"The Tragedy Of Prayerlessness"

Hi there, this is Lon Solomon and I'd like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor that God has given us to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truth of God's Word as it is uncompromising and straightforward. And I'm so glad you've tuned in to listen and be part of that.

Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio. And now, let's get to the Word of God. I believe that we as 20th century Christians have lost our awareness of how potent prayer is. And that's a tragedy. I believe that we've lost our grasp on how God honors prayer. And that's a tragedy. That we've lost our grasp on how God alters the events of the world and does majestic things in response to prayer. And that's a tragedy. And this morning what I want to try to do is to convince you of the power and the importance of prayer and then to motivate you and me to do a deeper and more thorough job of spending some time in prayer every single day.

So let's see if we can do that together. We're going to look at a passage here from the life of the Old Testament man of God, Samuel. Let me give you a little background. Remember, Samuel had been leading Israel for his whole life. Now he was about ready to die and Israel had come to him and said, Samuel, we need a permanent leader. We need a king.

And so in response, God had anointed a king, the King Saul. But here in the chapter, if you read it, and I'm not going to read it, but I'll summarize it. Samuel gives a little speech and here's what he says to the nation.

He said, you know, you guys miss the whole point. You guys have dealt with the symptom rather than the problem. You think you need a permanent king, but the problem is you've always had a permanent king. God has been your permanent king.

And he goes on to say, whenever you've called on God, God has always come through for you. No, he said, the problem isn't that you needed a king you could see. The problem is you weren't loyal and faithful to the king that you had. So by asking for a human king, you didn't really deal with the problem.

You just dealt with the symptom, fellas. And you insulted God. You implied that God wasn't good enough. God wasn't powerful enough.

You insulted God in the process. Now when he's done, this is what happens. Verse 19. Then the people all said to Samuel, Samuel, pray to the Lord your God for us that we will not die.

For now we understand that we have added to all of our other sins, the sin, the evil of asking for a king. And Samuel said to them, don't be afraid. You have done all this evil that you say, but if you come back to the Lord, if you won't turn away from the Lord, if you'll serve him with all of your heart, he's not going to kill you.

He's not going to wipe you out. Verse 22. For the sake of his great name the Lord will not reject his people because the Lord was pleased to make you his own. What does Samuel really say to them? He says, look, gang, you need to understand that in spite of all the wrong that you've done, God is the God of the second chance and the third chance and the 50th chance. And if you'll turn back to God and if you'll tell him what you did wrong and if your heart can be broken over what you did wrong and if you'll be true to him and loyal to him, God will take you right from where you are now and God will restore you and God will redeem you and God will provide for you.

God is the God of the second chance. I want to take a moment and say that if you're here today and you feel like you've made some horrible mistake, mistakes because of which you're sure that you and God are separated forever and there'll just never be a time where you and God will ever be like you used to be, I want you to listen to what Samuel says here. Samuel says that's not true. Samuel says that God is a God of the open arms and if we'll come to God with humility and with brokenness of heart over things that we've done, God will take us in his arms, he'll forgive us and he'll restore to us the years the locusts have eaten in our lives. If you're here today and you've never trusted Christ in a real and personal way and you feel like your life is just like a locust plague that has just been eaten up, Samuel says, hey, God's there with his open arms ready to restore to you those years if you'll just give him the chance and I hope you will.

Something to think about. Well, now Samuel goes on to say what I think is an incredible thing. Look at verse 23. Remember the people came and said, Samuel, pray for us.

Here's what he says. Verse 23, as for me, he says, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. I don't know about you, but that's an amazing statement. Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. Would you notice that Samuel calls prayerlessness sin? He doesn't call it just an oversight.

He doesn't call it just a careless omission. He doesn't see it as just letting the people down. He sees it as spiritual failure. He refers to it as spiritual tragedy that he would fail to be a man of prayer for the people of Israel. I don't know of many people in the world who refer to prayerlessness as a sin against the Lord, but this is how Samuel did.

This is how he saw it. Now that's the end of the passage that we're going to work through so far this morning, but it leads us to ask the really important question, and what's that question? I've been a pastor now for almost 20 years, and you know, when I talk to people, let me tell you the impression that I get from people so often. I get the impression that when people open the Bible and they read about the great men and women of God in the Bible, people like Samuel and Moses and Abraham and Ruth, I think that we as Christians have the idea that they were just born as great men and women of God, that they're made out of different protoplasm than you and I are, and that they just kind of walked a different road than you and I walk.

And folks, the answer is that's absolutely not true. If we want some insight as to what made the difference between these men and women of God and the rest of the world, Samuel gives it to us right here in 1 Samuel 12. Samuel tells us that he was a mighty man of prayer, and what led to him being a mighty man of God was that he was a mighty man of prayer.

He reminds me of another guy in the Bible, a guy named Daniel. If you remember, Daniel was the prime minister of the entire Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great. The Persian Empire stretched in today's terms from what would be Tibet to what's Turkey. I mean, it was an enormous empire.

He was the prime minister of this empire. I'm sure he had a crowded schedule. I'm sure his date book was full. If he had had Newton, I'm sure it would have been full.

You know what I'm saying? And yet here was a man who, in spite of the demands on his time, who in spite of the pressures of being a busy executive, Daniel chapter 6 verse 10 tells us that he still found time. He didn't find it. He made time to three times a day go into his private quarters, drop onto his knees, and seek the face of God in prayer. Folks, if you want to know where the great consistency in this man's life came from, I'll tell you where you can find it. Take a look at him spending three times a day on his knees in prayer. If you want to know where his great wisdom and discernment came from, it came from three times a day on his knees in prayer. If you want to know where his great personal integrity came from, it came from three times a day on his knees in prayer. If you want to know where his courage to go into the lion's den with nothing but his faith in God to protect him came from, it came from three times on his knees a day in prayer. Now lots of us as Christians know what it is to do crisis praying. Oh God, you know I'll be a missionary if you'll just get me out of this, God.

You know, that kind of stuff. Is there anything wrong with crisis praying? No, if you got a crisis, you better pray.

That's good. But you see, Samuel and Daniel and the great men and women of God understood that there was much more to prayer than just crisis praying. That there were more compelling reasons and deeper reasons to pray than just because there's a crisis in your life. And it was because they understood these deeper reasons for praying that they became the men and women of God that they did. So I want to take the last little bit of time I've got and talk to you about what are some of these deeper, more compelling reasons that you and I ought to have a serious prayer life. I've got five to give you.

Write them down. Here we go. Purpose or reason number one is that prayer is how we build intimacy with God. You know, in any relationship, a marriage, a dating relationship, being friends, whatever. In any human relationship, what builds intimacy into that relationship is consistent, regular, honest communication. And folks, the same is true in our relationship with God. What builds intimacy between us and God is consistent, regular, honest communication. Prayer defined as simply as you can define it is simply communicating with God. And if you and I want to be men and women of God, we've got to have intimacy with God and the only way you and I get it is in prayer.

You can't get intimacy with God through a book. You get it in communication through prayer. Number two, the reason that we should look deeper in terms of our prayer life, number two is because prayer brings perspective to the situations of life. You want to know how to keep from making dumb mistakes in life, stupid decisions in life. Let me give you a piece of advice as a Christian.

Learn to pray about those things before you do them. Because prayer brings perspective to the decisions of life. Then the question occurred to me, well, Lon, how come you make some of the dumb choices you make? And how come you out there make some of the stupid choices you make? It's all the same reason.

I'll tell you what it is. It's because we lose perspective. We get so close to the situation, we lose our focus. We can't see the forest for the trees. So how can you and I as Christians keep this from happening to us? Well, the answer is prayer. Prayer restores perspective. Prayer is like a spiritual helicopter where we can rise up above the situation and we can see the whole forest and not just the trees and where we can ask ourselves important questions and let God talk to us about important questions like what is the price you're going to have to pay to do this? What are the consequences you're going to have to live with?

Do you really want to do something this stupid? You know, Psalm 32 says this, verse 8. God says in Psalm 32, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.

I will counsel you and watch over you. Where does that happen? It happens in prayer. How do you keep from stepping on alligators in life as Christians, and making dumb and destructive decisions? One of the ways is by being a person that takes these things to God in prayer. Prayer brings perspective to the issues of life.

Number three. Reason number three that prayer is so important for us is that prayer fortifies us to stand firm for God. I'm sure you realize that ours is not an easy world in which to live for God. It's not an easy world in which to stand for God.

But you know what? The world never has been an easy place to live for God and stand for God. I want you to turn back in the Bible to Acts chapter four.

And while you're turning, let me give you the background. The early churches started, the early disciples, Peter and James and John are out preaching in the streets and telling people about Christ just the way Jesus told them to do, and they get arrested. And the people who arrest them were the very same people who killed Jesus, the chief leaders of Israel. And they say to them, fellas, this has got to stop.

You understand? Look at this chapter four of the book of Acts. Look with me at verse 18. And then they the chief priests called them the disciples in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

Verse 21. And after further threatening them, they let them go. Should the disciples have had reason to fear these guys? Well, they just got through killing Jesus about three weeks before. I'd say there's reason to worry about these guys if they say, Remember what we did to Jesus? We're gonna do the same thing to you, friend, if you don't stop preaching out in the street. Was there reason to be concerned?

I would think so. Well, how did they handle it? You know, they didn't stop preaching in the streets. You know, they didn't stop standing up for Christ.

Where did they get the courage? Where did they get the fortitude to go on for God in the face of this kind of threat? Watch verse 23.

And on their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. Verse 24. And when they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God.

And verse 31. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. Where are you and I going to get the strength and the fortitude to stand for God the way we need to in our world to stand for ethics and to stand for decency and to stand for morality and to stand for the truth of the gospel? We're going to get it from the same place these guys got it from. They got it on their knees from the Spirit of God, strengthening their life and giving them the courage they needed to stand for God. That's where you'll find it.

Number four. Reason why we should pray is that prayer changes things around us. It's a simple formula. We pray, and God moves the world in response.

It's pretty simple. And yet, do we really believe that God does this? There was a fascinating article in Time Magazine last year called Faith and Healing. I don't know if you read it, but the article asked the question, can prayer and faith really make a difference in your physical health? And here's the answer they give, a growing and surprising body of scientific evidence says yes. And then the article went on to cite a number of medical studies presented to suggest that there is an innate independent power to prayer that defies any and all explanation except that there's a supernatural God answering prayer. The study that I love the best is the one done in 1988, which is cited in the article by Dr. Randolph Byrd of San Francisco General Hospital. He's a cardiologist.

Here's what he did. He had 393 coronary care patients, most of whom had either had heart attacks or heart surgery. He divided them into two groups randomly, and without telling the patients they had no idea this was happening, he gave the names of half of the group to born-again Christians in the Bay Area to pray by name for these patients. The other half of the patients had nobody pray for them.

At the end of two years, here's what he found. Listen, he found, quoting from the article, that the unprayed-for patients were five times more likely to have needed antibiotics, three times more likely to have developed complications or needed further surgery, and that the unprayed-for patients recovered significantly slower than the prayed-for patients. And not a single patient even knew this was going on.

So forget the placebo effect. Now, as you can imagine, he published this in a journal of medicine. As you can imagine, this has caused some significant angst in the medical community. But this shouldn't cause any angst for us as Christians. We ought to believe this. This should be no problem for us to accept. Doesn't God say, call on me and I'll do stuff for you. You can't even believe.

So why does this surprise us? And if you've got circumstances in your life that you're not real excited about and you'd like to see God move in them, let me tell you how to get him to move. You won't get it by whining and crying and complaining.

You'll get it by praying and laying that situation at the feet of God. Praying changes situations around us. Reason number five that you and I should be compelled to pray is that praying not only changes things around us, but prayer changes us. See, I think there's a lot of us as Christians who think the highest reason for praying is to change the circumstances around us.

That's wrong. The highest reason for praying is to change us. I think of Jesus when he went into the garden at Gethsemane. Remember the story right before the cross? The Bible says, how did he go into the garden? He went into the garden how?

In anguish and distressed. And the Bible says he came out of the garden a few minutes later resolute, firm, calm and determined. Why was he in anguish of soul? Why was he distressed and upset when he went into the garden? Well, it's because in his human nature, Jesus knew the cross was right in front of him. And in his human nature, he didn't want to go to the cross. And yet when he came out of the garden, something had happened. And never again was there even a peep that he uttered. He went to the cross firm, resolute, calm, and gave his life for our sins. Now what happened in the garden that changed his whole perspective on the will of God for his life? You say, well, he attended a seminar.

No, there was no seminar in the garden. Oh, he read a book? No. Chuck Swindoll was there and preached a great message to him? No. Billy Graham?

No. Folks, he didn't hear a sermon. He didn't listen to a tape. He didn't read a book.

He didn't go to a seminar. Jesus only did one thing in the garden. What did he do? He prayed.

That's all he did. And he said, Father, you need to change me from the inside out on this issue of the cross. And God did it. You know, the greatest problem I face in my life is the gap problem, G-A-P. Say, what is the gap problem? Well, the gap problem is the gap between what I know God wants me to be and what I am.

There's a huge gap there. And you know, I've been reading the Bible for 26 years now. I've got a pretty good handle on what God wants me to be.

That's not the problem anymore. The problem is how do I get to be what God wants me to be? How do I bridge that gap?

And what I have learned is that seminars are good and books are good and sermons are good. But none of those things will bridge the gap in my life. None of those things will change my values, my behavior, my heart, my world view and bring those into alignment with the will of God for my life. Only prayer.

The Holy Spirit working in my life because I'm on my knees praying about these things. That's what closes the gap. And you know what? I'll bet you you got a gap too if you're a Christian in your life. How are you going to close it? Well, how did Jesus close it? He did it by prayer. And God has given you and me the very same mechanism to use in our lives to bring us into alignment with the will of God just like it worked in Jesus' life.

Here's the key point. Prayer not only changes things, prayer changes us from the inside out. And I love what Studdard Kennedy, the great preacher said. He said, prayer is not an easy way of getting what we want, but rather it's the only way of becoming what God wants us to be. Prayer is not an easy way of getting what we want, it's the mechanism that helps us become what God wants us to be. And unless your praying has reached that level, you have not plumbed the depths of prayer yet. Until it gets to the place where you're praying about God changing you, then you've still got to drive deeper because there's more there for you. Why do we pray?

Let me summarize. One, because prayer is how we build intimacy with God. Two, because prayer brings perspective to the situations of life and it keeps us from doing stupid things. Number three, because prayer brings the courage to our lives that we need to stand firm for God. Four, because prayer can change things around us.

And five, because prayer changes me. Prayer changes me. And if you want to be a giant in your Christian life, let me tell you how to be one. It's the same way Samuel became one.

It's the same way Daniel became one. It's by becoming a giant in your prayer life. Now I would suspect every one of us here who's a Christian would agree we don't pray enough. I've never met a Christian who says, oh yeah, my prayer life's totally what it ought to be. At least I've never met one.

Maybe there are some. So here's what I want to challenge you to do today. I want to challenge you for ten minutes.

Ten minutes. If you don't pray at all, I want to challenge you to make a commitment to God. You're going to start praying ten minutes a day. You say, that's not very much. I know, but you'll be amazed what God will do in your life if you just give him ten minutes.

You won't believe it. And if you already pray some every day, I want to challenge you to give God ten more. That's my challenge. And let God do what He says. Call to me, and what did He say? I'll answer.

Give Him a chance to do it and show you what He's capable of in your life. Let's bow our heads together. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, just before we are dismissed, I want to give you a chance to make that commitment to God if you want to. And so if you're willing to say, God, I'm going to commit to ten minutes a day of secret, private, focused prayer.

Or if I'm already praying, I'm going to commit to ten minutes more. And I mean it, God, starting tomorrow morning. And I want you to change my life because of this commitment. If you're willing to do that, then with our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I just simply would like you to stick your hand up and say, God, I mean it. I'm going to do it.

Anybody want to do that? Thank you, God bless you. Lord, for the folks who've raised their hand, and for others who maybe have made this commitment or will make it but didn't raise their hand, I want to pray that you would honor what they've done here. And I want to pray that you would move so magnificently in their lives that they will not be able to believe what ten minutes a day has produced. So, Lord, shock us with what you're going to do with ten minutes a day and motivate us to want to even spend more time seeking your face in prayer.

Lord, change us into the people you want us to be. And do all these other things that we've talked about prayer doing. We commit ourselves to you, Lord. May we look back on the commitment we made here today as one of the most life-changing things we have ever done because of the way you're going to move in our lives. We thank you in advance for that.

In Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to So What with Dr. Lon Solomon. So What is an outreach of Lon Solomon Ministries. To listen to today's message or for more information, visit our website, lonsolomonministries.org. Thank you for your support. If you would like to contact us, please visit our website or call us at 866-788-7770. We hope you will join us next time when Lon seeks to answer one of life's most important questions, So What.