hell. But going to hell is not the only issue involved here. The sinner must be one that is actually turned from enmity to God to actually having sorrow that s/he does not have more love for God. We can present aspects of truth to a self-centered sinner and that person will make a prayer out of self-centeredness rather than desiring God from a new heart. If a sinner only prays a prayer from a self-centered heart, then that sinner does not have a new heart and is still under a different love and lord than Christ. But the Great Commission requires us to make disciples of Christ rather than people who are followers of self. They may follow Christ in some outward way as long as it is good for themselves, but they are not in truth following Christ if they are still only doing what they want and think is good for themselves. That would still be loving self more than God and seeking the will of self rather than God.

The Great Commission as given in Matthew 28 is this: “18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'” The first thing He pointed to was His authority. In light of the fact that all authority in heaven and earth is His, the command is to go and make disciples of all the nations. He did not limit the command to evangelize the nations, but the command is to make disciples of all the nations. The command to the Church is not to go out and give some sort of weak and effeminate message to people and then check them off of the list because those people have heard the Gospel, but to actually make disciples or followers of Christ. Of course all must hear the Gospel, but a simple hearing of the ear is not what is commanded. The command is for the Church to make disciples of all the nations.

The Church is commanded to make disciples by baptizing them and teaching them to do/obey/observe all that Christ commanded. Simply telling people a weak message and begging them to come down the aisle or to pray a prayer is opposite of the Gospel that changes the hearts of sinners and makes true followers of Christ. Local churches and denominations are using the term “Great Commission” to justify their disobedience to the Great Commission. If local churches are not truly committed to teaching people to actually do all that Christ commanded, then that local church is not committed to the Great Commission at all. That local church is in direct violation of the Great Commission and is in direct disobedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In our day we see many mega-church type things going on. We have fancy programs and we have all sorts of outreach programs going on. We also have many discipleship programs going on. But is a discipleship program the same thing as actually making disciples of Christ? Can we assert in all seriousness and truth that our Bible studies and classes are really aimed at making true disciples of Christ? Couldn’t we be justly accused of having discipleship programs and classes just in order to get people in the door and perhaps to keep them? Are we teaching the Bible to people in order that they would become true disciples or just to fill their heads with information and to keep them busy? We might make a just accusation of many and say that their very Bible classes, discipleship programs, Sunday School programs, preaching, and on and on are really in direct violation of the command of Christ to make disciples. Just offering the classes and programs about the Bible and doing things is not in and of itself obedience to the Great Commission as commanded by Christ.

A local church that truly wants to seek God must examine all that it is doing in light of the Great Commission. But it is not just any version of the Great Commission we must carry out; it is the one that Jesus gave. We must quit interpreting the Great Commission by what we want to happen and by the numbers we desire and quit justifying what we are doing by the numbers. We must pursue true obedience to the true Great Commission. When we interpret the Great Commission by what we want to do and justify what we are doing by the numbers, we are in direct violation of the Great Commission. The sovereign of this universe who has all power tells us what we are to do. Just like the Pharisees we are twisting the Scriptures to our own destruction by lowering them to something we can do in our own power. It is easy to run around telling people a canned message about Jesus and feeling good about ourselves as we tell ourselves we are keeping the Great Commission. The problem is that we have lowered the command of Jesus and are in disobedience to it. We are to make disciples or followers of Christ by teaching them to do and observe (not just teach the data) all that He commanded not just give a canned message. The churches must repent and begin to obey the Lord of all. If not, what can it teach others about discipleship?

In past weeks we have been looking at what it will take for the professing church to be turned from seeking itself in activities, buildings, and outward religion to seeking the face of God. God has turned His face from us and we are under a spiritual judgment. Yet we continue to think that if we can keep busy, obtain great buildings, and have forms of outward religion that we are being blessed of God. We must understand that in a spiritual judgment God can give people many outward things and yet give them leanness of soul. The Israelites thought that they were blessed of God at times when they were actually under judgment, but it is true that He sent physical judgment on them as well. We must remember that the greatest judgment upon anyone is a spiritual judgment (Amos 8:11).

In modern America we have many expensive and great buildings for people to attend, but we have no spiritual depth and are without spiritual understanding. We have institutions of academic excellence, yet we have little spiritual understanding. We have many Denominations, but little true Christianity. We have evangelism programs, but true evangelism is lost. We have programs to increase water baptisms, but our theology is shallow. We have many ways of communicating self-help to people, but we don’t teach that men must deny self to follow Christ. We have multiplied programs to keep people busy in religion, but not busy seeking God. His face has turned and we have become very busy in our religion, but we are not really seeking God. While ministers and teachers are telling people that the building programs and being involved in academia or various programs is seeking God, we are sinking deeper into darkness and judgment. Those things have a form of godliness, but they have denied its power.

The professing Church in America is consumed in busyness just like the world. We have taken the name of God and have attached it to worldly things. Constantine “Christianized” many pagan celebrations by attaching Christian names to them, but America does this too. It is easier to have “Christian” candy than it is to taste the sweetness of God. It is easier to have a “Christian” gym than it is to exercise ourselves to godliness. It is easier to give money or stuff to a ministry that deals with the physical “needs” of others than it is to want to submit our hearts to God. It is easier to “minister” to the “needs” of people while they smile than it is to speak to a real need, which makes them frown. It is easier to Christianize sports and call that ministry than it is to buffet our bodies in submission to Christ. It is easier to make money as a part of a Christian business organization than it is to actually run a business for the honor and glory of Jesus Christ. It is easier to run a “church” by following business principles than it is to follow Christ. It is easier to go on missions trips (glorified vacations?) than it is to seek the Lord in our own locations all year. It is easier to go to camps and be entertained than it is to seek the Lord while fasting and mourning. It is easier to watch a “Christian movie” than it is to be moved by the Holy Spirit. It is easier to listen to “Christian music” than it is to make music in our hearts to the Lord. It is easier to pursue self-esteem than it is to seek to die to self and to take up the cross and follow Christ. It is easier to give presents to people in December than it is to be like Christ and be a burnt offering to God. It is easier to stand against the immorality of our day than it is to love God and our neighbor. It is easier to “Christianize” things and activities than it is to be a real Christian.

While many of the things above may be good, if we are not seeking the face of the Lord in truth and in spirit those things can be deceitful. When God has turned His face away, all of those things will do nothing to turn the face of the Lord back to us. The professing Church must wake up and understand that it must seek the Lord from the heart. Jesus taught that worship must be in spirit and in truth. Do we now think that we can pray words while our hearts are taken with our Christianized things? “Oh,” one might argue, “I am Reformed in my theology.” Okay, but where is your heart? Theology can be a thing of pride and Christianized as well. There is nothing that a heart will not seek in the place of God and be deceived by it. The spirit of the Pharisees spirit is alive in our day. A form of morality and doctrine has been set up that the Pharisees would approve of. But where are those seeking God for God?

We simply must see and understand that a true seeking of God is from the heart and from the heart alone. We will not seek the Lord until we come to Him in our helplessness of self and ask Him to make us a people with broken hearts that truly seek Him from the heart. We can even desire God to do many things for us and mistake that for seeking God when in fact we only seek Him for ourselves. That is nothing but self-seeking. We seek the Lord to bless our plans and ministries but again that can be nothing but self-seeking. While we rightly knock many so-called ministries for their extravagance and pleas for money, those ministries testify to us that self-seeking in any ministry is idolatry. The really extravagant ones are indeed worse, but can we say we are much different in heart? Isn’t it true that they simply have more opportunity to express their hearts by the circumstances that they are in? If those ministries are wrong because of their extravagance, then any ministry or ministry that seeks itself (though hidden down deep) is condemned. All self-seeking is idolatry and all those who do it are idolaters regardless of the extent to which they do it. As Matthew 7:1-2 teaches us, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.” When we judge others for their seeking of self while taking His name on their lips, we condemn ourselves when we do it, though it may be to a much lesser degree. We must seek God for Himself and His name’s sake or we are not seeking Him but self.

A vital principle is given in II Chronicles 7:14: “and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” This text teaches us that what it will take for God to turn His face back and hear the prayers of His people is for people to seek His face. God was not pleased when people tried to do things for Him and do all of the external things He had commanded. God wants the hearts of the people and He will have them to seek His presence rather than His physical gifts. God wants people to seek His presence out of love for and joy in Himself rather than trying to seek Him to give them something. This is also true in the churches. God is sought in order that He might grant people a building or some money or greater numbers, but where is God being truly sought just to be in His presence? Where are the people who desire to be truly humbled rather than the appearance of it so that they might seek the face of the Lord? Until the hearts of the people are broken, there will be no seeking of the Lord in truth and spirit and so there will be no finding of Him and there will be no true revival in our land.

Until we are seeking the face of the Lord in prayer, we will not be truly praying. We can utter words into the air and call it praying or whatever we wish, but until we are seeking the face of the Lord from the heart in truth we will not truly be praying. Perhaps it will be a type of prayer much like the Pharisee was said to pray to himself when he prayed (Luke 18:11). Can we imagine what it is like to be an angel in the heavens and watch as millions pray to themselves while hardly anyone is praying in such a way as to seek the face of the Lord? If the Lord would be pleased to open our hearts to us and show how much we are praying to ourselves rather than to Him it might bring a great mourning upon our souls. It is also true that according to II Chronicles 7:14 that until a people are humbled and seeking the face of the Lord, true repentance has not happened. This makes sense because people will not see their sin until they see their sin in the light of His glory. So if we are not seeking the face of the Lord in our prayers and in all that we are doing, we are not repenting of our sin which is enmity with God and still weighs upon our souls and all we do. When the professing church in America is caught up with its so-called ministries, programs, business, and all of the Christianizing things that it has done instead of seeking the face of God, it demonstrates that it is under the judgment of God and needs to repent of its most religious activity.

Individuals and churches must learn what seeking self in the name of God really is so that they may turn from that and humble themselves before God in order that He might grant them the grace to seek His face. It is not that we must turn from one way of doing things to another way of doing things, but instead we must be turned from our wicked hearts and the wickedness of self-seeking to truly seek His face. This only happens by grace alone. We must see that we are the modern Pharisees and the modern Constantine and we are attempting to do things for God and attach His name to our own desires and pleasures in order to do what we want using the name of religion. We must realize that apart from Jesus we can do nothing (John 15:5). We are totally dependant on Him for the grace to seek Him. We must be broken from our own wisdom, strength, and our own way of doing things in order that the life that flows from Christ our vine will work in us a true seeking of the living God. After all, Scripture does teach us that Christ is the only way to the Father. Perhaps it means more than we usually think. We will only seek the Father when His grace comes to us through Christ and the fruit of love by the Spirit. Humility is the emptiness of self, not the efforts of self. We must be broken from everything but His grace in Christ in order to seek His face.

We live in an age of great spiritual deception because we are under the spiritual judgment of God. While we don’t know how long this judgment has been upon us, we must be very careful. If this judgment came upon us in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, then what happened in the mid part of the twentieth century is not the standard of Christianity that we must have. If we continue to seek God in ways that He gave us as judgment, we will never seek His face. We must go back to the Word of God. We will continue in our Christianized ways until we see that those ways are not seeking God and are in fact part of His judgment upon us. Only then will we begin to see the deception of our ways and loathe ourselves for being at enmity with God while saying we were seeking Him.

We live in an age where prayer is thought of as an action that is performed rather than the life of the soul in pouring itself out to God as a result of the work of the Spirit in the soul. There is no merit to be obtained by performing the ritual of prayer and uttering sounds in the air, but instead we must learn again in our time that prayer is the act of a child of God in seeking God Himself. Prayer may seek God on the behalf of other people, but it must always be done while seeking God and His glory above all. Without love for God primarily there is no true prayer at all. In contrast to many methods and ways of modern instruction on prayer, here are the words of Arthur W. Pink on the prayers of Paul.

Finally, let me point out a striking omission. If all the apostolic prayers be read attentively, it will be found that in none of them is any place given to that which occupies such prominence in the prayers of Arminians. Not once do we find God asked to save the world in general or to pour out His Spirit on all flesh without exception. The apostles did not so much as pray for the conversion of an entire city in which a particular Christian church was located. In this they conformed again to the example set for them by Christ: “I pray not for the world,” said He, “but for them which thou hast given me” (John 17:9). Should it be objected that the Lord Jesus was there praying only for His immediate apostles or disciples, the answer is that when He extended His prayer beyond them it was not for the world that He prayed, but only for His believing people until the end of time (see John 17:20, 21). It is true that Paul teaches “that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all [classes of] men; for kings, and for all that are in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1, 2a, brackets mine) -in which duty many are woefully remiss-yet it is not for their salvation, but “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (v. 2b, ital. mine). There is much to be learned from the prayers of the apostles.

Now the words of Pink in the above quote may shock us and sound hard or even non-Christian. What we must ask ourselves, however, is whether he is right about what he says about the apostolic prayers and the prayers of Christ. We must always remember that in prayer as well as all of life the Great Commandment is to be our guide. Well, someone might retort, but we are also commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. But that is not an argument against Pink’s position at all. The greatest thing we can do for anyone is to love God and to pray for His glory. In fact, we need to hear I John 5:2: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.” We cannot even love the children of God apart from loving God. In our day we think that we love God when we do nice things for human beings but Scripture tells us that we love human beings when we love God. While the two should not be separated, this should at least tell us of the proper order our hearts should have in prayer.

The judgment of God is upon the professing Church and He has turned His face from it. We can do all of the nice and helpful things we can do but until we are seeking the Lord Himself He will not turn His face toward us. The only hope that the professing Church has to find God is to seek God. The only hope the professing Church has is to turn from all of its self-seeking ways and pray that God would give it a heart to seek Himself. The only hope that the professing Church has in pleasing God is if it repents of trying to please God in its own power and seeks the power of God to dwell in it.

There are several things in this provocative statement by Pink that we could look at, but we will look at just a few. The first thought that comes to mind is the difference between the prayers of Christ and His apostles and of the prayers of the professing Church today. As noted previously, we spend a lot of time praying about the physical problems that people have while the apostles prayed for the glory of God in the spiritual strength and growth of souls. We spend a lot of time praying for the salvation of particular sinners and also of larger groups while the apostles prayed for believers. I can imagine that some will think that this sounds like hyper-Calvinism or some sort of fatalism. However, what we must strive for is the biblical teaching on the subject. I would challenge anyone to take the time to read the New Testament and take note of all the prayers listed in it. On one side of a sheet of paper they would list all of the prayers for the salvation of the world and on the other side of the paper list all of the prayers for believers and for believers to know God. This would settle the issue beyond doubt.

The issue at hand is that the modern professing Church is so man-centered that it cannot see anything beyond what it can see and count. This means that it prays for what it can see and count. It believes that its primary task is in evangelism and so all that it does is focused on that. The primary task of the Church is the glory of God. Jesus Himself said that the world would know that we are His disciples when we have love one for another (John 13:35). In the book of Acts it was the Holy Spirit being poured out that drew men to hear the Gospel and then to send them out into the world. It is the Church alone that can be revived (bring life again) since it alone had true life before. It is only when the Church is revived that people then flood to the Church. It is only when the Church is filled with the living God that people will come to the buildings of the Church to seek God rather than entertainment.

It is only when the Church is seeking the living God that the Church has anything to say to the world. The greatest act of good that the Church can do for the world is for the world to see the Church seeking God first. It will do the world no good if it sees the Church seeking the world more than it seeks God. The world will not see God until the Church has been filled with God Himself. As long as the professing Church seeks the world and ignores God as its truest and greatest love the world will mock the professing Church because it does not see God in Her. The truth of the matter is that the world is right about the professing Church. God is not in the professing Church because She is under His judgment and He has turned His face from Her. The professing Church knows that something is wrong but it is trying to cure the problem by working to please God and doing things for Him. The world just sees the people in the professing Church as fools. We are fools if we seek the world and physical things rather than seeking the living God. What do we really seek in our hearts when we pray?

While it may seem counter-intuitive, the professing Church is in deadly error in praying for the world and not for the glory of God and the spiritual growth of God’s people. When it prays in this way it simply shows that it does not understand what Scripture teaches on prayer nor does it understand how sinners come to God. Let me ask again where we see in Scripture the type of praying like we see in the average “prayer meeting” at the local church? We simply don’t see it at all. In Scripture we see that God is sought. After all, to understand the Gospel is to understand that it is God who must draw sinners to Himself. Praying for the glory of God and praying for the saints of God to mature and to be instruments of His glory is the biblical and the best way to pray in terms of the local church and in terms of sinners truly coming to Christ. The most biblical way that a local church will reach the lost with the Gospel is seeking and praying for the glory of God to be manifested in the spiritual growth of His people. A local church is the body of Christ and it is through a local church that Christ Himself is manifested when it is being the body of Christ. People don’t come to Christ by hearing the facts alone, but by seeing Him manifested.

Let us look at a business model by analogy. Let us say that a restaurant named XYX was successful and so the owner starts a second restaurant. Before long he starts a third and then a fourth and so on. What is it that could be a cause of the restaurants he has already started failing? It would be if the business began to be more concerned with growing than it was with the quality of the food and the quality of its employees. The professing Church has become so focused on growing that it is neglecting the Church itself. We have become so focused on the world that we have neglected the body of Christ. It is the body of Christ that must be strong for it to truly reach the world in truth and love.

The local churches must learn about true prayer. True prayer is to spend time seeking God Himself and His glory through the strengthening of His people. The apostles were said to have turned the world upside down and yet the biblical record has them praying for believers and the local churches in virtually every case. Paul asked for prayer concerning his preaching and that is one of the best ways for concerned people to pray for the lost. We must begin to pray for preachers and the preaching of the Word of God. We must begin to pray for the preaching of the Word of God because we desire God Himself to be exalted in the preaching.

Again we must notice that prayer is the desire of the heart and the love of the heart. We cannot just decide to start praying in this way and start uttering words that are much like the words of the apostles and think that is prayer. What we must do is to see that this is the way we should pray and then begin to humble ourselves and seek the Lord for hearts that desire Him enough to pray in this way. If we do not desire these things out of love for God and for the body of Christ, then we will not truly pray them. We must have hearts that are broken from self and the ways of the modern professing Church or we won’t have a prayer at all (literally and figuratively).

The professing Church simply must turn from seeking itself while using the name of God to seeking God for Himself. There will be no true revival or true life within the Church until this happens. But of course this will not happen until our hearts are broken before God and are turned by Him to Himself. There is no prayer apart from a heart that prays and there is no prayer apart from the love of the heart. But God is sovereign over the heart and not just external events. We must learn to seek the Lord for broken hearts in order to seek Him. We must learn to seek the Lord for His love for Himself to be put in our hearts so that we seek Him out of love. We simply must wake up and realize that prayer is not saying words to God and it is not asking God for the things we want, but instead it is the heart groaning forth its desires for God Himself and for His glory to be manifested in us and through us.

The following quote is from A.W. Pink’s writings on the prayers of the apostles:

Note also the catholicity of them. Not that it is either wrong or unspiritual to pray for ourselves individually, any more than it is to supplicate for temporal and providential mercies; I mean, rather, to direct attention to where the apostles placed their emphasis. In one only do we find Paul praying for himself, and rarely for particular individuals (as is to be expected with prayers that are a part of the public record of Holy Scripture, though no doubt he prayed much for individuals in secret). His general custom was to pray for the whole household of faith. In this he adheres closely to the pattern prayer given us by Christ, which I like to think of as the Family Prayer. All its pronouns are in the plural number: “Our Father,” “give us” (not only “me”), “forgive us,” and so forth. Accordingly we find the Apostle Paul exhorting us to be making “supplication for all saints” (Eph 6:18, ital. mine), and in his prayers he sets us an example of this very thing. He pleaded with the Father that the Ephesian church might “be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge” (Eph 3:18, ital. mine). What a corrective for self-centeredness! If I am praying for “all saints,” I include myself.

Let us look at some of the points that Pink points out. First, by “catholicity” he just means that the prayer is for all the Church or church rather than just for me. This is very important in terms of our hearts. We are commanded to love God with all of our beings. If we are constantly praying for things for ourselves-even if we attach spiritual reasons to them-we show that we love ourselves more than God and think of God as more of a genie that carries out our personal wishes. Instead, however, what we must do if we love God is to love His glory and His people who are the expression and manifestation of His glory. If we love the glory of God and His people more than anything else, that is what the longings of our hearts will cry out to Him for. Our love must be for God’s glory that shines in and through Christ and so it will be for the body of Christ which is the Church. If we truly love God we love His Son and if we love His Son we will love His bride and the other children of God.

From this point we can see why the prayers of Paul were so often for the whole household of the faith. He does not just want what is good for another person; He wants what is good for a whole church and all of God’s people. We must also realize that what is the true good of a single person is what is good for the whole and what is good for the person and the whole is God Himself. When we pray for ourselves as individuals we are actually not praying what is best in the big picture for ourselves as individuals. If our chief love is God Himself then what is best for each person is the glory of God. God’s glory is manifested through His people as whole and not just individuals. The more the glory of God is manifested through the local church and the Church as a whole the better that is for the true love of believers.

True prayer must be seen as the person and each local church seeking the Lord for Himself and not just for things. When people begin to truly seek the Lord for Himself, this is a sign that they love God and other people in truth. We hear much in our day about speaking the truth in love, but not so much about loving in truth. There is no true love apart from the truth. We must learn to pray in truth in order that there would be true love. We must learn to pray in true love so that there will be truth. The true way to love others is to pray for what is true and what is good for them. When we are seeking the glory of God out of true love for Him and for it to be manifested in and through others, only then are we are praying for others in accordance with knowledge, truth, and love. It is not just that it is important to pray for others in some general way, but it is utterly vital to pray for others in accordance with the glory of God and of true love. Just uttering words for the physical welfare of another is perhaps one of the worst things we can do for them in terms of the bigger spiritual picture. If God does heal them apart from working a true spiritual good in their soul, the illness does them no real good and it may even increase their pride. We simply must pray for others and think of them in terms of a group which is always in terms of the glory of God.

The second point is that this kind of praying is in accordance with the model prayer that Christ has given us. As Pink points out, all of the pronouns in that prayer are plural. The disciples came to Christ and asked Him to teach them how to pray. The model prayer that He gave them used plural pronouns. We should note that surely this means praying for others and ourselves as a whole but also that this points to corporate prayer as well. For one person that is part of a body to pray mostly for self is for the eye of the body to pray for itself and ignore the rest. If we focus on physical things we are ignoring what is truly important in prayer and that is the soul which is the very dwelling place of God. Christ has taught His body (the Church) to pray in a way that is beneficial for the whole body which is the instrument of His glory in the world. In praying for the body of Christ one is praying what is in accordance with the model prayer of Christ. God uses the whole body and so we are to pray for the whole body rather than just ourselves and our favorite person.

The third point has already been made in a sense but it is that when we truly pray for the church (local) and the Church (all true believers) are we then truly praying for ourselves in the proper realm. Each person is part of the body and is not a separate entity of self. If we love Christ and His body more than anything else, then our prayers must be for the body and yet we are in the body and so we are praying for what is best for ourselves. When one part of the body suffers, it all suffers. When the body as a whole is in good health, then each part is in health. Each individual part is under the judgment of God because the professing Church as a whole is under the judgment of God. We must learn that if we desire true revival and for God to turn His face toward us we must have our hearts turned to pray for His glory and the good of His body. True Christians have to learn that each person is not an island and that when true believers are not prayed for it is not praying for the body or ourselves either. Most importantly, when we are not praying for the body we are not truly praying for the glory of God in the world.

What kind of heart is it that is engaged in prayer like this if it is more than just words? We must be instructed to know how to pray but our hearts must be taught of the Spirit to truly do this. We have to begin to ask God to teach our hearts to pray. We must begin to seek the Lord to give the body a true love for Christ and His Bride in order to pray out of a heart of love. Until we learn the real connectedness of true believers in Christ we will not understand that when we pray for others and ourselves to know the love of Christ which passes understanding we are praying in such a way that the body of Christ is built up. Ephesians 4:16 teaches us something about this: “from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” It is only when each part is working as it is supposed to be working does the body as a whole grow in Christ which is termed “building up of itself in love.” Let us meditate on verses like that and see that our hearts must be broken from our present ways and practices in order to truly love and in order to truly pray. American individualism is very strong in the professing Church but to the degree it is strong is to the same degree that the Church has been weakened.

What must we do to have a heart that desires the glory of God through His people rather than to focus on ourselves as individuals? We must be broken from our self-centeredness and our self-love. It is easy enough to stop what we are doing and start uttering different words, but the heart has to be changed. God alone can change our hearts and God alone is the only source of love that can pour forth His love in our hearts. Until we see how utterly wicked it is for us to “pray” in the ordinary way, we will not be broken from our self-centered and selfish prayers. Until we are broken from hearts that desire things for self and will be religious for self too, we will not know what it means to truly commune with God in prayer. Until our hearts are broken from our religious duties and religious prayers apart from Christ we will not know what it means to seek His glory by praying for His people. Again, we can say the words but these are things that must be done from the depths of the soul. Our true prayer is the deepest desire of the heart and God sees that deepest desire as our real prayer rather than hearing the words. We can say many words in what we call prayer but our deepest desire will be heard. Until God changes our hearts and gives us desires for Himself the desires of our selfish and wicked hearts will be our real prayers. God will justly hate them.

We are looking at how Paul prayed but also the heart that it took to pray these prayers in truth and love. This is all in the context that the modern professing Church is in a dire spiritual condition, which means that it is under spiritual judgment, which means that God has turned His face from the professing Church and has turned Her over to Her own methods and strength. The Church is to be the body of Christ and it cannot function apart from the wisdom and source of love and strength that the Head of the Church alone can give. When the Head of the Church has withdrawn, then it is given over to running around with a lot of religious activity that more resembles a chicken with its head cut off that makes a lot of noise with useless and pointless activity than it does a group that is driven by the love of God and guided by His wisdom. The Church must get back to true prayer and that prayer must be prayer of the heart that is taught by the Spirit rather than another activity and program.

Paul prayed in Philippians 1:9-11 that “our love may abound more and more, that we might be sincere and without offense, and be filled with the fruits of righteousness.” To be extremely repetitive we must ask make the point again that anyone can simply repeat these words. A person could memorize these words and repeat them for hours over and over. But what does that do if it is the language of religious works? What we must do is to get beyond saying these things for ourselves and others to where we begin to long for these things for others and ourselves. That will only begin to happen when the Lord breaks our hearts from our own strength and self-reliance and we begin to seek Him to conform our hearts to these desires.

To pray that our love would abound more and more is to realize that we have no source for love in ourselves and that our source is God alone. It is to realize that our love does not abound and that we need the grace of God to have love abound. We must see that true love is only in those that are born of God and know God (I John 4:7). We must see that the love of God only comes to us through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5) and that love is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22ff). We must see that to pray for our love to abound more and more is to first pray for God to pour out His love in our hearts so that we will have true love in our souls. We must not be satisfied with just a little love, but we must pray for this love to abound to us so that it may abound within us and then pour out to others so that the love of God may be glorified through us. But we also know that we will never have the grace of love in our souls until our hearts are broken and humble. The Holy Spirit does not work the fruit of His love in the souls of the proud because all of the love of God comes to sinners by grace and God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. This should simply ring in our ears and hearts.

The professing Church must realize that to pray this prayer of Paul in truth is to pray for each person to be humbled and broken. We are nothing more than liars if we presume to pray for the love of God to abound in us if we are not going to seek the type of heart that God requires before He pours His love in. What are we if we will say these words for other people and not seek the kind of heart this prayer requires? Let me get very close to the pride and self-centeredness of our hearts here. We pray many times for things we are not willing to truly seek. It makes us feel very spiritual to pray for missions but we are not willing to go and we are not willing to do anything toward it. We may be willing to go but are we really willing to seek brokenness in order to go to them with love? We can speak much of evangelism and then some are willing to practice some form of it, but are we ready to seek true brokenness and true humility in order to be filled with the love of God in order to truly reach them? Are we really willing to seek utter brokenness from self in order to be a true sacrifice to God? It is much easier to think we are serving God by going around to people and telling them a message. That is nothing more than attempting to give God a blind and maimed sacrifice when He commands a perfect animal. We will do anything but seek to have our hearts truly broken from pride and self as God wills unless it will look good. We will make great sacrifices and do great labors with God’s name attached, but we will not seek true brokenness from our own self-sufficiency.

Our very text (Philippians 1:9-11) tells us why Paul was praying for himself and for them that their love would abound more and more. The reason that he gives is so that “we might be sincere and without offense, and be filled with the fruits of righteousness.” We must note this very, very carefully. Unless we are abounding in love, we are not truly sincere. Without this love of God abounding in us, all of our religious labor is not sincere. When people go out with programs of evangelism and they don’t have the true love of God in their souls they are not sincere. When we preach the Word of God and when we do our programs or religious rituals each Sunday we must have the love of God abounding in us or we are not sincere in doing them. Biblical sincerity will only happen when there is biblical love. Biblical love will only be in the soul when the source of love Himself lives in that soul and gives Himself to that soul.

Another reason the text gives us that we must have love abounding in us is so that we will be filled with the fruits of righteousness. Whatever is moved from love for self is the fruit of self. Whatever is moved by the strength of self is the fruit of self. Whatever is done by the wisdom of self is the fruit of self. Whatever is done in our own sufficiency is the fruit of self-sufficiency. Surely it is clear that we must have hearts that are utterly broken from love for self, the strength of self, the wisdom of self, and the sufficiency of self in order to take up our cross and follow Christ and in order for what we do to be the fruits of righteousness. If Christ is our righteousness then He is the One that works righteousness in us rather than self. If the fruit of love is by the Holy Spirit, then He alone can work the love in us that bears the fruit of righteousness. Surely it is so obvious that if we are going to pray this prayer of Paul in sincerity we must have hearts conformed to Christ in order to do so. Are we really willing to lay down everything we are and stand for in order to have the life of Christ? Are we really willing to lay down our religious reputations in order to seek God in truth? Are we ready and willing to confess before all that all we have done before is nothing but the fruit of self and our righteous acts are as filthy rags that make us unclean in His sight? Are we willing to confess our sins as David did and lay aside all hope in ourselves and lay low at the cross and ask God for grace apart from one single worthy thing in us or one worthy thing we have done? If we are not ready to do those things, we cannot pray this prayer in sincerity and we cannot do one thing in the name of God in sincerity. We must have hearts that seek the Lord or we are idolaters in seeking ourselves.

Paul prayed in Colossians 1:10 “that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Do we desire hearts to pray this? Do we really desire hearts that desire to please Him in all respects? Wouldn’t we rather please ourselves in all respects? Wouldn’t we rather please God only to the degree it pleases us and fits our own comfort levels? Do we really desire to love God in all we do apart from our sinful self-love? Will we seek the Lord to be delivered from our wicked self-love in order to love Him enough to please Him in all respects? Is this really any different than the Great Command to love God with all of our being each and every moment? If we are going to pray like Paul, we need to seek hearts like Paul. If we are going to pray for ourselves and others to please Him in all respects, then we must seek hearts that will seek to love Him in sincerity so that this can be truly done. If we pray that we want to please God in all respects and we only do that in order that others would be pleased with how sanctified we are, we are again praying to ourselves and seeking the honor of men. That means we don’t want this prayer to be answered and we are deceiving ourselves and lying to God and others.

Paul prayed in I Thessalonians 5:23 this: “may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely.” Can we pray this in truth for ourselves? Until we are ready to be sanctified as God would have us to be sanctified, we cannot pray this in sincerity. It seems to be that the professing Church wants to be sanctified enough to get God to give it what it really wants. That is not sanctification at all but is a system of works designed to manipulate God in love for self. That is nothing but the idolatry of self. When even our sanctification is vile and wicked before God, we should not wonder that we are under His judgment. Are we so sure that we want God at all? If we desire God in truth and love, then it will require much pain of heart and many hours of seeking Him for a broken and humbled heart. If we don’t desire that, let us not fool ourselves that we desire God or true revival. We may want a comfortable life where we can pray comfortable prayers and have some form of comfortable morality that we call sanctification. But again, that is nothing more than a lie and a desire to escape hell in an easy and comfortable way.

Are we satisfied with moral kids even if they do not love God and do not pursue Him with panting hearts? Are we satisfied with living ordinary lives as long as we pay the bills, don’t rock the boat, and attend church on a regular basis? Do we pant after God and want to please God and be sanctified from the depths of our hearts? Are we satisfied to pray and perhaps pray long and with intensity if we do not obtain the object of true prayer which is God Himself? We must learn that the goal of prayer is not to pray and it is not to spend time in prayer, but to find God Himself. If we are not willing to seek God at all costs to self and our own comforts, we are not ready for true revival. If we are satisfied with a time of prayer and yet a prayer that has no repentance and no humbling of self, we do not desire true revival. Let us not kid ourselves any longer. There will be no true revival until the people of God truly pray. There will not be true prayer until we are living sacrifices from the depths of our souls.

The modern professing Church seems to be completely turned around. The Lord has hidden His face from us and yet we are continuing on a path trying to do things for Him rather than seek His face and seeking the return of the shining of His glory on His desolate sanctuary. The name of the game is to see who can do the most and get the most involved. We have buildings to build and programs to carry out. We have activities to carry out and busy things to keep us busy. While many recognize that the professing Church is weak, it seems as if the answer to the predicament is more business and more to do. Books are coming from the busy presses on how to do church and all the other how to do things. Those of the Reformed persuasion have their own list of things to be done, but they are still things. After all, to reform a church we think that the church must fit a specific standard.

The real mark of a local church that is truly seeking the Lord is one that seeks the face of the Lord by spending much time in prayer. Without hearts that truly pray, correct theology is nothing more than information. Without hearts that pray, outward prayer is simply cold hearts uttering correct words. Without hearts that pray, the marks of a church are marks of deceit. Without hearts that pray, one can institute elders and have a biblical form without true substance. Without hearts that seek the Lord in prayer there will be people seeking themselves in various forms in words with the Lord’s name attached. Without hearts that seek the Lord’s interests in prayer there will be people seeking their own interests. Without hearts that seek the Lord’s glory in prayer people will seek their own honor and glory. Without hearts that seek the Lord’s kingdom in prayer people will seek their own kingdom in reality. Without hearts to seek the Lord’s will in prayer people will seek their own will and call it the will of the Lord. Without hearts that love the Lord and so seek His face in prayer people will simply seek the things of self that they love. In other words, what the professing church needs to do is to stop its activities and programs and begin to seek the Lord from the heart pleading with Him to turn His face and make it shine upon His people.

In years past this was seen by some. One of them was a man named A.W. Pink. He wrote several books and two on prayer. The following is from his book on Fervent Prayer:

“Consider also the burden of them. In the recorded apostolic prayers there is no supplicating God for the supply of temporal needs and (with a single exception) no asking Him to interpose on their behalf in a providential way (though petitions for these things are legitimate when kept in proper proportion to spiritual concerns). Instead, the things asked for are wholly of a spiritual and gracious nature: that the Father may give unto us the spirit of understanding and revelation in the knowledge of Himself, the eyes of our understanding being enlightened so that we may know what is the hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe (Eph 1:17-19); that He would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we might know the love of Christ… and be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:16-19).”

When we read words like this, we should be humbled and broken for our own shallow and misguided words that we have called our prayers. Out of all the apostolic prayers, he says that not one of them is a supplication to God for temporal needs. He could only find one prayer that asked God to interpose in a providential way. Rather than focus on temporal things, the apostolic prayers were for spiritual things. We need to read these prayers and we need to hear the focus of those prayers today. Is it any wonder that the modern professing Church is so weak and helpless in spiritual things if even Her prayers show there is nothing spiritual about Her? What is the difference between asking God for things and seeking the face of the Lord for spiritual power? What is the difference between uttering words and truly having a heart to pray these things? For the rest of this newsletter I want to focus on the heart behind the prayers in the things mentioned by Pink as he quoted Scripture. We could learn the proper words and repeat them just like the apostles wrote them down, but if our hearts are not engaged we are not truly praying. We can learn how to pray in the sense of learning a proper method, but we have not learned to truly pray until Christ Himself by the Spirit has taught our hearts to seek the face of the Lord in prayer.

What kind of heart is it that is engaged in prayer like this if it is more than just words? What kind of heart is it that pours forth its true desires like this? What kind of heart is it that instead of praying for the things of self it prays that the Father may give to us the spirit of understanding and revelation in the knowledge of Himself? This is a heart that desires the face of God more than the world. It is a heart that has a love for God Himself rather than the things that the world offers and even things that religion offers. It is a heart that loves God Himself and desires His presence more than buildings and programs and all the pomp of religious ceremony. If this type of prayer is truly the deepest desire of the heart, then that heart is one like Moses who desired to see the glory of God more than anything else. But we must always force ourselves to think and dwell on the fact that a heart like that is not one that is worked up or can be obtained by human effort. A heart like that is one that grace alone can form.

We must get away from the modern approach to education. It teaches people the facts and then says they understand it. We have not learned to pray when we repeat correct words, for even a parrot can pray if we spend the time teaching it words. True prayer can only come from a heart that has been humbled and broken by the mercy of the Lord and then tempered by the hand of God in the soul. Prayer can only come from the heart or it is nothing more than any pagan could memorize if s/he wanted to bad enough. Interestingly enough it seems as if the focus of much of our words we call prayer is most likely what a pagan would ask for. We ask God to help us in our temporal concerns and help people with their physical issues. We ask God to add to our number and give us money for the buildings. But we do not see those things in the apostolic prayers. What we do see is Paul’s heart poured out in prayer pleading with God “that He would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.” When we live in our own strength and think we just need a little help from God I suppose his prayer does not make much sense to us in our self-reliant day. But Paul thought that the people needed to pray like that. Why do people need to be strengthened in accordance with the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man? Why is that vital to prayer?

The answer to the previous question is from the rest of the text: “that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we might know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:16-19). What a beautiful prayer this is if people want to know what it means to have Christ dwell in their hearts and they want to know the love of Christ and they want to be filled with the fullness of God rather than to spend all of their time praying over buildings, programs, and the physical problems of people. The real need of any person that is having a physical problem is to rest in the sovereignty of God in the matter. They need the love of God in their soul more than they need their bodies to be healed. When we only pray for the physical problems of other people it shows that we are spiritually unaware at best. No matter a person’s physical condition they need Christ and more of Christ far more than anything else. In fact, if we truly believe in the sovereignty of God then their physical problem is in the hands of God and He has brought it to pass for a spiritual reason.

The professing Church in America does not pray because it does not know by the understanding or experience how to pray from the heart and in the Spirit. Praying in the Spirit is not a charismatic approach, it is a spiritual approach. We are not spiritual enough to truly pray because we want to pray in our own way and pray for the things that concern us rather than according to the Spirit. We don’t have a prayer because we don’t have a heart to truly pray. Anyone can repeat words or say certain things, but for spiritual prayer the heart must be broken by the Spirit and taught to pray by the Spirit. The Spirit will lead us to Christ and give us a love for the Father and only then will we really be praying. We are good at having so-called prayer meetings where we run through a list of things and go home satisfied that we have done our duty. But where are the prayer meetings where people are broken of self and seek the Lord and His presence? Where are the prayer meetings where people groan for the living God from a heart that aches with love and desire for Him? Without that, is it true prayer at all?

We must learn to pray as Paul prayed and our learning must be of the heart and by the Spirit or we will be doing nothing more than filling our minds with information and the air with similar words. Notice the difference between learning to say what Paul said and praying those words from the heart full of desire for the glory of God and the spiritual good of His people. We must seek the Lord for a heart that loves God from the depths of its desires and a heart like that seeks the Lord and His glory. We think something is prayer when we bring our ever so slight desires (if at all) to God for the physical well-being of another. We are more excited over a new dress or a new toy than we are over God Himself. We will ask for things and have greater delight over another human being’s attainments than we do over the glory of God. Until our hearts are broken and the Spirit teaches us to pray, we will continue on in our words we call prayer and yet we will not have a prayer at all. Accurate theology and the best words in prayer are not what the Lord looks for. He is looking for broken and humbled hearts that will learn from Him to pray.

For several weeks we looked at how the modern professing Church is under the spiritual judgment of God. The last two weeks we have looked at taking steps to seek the Lord for Himself. We did this by looking at prayer and by the kind of heart that it takes to truly pray. Very few people would deny that we need prayer and a lot of it. What is not so generally recognized and understood is the heart that it takes for true prayer. Prayer is not just the uttering of words; it is lifting the desires of the heart to God. Prayer is not just a religious activity; it is communion with the living God. Prayer must be from the broken and humble heart and God is sovereign over the heart. Scripture tells us that God “is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous” (Prov 15:29). It also tells us that “He who turns away his ear from listening to the law, Even his prayer is an abomination” (Proverbs 28:9). We are also told that ” you ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasure” (James 4:3). Without question, then, the real problem in terms of prayer is the heart. There is no returning to the Lord and no seeking of the Lord apart from returning to Him with the whole heart.

The Pharisees were quite well known for their many prayers, but we should not make them our example. Instead we should look at them and understand that our hearts must be changed in order to pray. Matthew 6:5 gives us one example from the Pharisees: “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” When those men prayed they prayed in the synagogues and even on the street corners. It seems as if they prayed a lot. They were not ashamed to pray in public and even before the watching world. But they were not seeking God in prayer, they were seeking honor for themselves. This text along with James 4:3 (given in the previous paragraph) sets out to us one of the real problems in the modern professing Church. When we pray it is for reasons of self rather than for God and His glory. A selfish heart’s deepest desire is always self in some way.

Love is the deepest language of prayer and when looked at in the depths of the soul it will tell us what our real prayer is. The Pharisees prayed and prayed but Jesus saw that their motives were for themselves in the sense that they wanted to be honored by others. In other words, they prayed to be seen and wanted the honor from others. This is the same thing as saying that they were praying to themselves and were praying for themselves. This is why Jesus said that they had their reward in full. They prayed while the deepest desire of their hearts (their true love) was that they themselves would be honored. They actually received what they really prayed for and that was the honor of men. In much the same way, then, our prayers come from motives in the heart that reflect our deepest desires. The Pharisees deepest love was for self (themselves) and that was seen in their self-centered motives when they prayed. Jesus understood that and set out their sin for all to see. We are born with the same hearts of the Pharisees. We also desire honor for others in many ways when we pray unless God has truly changed our hearts and unless He is the One working the prayer in our hearts. We pray in order that others will think we are religious and perhaps draw an “amen” from the others. We pray so that others will admire our fervency or that others would admire our deep theology and biblical knowledge. Our prayers are like the Pharisees in that we are not truly praying to God. As long as we pray out of love for self and desire the honor of men, our prayers will be answered. The problem, however, is that we would not be praying to God and He will not shine His face upon us until our hearts are turned from seeking ourselves to seeking Him in prayer. Our prayers are answered in that we obtain what our hearts desire. Despite our pious words, like the Pharisees it may be nothing but the honor of men.

The Greatest Commandment continues to stand against all of our prayers that have motives for self, even if we continue to deceive ourselves about the motives of our hearts. When we pray what we love the most is in fact what we are truly praying for. If I stand and praise God for the beauties and glories of who He is it may be that the real desire of my heart is to be thought spiritual or for people to think highly of me as I pray. In that case I would be using God and that which is to be used to exalt and know Him is really an effort to exalt myself. My deepest desire and my greatest love would be for self and my prayer would be for me to be exalted. To put this in yet another way, the person that prays like I just described is a person that loves self more than God and uses religion as a way to obtain honor and to manipulate God to his or her own will. This is a horrible thing, but unless we are truly seeking the glory and honor of God from our hearts we are in fact doing something like that with each prayer. It is not enough to pray if by that we mean offering up words with the name of God on our lips, but it is only prayer to God when our hearts love God and our prayers are moved by that love to seek Him and His glory.

Let us look at this from another view. Let us imagine a person standing in the pew leading the local church in prayer. Imagine that the person praying begins to warm to the task and his prayer begins to be fervent. An amen is heard and then more and more are heard. The one praying seems to get more fervent in the prayer. The one praying raises his voice and utters glowing and exalted works about God. The prayer then pleads with God to do certain things on earth. There is now a chorus with amen after amen ringing through the sanctuary. Let us then move a few thousand miles to a jungle where a tribe of natives are praying to their many gods. They are even more fervent and they gash themselves to show their devotion and the louder and more animated they get the more excited others get and they end up shouting praise and prayer to their gods with great excitement. It could be that there is more in common with these two services than we would care to see. But which one is worse?

The object of prayer in both of the services is self. The one praying in a local congregation desires to fulfill his religious duty and along the way to obtain honor from others. It might also increase the offering. But the real motive and intent of the prayer is self. It is an act of self-love and it is self that is the object of that love and so using the name of God is a violation of the third commandment as much if not more than a callous and worldly person using God’s name in cursing. Using God’s name in a church service to gain honor for self is worse than cursing (personal opinion) because it is using His name directly in a vain way for self. The group in the jungle is not using the name of the true God in the way that those in the local churches do. They are indeed praying for self in that they want their gods to act for them, but that is all that the people in the local church are doing if the deepest desire of their hearts is not for God Himself and out of love for God and His glory.

We can also note that both groups were fervent and grew in fervency and earnestness during their prayers. But if the love they had was not for God but instead was for self, then the fervency and earnestness that grew during the time in prayer was really the display of a greater and warmer love for self. When the fervency of prayer is increased based on an amen chorus from the people, it might be nothing more than an increased fervency based on the honor of men. Our very fervency can be nothing more than an increased idolatry of self and be nothing more than self-love warming at the giving of honor toward self. Our fervency may indeed use the name of the Lord and so our deceptive hearts may deceive us into thinking that we are really praying, but the eyes of the Lord know what the real love of our heart really is. When our love is for ourselves in our prayers we do nothing but offer incense of the heart to our true love and idol which is self. Our prayers are nothing more than acts of love to self which is the self-god in that case and so our very prayers are acts of enmity with the true God we claim to pray to.

God has turned His face from the professing Church and we will not see His face again unless we seek His face in prayer. It is not just that we need to pray more, it is that we need to really pray. We will not truly pray and seek the face of God until we are broken from self as our god and from seeking the honor of men. We will not truly pray until we love God more than self and so desire Him in prayer rather than self. We will not truly pray until our hearts are broken from using His name as an excuse to pray for stuff we want and we truly desire His face more than the things of the world. Regardless of our excuses and religious activities, if we love the world the love of God is not in us (I John 2:15-16). Seeking God is not seeking Him to get us the things of the world that self loves; it is to seek Him to deliver us from love for self. The professing Church will never know the presence of God and of what it means to truly love His glory until it is broken in heart and crying out for God Himself.

Seeking the Lord in prayer is the only kind of prayer to God that there is. Self-seeking prayer is words that seek self even if it is trying to use God to do so. Ministers can pray with great fervency that God would bless the church while their hearts desire their own honor rather than the honor of God. It is so easy to pray for God’s blessing on self and the plans of self, but it is harder when the will of God crosses our selfish hearts. Yet seeking God’s will in prayer is an important part of true prayer in seeking God Himself. But until our hearts are broken from self, we will do nothing but pray for self and we will not see the face of God. Until our hearts are given love for God, our love and therefore our prayers will be for self and we will not see the face of God. We must learn to ask God for broken and contrite hearts in order to seek His face. Even then we can desire those for selfish reasons. We need to seek the Lord for grace in order that our hearts would be broken and we could plead with Him for Himself. The Church is on earth to manifest the glory of God and it is to that end that it must pray with desire and love for that.

The professing Church in America and beyond is in deep darkness while it goes on with its carnal pursuits and programs. It thinks and functions like a business and so its standard of success is like that of a business. It thinks that buildings and activity will lead it to more numbers and bigger offerings. Then it thinks that the buildings and the offerings are signs of success and of God blessing it. But these things are also the signs of judgment. In Amos 8 God sent a spiritual famine on the land and the people continued with their business in seeking the Lord. They went from coast to coast and from north to the east looking for the word of the Lord. At various times when Israel was under the judgment of God their activities did not cease at all but God was not with them. In the days after the time of Christ we are in a more spiritual time. The true success of a church is spiritual and the true judgment of a church is also spiritual. One of the surest signs of a people that are religious without being spiritual is the lack of anything resembling prayer but also the lack of a true seeking God in prayer. If this is true, then we are in the depths of judgment in our day. We are given to buildings and to religious activities as the Israelites were but we are not given over to seeking the Lord from the heart in prayer. The Lord has hidden His face from us.

It seems as if we pray for God to teach us to pray and we think that once we have the proper method we know how to do it. Perhaps we should think of being taught to pray as something that must happen each and every time we pray. While it is the case that the Lord’s Prayer can be thought of as a method, we must not think we are praying because we have taken the name of God on our lips and offer up requests of Him. Prayer is of the heart and without the heart there is no true prayer. Worship must be done in spirit and truth and prayer must also be done in spirit and truth. Unless prayer is in truth and unless it comes from the depths of our souls it is not true prayer. God alone can conform the soul to Himself and teach it to pray. He does not do this just once as a permanent teaching, but since prayer is new each time He must teach the soul each time. God must teach the soul true humility and He must cast pride out of us Himself each time for there to be true prayer.

True prayer is worked in the soul by grace. So often it appears as if we think prayer is something we do that is worthy of praise or as if it is a work. True prayer is the soul communing with God and that only happens by grace alone. True prayer is the precise and exact opposite of the modern professing Church which is given over to self-love, methods, and programs. The modern professing Church goes to God and asks Him to bless its plans and to give it money to carry out its inordinate building programs and all of the things it does that makes it look like a business and the world. True prayer only happens when the soul is delivered from its own plans and seeks the plans of the Lord. True prayer is the soul being conformed to God and asking after the will of God. True prayer is when the soul is in communion with God and its desires are given to it by God and it seeks the Lord in accordance with those desires. While it is thought in our day that prayer consists of words for external things, we must know that the soul is of far more worth than the body and that should be the focus of our prayers. The soul is the dwelling place of God and so we must pray for our souls only what leads to His glory being manifested.

It is the work of the Spirit to work true love and joy in the hearts of the saints of God. Without love and joy there is no true prayer. Love is the language of prayer because it is love for God that should move us in true prayer. The Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our being at all times and as such that includes our prayers. It seems as if we think of prayer as being a means which we seek things from God for self, but in reality prayer is a giving over of self in order to seek God for Himself. Edward Payson was known as the Praying Payson of Portland. He describes prayer like this: “From the fullness of a heart overflowing with holy affections, as from a copious fountain, we should pour forth a torrent of pious, humble, and ardently-affectionate feelings; while our understandings only shape the channel, and teach the gushing streams of devotion where to flow, and when to stop.” It is the Holy Spirit who is referred to as the springs of living water and it is the work of the Holy Spirit to give us such love and joy in God that they will pour out in love for Him in true prayer. Even when the heart is mourning for the state of the professing Church or when the heart aches because of trials, there is an underlying joy in the Lord that should bubble forth. It is true that the Lord will withdraw Himself and give us periods of dryness in order to seek Him by grace alone for grace alone in prayer, so we should not expect rapturous times in prayer each and every time. But where is prayer like this in our day? Is it here at all?

True prayer is to come to God empty of self rather than full of self as many in our day teach. But again, we must come to God asking Him to empty us of ourselves if this is to be done by grace. Even if we teach something of humility it is taught as a virtue and something we must do of ourselves. But the heart that is taught of God knows that humility is the work of the Lord in the soul casting out self and the desires and loves of self so that the life of humility which is Christ Himself may dwell in the soul. Jesus Christ is Lord over His dwelling place and He is the absolute sovereign over our soul. He is the One that can cast things out of the soul and He is the only One that cleanse the soul according to His own will.

If prayer should be thought of as the life of Christ in the soul expressing its desires for the glory of God or the Spirit working in the soul a love for God, then it is obvious that there must be humility in the soul in order to pray. We must also think of humility as the emptiness of self rather than a virtue that can be worked up. So often we hear that Scripture commands us to be humble and so we set out to accomplish that in our own strength. We see all the examples in Scripture of prayer and then we see the commands of Scripture to pray, so we set out to pray in our own strength. Here is a great error in our day. It is the idolatry of man in thinking that he is sovereign over his own soul. It is the idolatry of man in thinking that he can be spiritual by means of his own works and efforts. Yet prayer is a spiritual work and Jesus has taught us that we can do nothing apart from Him (John 15:5). We think of that which is spiritual as that which is non-physical or perhaps that which is for God. But the Bible calls that spiritual which is of the Holy Spirit. Man is not sovereign over God and so God is sovereign in the spiritual realm and not man. Spiritual prayer, then, is not the work of man in his own strength but is the work of the Spirit in the soul of man. True prayer is as much beyond the strength of man as man giving himself a new heart or of working a new heart in another person. How we must learn this lesson in our self-seeking and self-sufficient day.

It is not that the command to pray is a command to do something in our own strength, but that the command to pray is to show us that we cannot do it and that we need Christ in us to truly pray. The Law of God was not given to us to keep in order to be saved, but to drive us to Christ in order to be saved. So the command to pray is not something we can do but is to drive us to Christ in order to do so. We must be emptied of our self-strength and our self-sufficiency to pray. It is only when the soul is emptied of self does the humble Savior live in the soul and shine the glory of the Father through the soul because Christ is the very outshining of the glory of God. Only the soul that is empty of self will truly desire the glory of God for the sake of God while the proud soul may work up some deceitful form of humility and desire the glory of God for the sake of self. True prayer is far, far beyond the natural power of man and is utterly dependant upon the Spirit of the living God. That is why it cannot be done in accordance with the programs of men and that is why true success cannot be measured by out buildings, numbers, and of offerings. True success is the presence of God. It matters not if we have a million people in attendance in a church on Sunday and our building is the size of Disney. Without God we are not a successful church.

Matthew 26:42 gives us a picture of true prayer. The context is that of Christ in Gethsemane just before He was arrested in order to be tried and then crucified. “He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.'” Here is the picture of what must be the hearts of the people in prayer rather than just the words. The humanness of Jesus cried out in wanting to be delivered from going to the cross and suffering the wrath of the Father. But His heart was obedient and wanted above all to do the will of the Father. Who would willingly go to a cross and be the most wicked person in the history of the human race because the sins of others were heaped upon him? Who would willingly suffer such shame? Who would willingly do all of this out of perfect love for the Father? Only the Lord Jesus Christ could and would. We see, then, true prayer. It was seeking the will of the Father despite all the suffering that would take place and despite all the shame. It was seeking the will of the Father despite all that the world thought of Him. It was seeking the will of the Father despite the appearance of utter failure. It was seeking the Father for the strength and spiritual strength to have all those human desires in Him to be put to death in order to carry out what must be done. Until the churches in our day learn this lesson, they will be utter failures in the spiritual realm while they bask in the glory of apparent success. Until we learn that true success is dying to self which includes the desire for self to be spiritually successful in its own way, we will have utter failure despite the appearances. If Christ would have become king of Israel and the world and not went to the cross, He would have failed. Let the churches in our day look to the cross and learn what true success is rather than listen to the world. Let that instruct our hearts and our prayers. If we don’t, our failure will only multiply in the face of our outward “success” as we blindly go on.