The Necessity of Prayer

 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. [John 17:16-17]

"We see that nothing is set before us as an object of expectation from the Lord which we are not enjoined to ask of Him in prayer, so true it is that prayer digs up those treasures which the Gospel of our Lord discovers to the eye of faith. The necessity and utility of this exercise of prayer no words can sufficiently express." John Calvin

 John Wesley once remarked that “God does nothing but by prayer, and everything with it.” If Wesley is right, that is an incredible statement. Think of it. All of the blessings God would pour out in our lives, our families and our world come only as we pray. If we don’t pray, things that God would do he doesn’t because we don’t pray. Billy Graham said it like this: “Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.”

"We must not become, as John Stott puts it, “a rabbit hole Christian,” the kind who pops his head out of a hole, leaves his Christian roommate in the morning and scurries to class, only to frantically search for a Christian to sit by [an odd way to approach a mission field]. Thus he proceeds from class to class. When dinner comes, he sits with the Christians in his dorm at one huge table and thinks, “What a witness!” From there he goes to his all-Christian Bible study, and he might even catch a prayer meeting where the Christians pray for non-believers on his floor. [By what luck that he was able to live on the only floor with seventeen Christians!] Then at night he scurries back to his Christian roommate. Safe! He made it through the day and his only contacts with the world were those mad, brave dashes to and from Christian activities." Rebecca Manley Pippert

"My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it." John 17:15-16

Ray Stedman used to quip, “There are two kinds of people in the world: Those that divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.” I fall into the former. There are two kinds of people: Believers and non-believers, and the difference between the two could not be more profound. Believers are called by God. Believers are children of God. Believers know God. Believers hear God, serve God, please God and love God. Jesus said it like this:  “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”  Although our feet are on the earth, our hearts are in heaven.

“Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the godly; there is no mirth like the mirth of believers.” Richard Baxter.

"I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.” John 17:13-14

I have always known I was different. [No comments necessary, please.] First, I grew up in a Pentecostal Preachers home. Preachers were different. They represented GOD-ah! I was a preacher’s son, so was expected to be different, a little more pious than the rest of my friends, which my Mom never let me forget. We lived in a fish bowl of sorts for my Dad’s profession was our life! If my father got voted out, I lost my home, my church family and all my friends. Our church was Pentecostal, considered a little bit on the fringe- loud at times, strange at times, but always interesting. I was also a Christian, which meant I could not “drink, dance or chew or go with the girls that do.” It was something my fellow jocks loved to make fun of in the locker room.   

“We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power of the Twentieth century does not reckon with. But we are ‘harmless’ and therefore unharmed. We are pacifist, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the–death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the cross. We are ‘sideliners’- coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!”

"I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name — the name you gave me — so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled." John 17:11-12