Intercessory Prayer Podcast Episodes

There’s no question in the Bible, in both its teaching and examples, God has for some reason said, when you come to me on behalf of someone or something that’s meaningful to me and meaningful to you, it somehow stirs God, compels God, comes alongside God. I’m not sure of the exact phrase and something real happens. 

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Today, I have Joe Gerber with me. Joe, thanks for being here. My pleasure, Matt. Joe, you hail from Champaign. Yes, I’ve been in Champaign for 11 years. Originally born and raised in Bluffton Country Church but have thoroughly enjoyed the people in Champaign and love calling it home. 

Very good. Real quick, your family. So, Heidi’s my dear wife. We have five children, Owen, who is ten, Marcus is eight, Emmeline is five, then we adopted a dear little girl from Florida who is two, and then found out we were expecting Simeon, our fifth, and so they’re nine and a half months apart. 

Nice. Kind of bringing up the rear, so it’s a full home life, as you would be able to relate to. Well, that’s awesome. You know, Joe, today our topic is going to be prayer. And you know, somebody has said to me once, and it really rings true with my experience, ask any Christian about their prayer life and they’ll hang their head and they’ll kind of kick the dirt. 

And there is a nature of that with the topic of prayer, but we don’t want our audience necessarily to do that today. Frame up the intention. What do we want to inspire our listenership by here today? That’s a great question. And I think part of that common reaction to prayer, kind of kick the dirt and look down, is a function of us really not understanding necessarily what prayer is, and thereby not being able to feel out if we’re doing it well, or poorly, or what’s the measuring stick, or what are we doing? 

And so, I think part of the goal today would be able to encourage folks what prayer actually is, maybe what it isn’t, and by doing that to inspire folks to lift their head and to pray and feel more confident in prayer, and maybe be able to change that natural response, which you are exactly right, we all have at the heart of the goal. 

And I love that. Joe, right out of the gate here, this is going to be a hopeful conversation regarding this very dear topic of prayer. I want to back up. Okay. You took a European vacation that looked very different than most people’s European vacations. Okay. You visited some places that most people don’t have on their top 10 lists. 

Correct. Okay. In Europe. I want to start right there, Joe. Take us to those places. And why did you go there? So, several years ago, I was wrestling through some personal things. I had a really strong sense of the darkness, the pain, the sin in the world, a very high sense of that, and also a very high sense at the time of my own inadequacy to do anything about those things. 

And I began to wrestle. How do we make up the gap between the world’s pain and darkness and sin and our inability as humans, particularly mine at the time. I felt a very keen sense of there’s no hope to make a difference in this very difficult world we live in. And so, the Lord took me through a journey. And helped me see that part of what makes up that gap is praying to the God who can come in and fill in those gaps. And in the course of that time of searching, and it wasn’t particularly a pleasant time of my life to be perfectly honest, I stumbled across a group of people who I could identify with because they were a group of people called the Moravians who were not in themselves anything to look at. 

They were refugees. And this is a historic group. Yes. 14, 1500s. Yes. Again, they were refugees, and didn’t have a lot of power or clout. So, when you connect with a refugee, you’re connecting with a person struggling with the out of placeness that they have in this kingdom. Is that a fair statement? Fair statement, as well as a lack of power, influence, ability to change things based on who they are. 

What’s interesting about this group of folks, though, is that the Holy Spirit really visited them in the early 1700s in a unique way. And when the Holy Spirit visited them, they felt compelled to pray, significantly pray. They took the Scripture verse in Thessalonians, pray without ceasing, and really took it to heart and committed to pray around the clock.  

They prayed around the clock, and what they called the hourly intercession for over a hundred years consecutively. And as a result of that so, that’s hard to get my mind around. Okay, so unpack that a little bit. Yeah. They prayed without ceasing for over a hundred years. 

Correct. Am I hearing that right? That is correct. Where they had an organized group where one would pray. And then it was a bit of a relay of prayer. Is that how it was done? That is exactly correct. Through the night, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365. And it wasn’t that large of a community. 

It wasn’t thousands and thousands of people. It was folks who were radically committed to prayer. And I think part of that commitment was a realization of the world’s need and their inadequacy. I’ve heard it said, and I do believe it’s true, that one of the biggest hindrances to prayer is not so much lack of faith, it’s self-sufficiency. 

We don’t pray because we don’t think we need to pray. But when you are a refugee and when you’re struggling with your own inadequacy, I think prayer comes a little bit easier. And so out of that sense of need and the Holy Spirit’s direction, they prayed as you described it around the clock, 24-7 for a hundred years. 

And as a result of that prayer, they sent out, this is before there were missionary societies. Yeah. They sent out hundreds of missionaries. And I could go into the detail of the Moravians, but it’s a remarkable story of people who recognize their own inadequacy and the great need. And that prayer fills that gap because God shows up in a remarkable way. 

And what ways did he show up after these hundred years? They were remarkable missionaries before there were missionary societies. They were sending out people who would sometimes sell themselves into slavery to reach slaves. They were oftentimes the first Protestant presence in any given geographic area. 

They impacted people like John Wesley. He came into contact with the Moravians and actually went to the little town where I took my European vacation, as you say, called Herrnhut, which means House of God. And he was very touched and wanted to stay there. But Count Zinzendorf, who was the leader of the Moravians, sent him back and said, no, we don’t need you here. 

Go back to the people. Remarkable group of folks, but even more remarkable Holy Spirit and God who moved them. So Herrnhut, that was the place. Yes. And that was a town? A small town that they set up as they were being chased by the church and the government. Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf gave them a little land to protect them, and they built this little town called Herrnhut. 

And so that’s the place that you were compelled to visit just to experience that location where the Spirit of God descended upon a group in 1727. Now, prayer takes many forms and purposes. Yes. Why don’t you fill out some of those details and narrow our scope a bit here today. 

The reality is you’re exactly right. Prayer takes many forms, there are prayers of praise, confession, mourning, and commissioning. When someone enters the ministry or the mission field, there is a multitude of different forms of prayer. I think where my heart was most touched and where the Moravians stood the tallest was in the intercessory prayer. 

Again, trying to stand in that gap between the world’s need and our own inadequacy. And so again, there are again, many kinds of prayer, but yes, exactly right. This is more of an intercessory kind of experience they had and what I was craving and looking for at that time. Yeah. And so, our conversation here today is going to really center around that intercessory prayer. 

Absolutely. So, let’s fill out that space a little bit. Joe, what is intercessory prayer? I would describe intercessory prayer, Matt, as going to God on behalf of someone else or on behalf of a cause or a calling or conviction. I think sometimes prayers of praise to God makes more sense to me than prayers of intercession. 

Intercessory prayer, though, is a bit of a different edifice or building, and I think requires a bit of a different foundation. Am I making sense? And I would love for you to build that foundation a bit. We are told to pray. We are commanded to pray. And the Scripture is rich with examples and even teaching that shows that in God’s economy, in some mysterious way, there’s no algorithm, there’s no formula, in God’s economy, prayer, intercessory prayer, does something in the world. 

Now, why that is or how exactly it works, I am not here to say. It’s a mystery. There’s no question in the Bible, in both its teaching and as example, God has for some reason said, when you come to me on behalf of someone or something that’s meaningful to me and meaningful to you, it somehow stirs God, compels God, comes alongside God, I’m not sure of the exact phrase, and something real happens in the world. 

That gap between the world’s need and our inadequacy is really, I don’t know how to unpack that other than to say that prayer makes a difference. It makes a difference. Absolutely. And that’s a remarkable privilege, a remarkable responsibility. Speak about that responsibility. God views it as our responsibility. I believe he absolutely does view it as our responsibility. 

And that’s why, in my humble opinion, there’s that strong command. Fulfill your responsibility. I think he calls us to fulfill our responsibilities as fathers. Yeah. I think he also calls us to fulfill our responsibilities in prayer. And I think that’s why he gives us so many powerful, almost unbelievable examples. 

Give us an example. I think of maybe 2 Chronicles chapter 20, I believe it is, where the Israelites are surrounded, and they really have no hope. And so, the king calls all of the people to come together to pray and fast together. And what I love about this particular passage is he says, I don’t just want the men to come pray. 

I want the men and women and children, and young children. So, everybody’s coming to pray. And on an aside, what’s interesting, in the Moravian hourly intercession, they also had youth come and pray as well. And I happen to believe that some of the sincerest, faith filled prayers come from younger people. 

All that’s to say, everyone came together, everyone prayed, and God delivered them in this miraculous way where he actually sent out on the front lines of the battle, the worship leaders, the song leaders, the musicians, so confident that God would deliver. And he did, because they came to him in need. They didn’t draw their bow right away. 

They knelt down and prayed, and then God stirred and moved. And so, lots of examples like that in the Bible. So, as we build this foundation of intercessory prayer, and I think you’ve started to build it to say, hey, it makes a difference. And there’s a responsibility, we have to intercede. Okay. What are some of the obstacles that we might have that work against this foundation of intercessory prayer?  

It’s a great question. God calls us to pray in faith. And sometimes we don’t have that faith. And we can pray for faith, increase our faith. That’s a great prayer. So, lack of faith is sometimes a barrier. Lack of understanding about what intercessory prayer is. Does it really make a difference? Is one that I’ve struggled with over the years. And once you cross that hurdle and you begin to say it actually does, it really opens up a lot of joy, I would say, in prayer. Some really simple practical ones, we oftentimes don’t build in enough time, and our minds are so scattered if people are like me and distracted. 

We come to prayer and it’s just hard to center and go deep with God. We’re doing a lot of small talk with God, but not like really praying. So, there’s time. And I will say this too, to your initial point, I would say guilt is actually sometimes one of the things that hinders us from prayer. 

It’s almost like we feel, well, I’ve struggled with this for long enough that really what’s the point of trying to take prayer more seriously and ask God for grace to do it. And so, we let our past struggles hinder our future opportunities with prayer. So, there’s some practical things. 

There are some more, maybe deeper spiritual things, but I would say this as a close to that question. We have an enemy of the soul who wants nothing else than to keep us from praying. Because remember, when we pray, God shows up and meets that, stands in the gap, and thwarts the work of the enemy. He’s not afraid of me. He’s not afraid of you. But he’s terrified of the Holy Spirit. He’s terrified of the God of the universe showing up. And so, he will do anything he can to keep us from prayer, whether it’s confusion, whether it’s lack of faith, whether it’s being too busy. I would even say this. Sometimes, the things that hinder us from prayer are good things. 

Family, ministry, preaching, and teaching are all really good things. But in themselves, those things don’t really scare the enemy. When God blesses those things and shows up to a humble servant praying, then there’s power, then he’s fearful, and so he will do whatever he can for the good to keep us from praying. 

So, it’s a combination of practical and spiritual warfare types of things. There are lots of reasons we don’t pray. And I’ve experienced pretty much all of them. Let’s take some of those one at a time. Joe let’s go to that spiritual realm of prayer makes a difference. Sometimes I throw my hands up. 

Okay. It’s a personal confession. I throw my hands up and said, God, do what you’re going to do. And aren’t you going to do it anyway? Type of thought. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. I can see that working against this foundation. What needs to undergird our concept of God and the way that he operates to support intercessory prayer? 

Well, I think the first thing to understand is that God is sovereign. What that doesn’t mean is that God’s going to do what God’s going to do, whether we pray or not. I think that Scripture teaches that God, in his sovereignty, in his infinite wisdom, has for some reason, in his sovereignty, chosen to be sovereign. 

To make prayer causal, or that it does something is his sovereign choice. He didn’t have to do it that way. He chose to. The way that you’ve articulated responsibility is that God is looking to us to pray in much the same way we are looking to him when we pray. Does that make sense? Yes. That’s the impression that I’ve gotten from this conversation that’s very impactful to me, that he is looking to me. 

At the end of the book of Job, where God has expressed his displeasure with Job’s friends for giving him bad information. And then God says that he doesn’t really want to judge those friends, but he says to the friends something very interesting. He says, I want you to go to Job. I want you to ask him to pray. 

When he prays, I’ll accept his prayer, and then I won’t judge you. And it’s always struck me as strange, well, if God didn’t want to judge them, why didn’t he just not judge them? Why did they have to go to Job, have him pray? God says, I’ll accept his prayer, then I won’t. There’s this sense in which God is waiting for on Job’s prayer to do the very thing he wants to do. Now, don’t ask me to explain why, but that’s just what the Bible says. Also, Samuel, as he’s talking to the people of Israel, he actually says that it’s a sin against God not to pray for the people. And that would also indicate that God’s looking to Samuel, particularly as the high priest, to really be an intercessor. 

And if he doesn’t follow through with that, it’s a sin against God because that’s what God wants him to do. So, there is a responsibility, but more than a responsibility, it’s a privilege. Yes, I think there is sin in not praying as we should, but that should not be our motivation. It’s an opportunity that God in his sovereignty has graciously, for some unknown reason, given us as these weak, frail, fallible humans, the ability to participate with him in what he’s doing in the world. 

It’s really a remarkable thing. Yeah. So, when we’re coming to God, when we’re tempted to throw our hands up, as you say, it’s a common experience, I’ve had it as well, and say, God, just do what you’re going to do anyway. I think the thing to remember in those moments is that, no, this is my responsibility to pray. 

My prayer makes a difference. The other thing I think that is a safety net is to say this, all of the world’s prayer, all of the weight of the world does not rest on your shoulders or my shoulders. We are a body. We are a community. And I’ve heard people say, when they’ve been called to pray, they’re tempted to throw their hands up. 

And perhaps they’re even throwing their hands up and say, you know, I’ve prayed, I’ve lost faith in this, I’m just going to back off and not pray. What I’ve heard one brother told me is that at that moment, he said, what remarkably happened is the brother or sister behind you in the pew, when you’ve given up and thrown your hands up, God will say, That’s okay. 

We’re human, right? Suddenly they’ll feel the call and conviction to pick up the banner and pray for that particular thing. So, it’s a joy. It’s a heavy responsibility, but it’s a joy that God has sovereignly given us a privilege to pray. We are to pray, we are to be persistent in prayer, but where we’ve come to our end, we throw up our hands to say, I don’t have the faith to pray anymore for this. 

Don’t feel like a failure. Perhaps God’s saying, hand the baton to that brother or sister behind you in the pew and let them carry the ball forward. There’s a couple of important sentiments, I think, that are weaving themselves through this conversation, okay? And that concept of corporate failure. Prayer. 

Yes. Corporate prayer when we pray together, but corporate prayer, even in our prayer closet. Yes. Really what you just exposed. Yeah. That is a reality. And that’s very much what the Moravians were doing. Exactly. Corporate prayer and prayer closets in a sense of passing that on and allowing that intercessory prayer to rest on the shoulders of the group. 

Yes. You hit a very key point. We oftentimes think of corporate prayer as being, really what we mean by that is communal prayer, where we’re praying together. And you do see no question in the early church, them coming together communally to pray. They’re in the same room, they’re praying the same thing. 

That is one aspect of corporate prayer, but you just highlighted another one, and that is to say we pass the baton. And so maybe God says to us, again, there’s no formula, there’s no algorithm. There’s nothing in the Scripture that says, pray for this for two weeks, and it doesn’t work that way. You pray as long as the Spirit leads you to pray for something. 

You pray in faith, you pray persistently, at the point at which your faith begins to wane, or you feel like, I have prayed enough on this particular thing. Trust God. Again, it doesn’t all rest on you. Trust God will lay it out to someone else’s heart, and they’ll carry it forward. And that’s corporate prayer as well. 

I’m going to hit pause on the conversation with Joe now. I hope you are, as I am starting to lift my head to this important topic of prayer. The power of a praying group is truly exciting. When we come back, we’re going to talk about what we should be praying for. What do we do with unanswered prayer? Lots more coming, and we hope that you’re with us. 

As always, we’re glad to hear from you. Reach out to us at [email protected]. Have a great day. 

All of the weight of the world does not rest on your shoulders or my shoulders. We are a body. We are a community. It’s a joy that God has sovereignly given us a privilege to pray. We are to pray. We are to be persistent in prayer, but where we’ve come to our end, don’t feel like a failure. Perhaps God’s saying, hand the baton to that brother, sister behind you in the pews. 

Welcome back to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. I’m sure you’re as anxious as I am to get back into the conversation with Brother Joe Gerber as he teaches us on intercessory prayer. Joe, in this area, again, we’re talking about making a difference and God wants us to bring these petitions to him. 

All right. For the individual, for myself, who says, I don’t even know what to pray for. Am I right to ask for this? Am I right to petition that for this group? Help us sort that out. Do we have to be right about what we pray for? It’s a great question. But I would say this, the safest way to pray is simply to pray the Scriptures. 

So, as you go through the Scriptures, we know that there are certain things unquestionably that are God’s will. It is safe, 100 percent of the time, to pray those things for really anybody you’d like. So, when I’m praying for an unconverted person, I don’t have to pray, God, if it’s your will that they be born again. You don’t need to pray that. 

In fact, you shouldn’t pray that. The Scripture says it’s God’s will. Yes. So, we can pray with great safety. So, you say, well, how do I know what to pray for? The safest thing to do is to pray the Scriptures. Very safe and very powerful. If it’s something where it’s not particularly clear in Scripture, for example, a common one is physical health. 

Someone who’s sick, you know, do we pray for healing? Do we pray that they would be maybe spiritually unharmed? Groomed by their sickness. What do we pray? Because healing is not always God’s desire, in my opinion. This side of heaven will all be healed eventually. So, what do we pray in those cases I think it’s simply a function of trusting the Spirit, asking the Holy Spirit, this person is sick. 

Should I pray for healing, or should I pray that in a situation they experience you in a new way even remaining ill? Let him guide you and then, at the end of that, even if we’re not sure, there’s this wonderful certainty in that prayer in Gethsemane where Jesus said, not my will, yours be done. 

If we’re not sure what to pray, is it valuable to stand in the gap for someone and pray that God’s will be done for that particular person? So even if you don’t know what it is, absolutely. What a great thing to pray. So safest, pray the Scriptures. Secondly, trust the Spirit. If you’re not getting clear direction, just pray consistently for God’s will to be done, whatever that may be, and stand in the gap persistently for that until he tells you to stop praying. 

And then how do we process answers, Joe? So, I’ve been praying for this. And it seems like it’s not coming into fruition. It feels like my prayers are hitting a ceiling. It feels like God is not hearing or answering. I think that probably is another obstacle that we have. Unanswered prayer, right? 

What do we make of unanswered prayer? That is a really good question. And the way I process that is this. If the Scripture is clear that this is something that God wants done say for an unbeliever. The question really isn’t, is my prayer wrong? It’s not. The question is maybe I’m to hand it off to someone else, the prayer, or maybe I’m to bring someone else alongside me, maybe a few more folks praying. 

Again, there’s no algorithm or formula, but if we know it’s God’s will and it’s not coming to fruition, I think we are called to persist. I don’t think there’s any option to give up in Scripture. I think of Luke 18, I believe it is, where he says, keep praying and don’t give up. Now again, that’s if we know it’s God’s will. 

For an unbeliever, for example. Maybe the call is to get a few more folks involved. If it’s for something like physical healing, or maybe something where we’re praying for something that we’re not just quite sure what God wants to do, and it’s unanswered prayer. I would say this, perhaps maybe God wants you to pray for something different. 

I do think there’s also a reality in Scripture that says your prayers are being heard, they’re being responded to, they’re being answered, but the timing just hasn’t come to pass yet. I think of the example in Daniel where Daniel has been praying for an answer. God says, actually, then the angel comes and gives him the answer, but the angel says, I was bringing you this answer, but in the spiritual realm, I was held up. 

So, that’s why I think probably persistence is one of the key elements of successful prayer, fruitful prayer. So, unanswered prayer is a mystery. And I would say this. There was an author I was reading, and he made a very good point. He said this, based on the Scriptures, unanswered prayer should be a mystery and it ought to bother us. 

In other words, because you’re taking it seriously and you’re taking God at his word. It should cause us consternation. And maybe we’ll never have the answer to the question, but we should be saying, God, in your Word, you said these things. I’m praying for these things. It hasn’t come to pass.  

The worst thing we can do is just write off prayer. Okay. And see, now that’s helpful, Joe, because as I kick the dirt and look down, I’m struggling with that. But what you have just given me permission to do is struggle with it. Yes. It’s okay. So, how’s the prayer life going? 

I’m struggling with it. But as you mentioned, the Moravians. From those wee hours in the morning, that’s where it must have sounded like silence. No question. And then, in a hundred years of faithful prayer, we can see that God was faithful to every single moment of prayer that community engaged in. 

Yeah, there’s a term in the Scriptures, it talks about wrestling in prayer, contending in prayer. And I think if we take prayer seriously, as Scripture calls us to, we acknowledge we live in a spiritual world with spiritual opposition, we have barriers, prayer will oftentimes feel like a struggle. Like a wrestling match. 

Like we’re contending. It’s work in many respects. That’s a natural good thing. And sometimes we’ll come and our prayers, we believe they’re filled with faith, we’ve been persistent and it’s just not happening. That’s a natural occurrence. I shouldn’t necessarily reflect on my prayer life that since it’s not easy, I must be bad at it. 

Or since it’s not easy, I must not have the gift for prayer. Quite frankly, I would suggest that if your prayer life is easy, smooth, think about a lazy river, maybe you’re not praying correctly, if it’s easy. Because prayer, again, you are going against the spiritual realities, you are trying to stand in the gap for the world’s need. 

That’s a good thing. Good thing to struggle and wrestle and comment on that. What you just said is it’s engaging with the spiritual. This is a very spiritual endeavor. Yes. We live in a culture and in a climate that’s very anti-spiritual. And what I mean by that is we have our reasons for the way everything happens and it’s not mystical, but prayer is very mystical. 

We have been taught from our youth, and it’s not all bad. That if we can’t taste it, touch it, smell it, see it, or hear it, it’s probably not real. And it’s certainly not important. And unfortunately, we, particularly here in Western culture, we’ve just subconsciously absorbed that thinking. And it runs counter to prayer. 

Absolutely runs counter to prayer. And it’s hard for us, it’s hard for me to admit that prayer is not an algorithm or a formula. I wish at the back of Scripture, after Revelation, there was an addendum, here are the recipes, here’s the formula, here’s the algorithm for how you get prayer to work. There are no recipes, no simple formulas. 

We simply have patterns that in a mysterious way, let’s be honest, prayer is a mystery. Why does God care what Joe or Matt prays? Why does God care what we pray? I don’t know. It is a mystery. We act in faith. And that pushes against so much of who we are. It will be work. There will be wrestling. There will be contending. 

But I can guarantee you that somehow, some way, what you are praying is making a difference. And far more than not, I believe the problem isn’t that we’ve prayed and not seen God work, it’s that maybe we aren’t even praying big enough prayers. The bigger risk in my mind is not that God’s not going to show up, it’s that we’re not asking him for enough based on who he is. 

That’s just my personal intuition, I could be wrong about that, but I think we do leave a lot on the table because we weren’t rational. A’s before B’s before C, and it’s just not how God works. As I introspect in my own heart, I’m afraid to put my faith there for fear it might be wounded. I’m afraid. 

Does that make sense? Sometimes the smallness of our prayers is actually a mechanism for us to protect God from losing credibility in our eyes. So, we don’t ask him for great things, thinking, well, if he doesn’t show up, then I will think less of him. But if we do trust him and accept the nos and accept the uncertainty and accept the wrestling and the struggle as a natural part of the process of intercessory prayer, suddenly the world becomes a joy. 

There’s not a weight or a burden, and it becomes an opportunity. It makes an opportunity. Joe let’s go now to the practical, because that has some obstacles. You mentioned time, and I know there’s more than time, but help us think outside the box with practicality of prayer. Well, I think this is fairly common. 

I don’t know if it would have been common 20 years ago, but for me, having a focused purpose in prayer helps. And what helps with that focused purpose, so that my mind’s not scattered, if we only have, let’s say 10 minutes, I say only, 10 minutes is 10 minutes, but if we spend seven of those 10 minutes with our minds scattered and not focused, it’s not really an effective prayer. 

One thing practically that has helped is simply a list or coming with something very specific so you can get right down to it with God. Now again, intercessory prayer should just be one part of our prayer life. If we’re just always interceding, we’re never praising, confessing, and so forth. 

That’s not particularly healthy. But when it comes to intercession, I think being focused, even if you want to write out a list, you know what the needs are, you can come boldly and quickly and focused with God. I think lists are helpful. At least I have found them to be. Another simple thing is if we’re going to have limited time with God, make it the best time. 

Let’s not give him the time when we’re the most tired or distracted. Let’s find the time where we’re locked in, maybe it’s before lunch or whatever it may be, and give him the best time, the first fruits of our time to pray. Accountability partners are helpful. Knowing that someone else is praying the same things you’re praying, whether it’s a spouse or a friend, they can ask you, have you prayed for this request? 

You know, I’ve kind of not this week. It’s just that accountability helps. I think having rhythms of prayer is important. So, finding again, that first fruits of time and also our physical posture, our physical location. So, if I’m kneeling by my bed, it’s dark, my head’s by a soft pillow, I’m oftentimes going to fall asleep. 

I personally find that walking. So, when I go for a walk, I’m alert. I learn the best when I’m walking. That’s a great time to pray. So, find not just the first fruits of time, maybe a list, but find the best physical posture or the best physical place to pray. If a book or reading a book stirs you to think about prayer, or maybe listening to a song that really affirms faith, and then we come and we pray in faith, lots of things can be done to make our prayer time rich and really enjoyable. 

Yeah. Joe, we started with the Moravians. And if I understand it right, they were kind of out of sorts there at their onset. Absolutely. Within five years, they were fussing and fighting and arguing with each other and nearly fractured. So, they were dismantling. Yes. And then God laid on their heart, prayer. 

Exactly. And they engaged in this culture of prayer. As a community and the fruit of that is still giving fruit today. Yes. Okay. So huge explosion in God’s Spirit on this world, doing just exactly what you said, bridging the gap, give us a vision, Joe, what might it look like if we, as a people, embraced such a culture of prayer and prayed in a manner, a fervent intercessory prayer. 

What’s at stake in today’s culture? What’s at stake in our denomination? What’s at stake in our families and in our culture? Well, I think everything’s at stake, quite frankly. And I think that it’s my personal belief that there are a number of similarities between the Moravians in their early days, and even how we as a denomination operate, very communal, they were actually agrarian. 

You know, we’re still fairly agrarian. That’s not much of what we used to be. They were not seminary trained, deep thinkers, people who just loved the Lord, yet were struggling a little bit. And then the Holy Spirit got hold of them and then launched this culture of prayer. What would that look like for us? 

I think it would simply be that we still move denominationally. If we were to say, again, our small part of the kingdom, we are going to water and nurture our church life, our personal life, our family life with prayer, committed, accountable prayer. And we’re all doing this. We’re all moving together. 

Culture is an incredibly powerful force for good. And in this particular instance, if we as a denomination begin to embrace prayer as a culture, praying for missionaries, praying for the lost, praying for cultural renewal in our country, in our world, praying for the gospel to go where it hasn’t gone before, any time that has ever happened in history. 

It is required a time of fervent prayer before it happens. Again, God waits for the prayer of Job, accepts it, and then he acts. What if God were calling us as a denomination or a local church or a family to pray for a particular people group that doesn’t have the gospel? What if we prayed, all 10, 000 of us together for a particular people group? 

Could we see a breakthrough? I think we absolutely would. But it’s just that cultural commitment to doing that, to valuing that. I also think that we as a denomination have a real respect, a good respect, for the power of the Spirit. We want our preaching to be Spirit inspired, whatever that may look like. 

We want him to speak. We want the Spirit. And that’s a key part of the recipe for seeing him move, to have him, to want him. And so, I sense a real respect for the Spirit’s working in people’s lives that’s very healthy and somewhat unique in today’s world that could also be used by the Spirit to call us to a culture of prayer. 

It’s powerful. It’s not impossible to see it. You know what, Joe, what I really love about all of this is a lot of what’s been shared here today is completely within grasp. It’s about not necessarily understanding it but being faithful. Yes. It’s about believing God. It’s about wrestling with it. It’s about sharing the burden with each other. 

It’s about engaging the community together in prayer. Jesus tells us to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. If you think about that, we talked about the gap. You think about the gap between what God wants as he reigns as king in heaven and what’s happening here. There’s a big gap. 

And he says, pray thy will be done, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And when we pray individually, in our prayer closet, communally, when we hand that baton, in some mysterious way, God releases his power, his provision, all those things that reside up in the Kingdom of Heaven, and he brings them here through prayer. 

And that has been consistent. You look at the great evangelists, many of them I’ve come to discover, to my delight, think of prayer as a conduit, and they will say things like when we pray and take God seriously, remarkable things happen. Maybe not right away, but remarkable things will happen. 

Do we want to see them or not? That’s the question. Yeah. Joe, we live in exciting times. And for our denomination, HarvestCall is right now moving in many places, and they have seen a great need for our church community to pray. They have. They see it as a requirement for the work that they’re being asked to do. 

And it’s not just HarvestCall. It’s our pulpits. Correct. And it’s our Sunday Schools. And it’s this agency. It’s Gateway Woods and it’s Life Points and it’s all that we do in touch. And the many parachurch organizations that are an outgrowth of that, right? We’ve articulated it well. One of their core values is that they will submit to the Lord’s direction and seek His guidance in accordance with God’s Word with prayer and fasting. 

That goes first and foremost for their own board, their own staff, but also then it’s a call to prayer for their whole denomination. And so, what they are hoping to do is catalyze a culture of prayer. And so, they have requested this particular podcast, some other resources to just get our hearts stirred in a way that would release the kind of prayer that can change the world. 

That’s really what they’re looking for. There are lots of resources, lots of good Bible studies on this podcast, but they’re just looking for people to take prayer seriously because they know that advances their work as well as all the other organizations you shared. It’s a call to God’s people to pray. 

Yeah. Awesome. So, Joe, have you crunched the numbers? I have crunched the numbers. If we wanted to pray without ceasing, as a community, not as an individual, it would only take 730 people to commit to praying one hour per month to allow us to be able to pray around the clock, all year long, without ceasing for HarvestCall, for Gateway Woods. 

I mean, think about house parents knowing they’re being prayed for. All the time. Yeah. Remarkable opportunity. Remarkable. Thanks so much, Joe. Again, not too far out of reach, which is so much like the character of God, isn’t it? He’s so expansive and yet he makes himself accessible in real ways. Thanks for being on. 

My pleasure. Thanks, Matt.