A Reflection on Prayer on this Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem

“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
    and security within your citadels.’
For the sake of my family and friends,
    I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’ ”

(Psalm 122:6-8, NIV)

Recently, I listened to Dr. David Platt on YouTube preaching about, "The Role of Desperate Prayer in Relenting Wrath.” The sermon challenged me to think about prayer in a different way. Platt tackled God's relenting of wrath based on the intercession of Moses in Exodus 32.

We often wonder why we should pray when God already knows what we need or what is going to happen. Platt’s definition of prayer sheds light on this matter. “God, in His providence,” Platt underscored, “has ordained prayer as a powerful means by which we interact with Him and effectively shape the course of history.” Prayer should not, therefore, be a formality but rather a relentless reality in our lives (c.f. 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “pray continually.”)

If we want God to work in and through us, we must make prayer a priority in our lives. Believers in the Early Church and Moses in the Old Testament, especially in the relentless way he interceded for the children of Israel in Exodus 32, are examples as far as prayer is concerned. David Platt mentioned that every major move of God in the book of Acts came in response to the prayer of God’s people. Some of the examples of the Power of Prayer in the book of Acts are:

1.       Acts 1—the church numbering 120 devoted themselves to prayer as they waited for the Promise of the Father.

2.       Acts 2—the Holy Spirit empowered all those who were in the Upper Room, and 3000 souls were saved and baptized in response to Peter’s message. What an amazing power in response to the prayer of the saints!

3.       Acts 3—Peter and John went to pray in the synagogue and on their way there, they met a lame man. The power of prayer healed the lame man and brought glory to God.

4.       Acts 4—the number of those who got saved increased greatly because of the prayer and the witness of the Early Church, etc.

Moses as a mediator or go-between between God and the children of Israel, pleaded for God’s mercy, God’s power and God’s glory. He knew that it was only through prayer that God’s work could be accomplished. Of course, God can accomplish His work without the prayers of His people, but what we see in Scripture is that “God wills to work through willing intercessors [like Moses]” (David Platt). We must therefore be on guard against complacency, and the habit of sitting, watching and doing nothing. Instead, we should shape history through prayer. We must at all times be about the Master’s business and we must P.U.S.H. (pray until something happens).

There is so much power in prayer and we often don’t have it, as well as God’s peace, because we don’t pray in the right way. We often pray amiss as the book of James puts it: “When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:3). We must learn how to pray and intercede for others from the examples of the Early Church and from that of Moses.

The church today has tended to depend more and more on natural ability and human ingenuity but if we want to change that, we must choose to depend on God's power. Our intercessory prayers for the lost and for God’s work in general will demonstrate our dependence on Him. Our constant prayer must be, “I need Thee, every hour, most gracious Lord.”