Prayer E-Book

John Onwuchekwa

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Building Healthy Churches
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 162

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

What is the role of corporate prayer in the church? Prayer is as necessary to the Christian as breathing is to the human body— but it often doesn't come quite as naturally. In fact, prayer in the church often gets subtly pushed to the side in favor of pragmatic practices that promise tangible results. This book focuses on the necessity of regular prayer as a central practice in the local church—awakening us to the need and blessing of corporate prayer by examining what Jesus taught about prayer, how the first Christians approached prayer, and how to prioritize prayer in our congregations.

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“I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book on prayer that left me feeling the entire range of human emotion—until reading John Onwuchekwa’s Prayer. Here is a human book—beautiful, poignant, funny, gritty, and pastoral. This book is better than a correction to our often languid prayer lives. There’s no guilt-based manipulation. Onwuchekwa writes like a fellow traveler, and as a fellow traveler knows what travelers need most: refreshment. Here’s a thirst-quenching encouragement to join together in seeking our great God. I pray every church reads Prayer together; it will change our congregations. Here’s a warm invitation to the entire church, beckoning the people of God to the wonders of prayer.”

Thabiti Anyabwile, Pastor, Anacostia River Church, Washington, DC; author, What Is a Healthy Church Member?

“Prayer is an excellent book by my dear friend John Onwuchekwa. It is biblically and theologically rich. It is also real and honest. Want to get a corporate prayer meeting started in your church? This book is a very good start.”

Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Everyone remembers that auntie or uncle who hushed our fears with the words, ‘Baby, we just gon’ pray on that.’ John Onwuchekwa is that voice for today, calling the church back to one of the simplest and most powerful tools in her arsenal—the habit of communal prayer. He doesn’t merely want to reawaken our atrophied prayer muscles; he invites us into the much harder work of reorienting our priorities so that they’re more in line with God’s. Onwuchekwa’s call to return to such ‘first things’ is an excellent start to seeing Christian communities moving in the same kingdom direction.”

K. A. Ellis, Cannada Fellow for World Christianity, Reformed Theological Seminary

“There’s likely something missing in your church, something you haven’t thought much of and likely haven’t even noticed. It’s prayer. Onwuchekwa shares compelling, insightful, and biblical reasons why corporate prayer should be a priority for the church. What a privilege it is to pray together as a family—this is the vision Onwuchekwa casts for us. This book has the potential to transform not only individuals, but also our relationships and the culture in our churches. I highly recommend it.”

Trillia Newbell, author, God’s Very Good Idea; Enjoy; and Fear and Faith

“The early church moved forward in power because they were a praying church (Acts 4:31). If we today are so proficient at ministry mechanics that we can succeed without power from on high, we have failed. But if our churches today will heed this compelling call to prayer by John Onwuchekwa, we too will prevail against all earthly powers, for God’s glory!”

Ray Ortlund, Lead Pastor, Immanuel Church, Nashville, Tennessee

“This is a thought-provoking book about the life of prayer in the local church. Onwuchekwa builds a theological framework and then gives tangible and practical solutions for fleshing it out. I’ve had the privilege of working with John over the last decade, and I’ve seen no one better able to take lofty concepts and present them in a way that is palatable for the body of Christ. This book is an outworking of his gift. He takes biblical principles and communicates them in an effective way. His work on this subject is a gift to the church.”

Dhati Lewis, Lead Pastor, Blueprint Church, Atlanta, Georgia; Executive Director of Community Restoration, North American Mission Board; author, Among Wolves: Disciple-Making in the City

“What more could be needed by our churches than a revival of gospel-centered spirituality? And what more could we do to experience this revival than to recommit to nourishing communion with our Father through prayer? This is why I’m thankful for this exceptional book by John Onwuchekwa. It is an accessible, practical, and relatable guide to the depths of the enormous, glorious privilege of speaking to the God of the universe.”

Jared C. Wilson, Director of Content Strategy, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Director, Pastoral Training Center, Liberty Baptist Church, Kansas City, Missouri; author, Supernatural Power for Everyday People

“I have a lot to say about this little book, because it’s so good. In fact, I think this is one of the best books in this series. Brief and well written, this book by pastor John Onwuchekwa looks especially at two sections of the Gospels—the Lord’s Prayer and Jesus’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. Onwuchekwa shares significant observations that seem intuitive, but are also surprising. It is well illustrated, biblically faithful, and theologically accurate. This book is useful to think not only about when we should pray, but also about how we should pray, and even what we should pray about. It reintroduces us to the ignored topic of praying together at church. Hope-giving and inspiring, specific and practical, the whole book is sweetened by touches of humor. You and others could benefit from investing your time in reading this small book on such a grand topic.”

Mark Dever, Senior Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC; President, 9Marks

Prayer

9Marks: Building Healthy Churches

Edited by Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman

Deacons: How They Serve and Strengthen the Church, Matt Smethurst (2021)

Corporate Worship: How the Church Gathers as God’s People, Matt Merker (2021)

Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church, John Onwuchekwa (2018)

Biblical Theology: How the Church Faithfully Teaches the Gospel, Nick Roark and Robert Cline (2018)

Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global, Andy Johnson (2017)

Conversion: How God Creates a People, Michael Lawrence (2017)

Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus, Mark Dever (2016)

The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ, Ray Ortlund (2014)

Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today, David R. Helm (2014)

Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus, J. Mack Stiles (2014)

Church Elders: How to Shepherd God’s People Like Jesus, Jeramie Rinne (2014)

Sound Doctrine: How a Church Grows in the Love and Holiness of God, Bobby Jamieson (2013)

Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus, Jonathan Leeman (2012)

Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus, Jonathan Leeman (2012)

Building Healthy Churches

Prayer

How Praying Together Shapes the Church

John Onwuchekwa

Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church

Copyright © 2018 by John Onwuchekwa

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Cover design: Darren Welch

First printing 2018

Printed in the United States of America

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-5947-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335- 5950-1PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-5948-8 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-5949-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Onwuchekwa, John, author.

Title: Prayer : how praying together shapes the church / John Onwuchekwa.

Description: Wheaton : Crossway, 2018. | Series: 9Marks: building healthy churches | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018003481 (print) | LCCN 2018024421 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433559488 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433559495 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433559501 (epub) | ISBN 9781433559471 (hc)

Subjects: LCSH: Prayer—Christianity.

Classification: LCC BV210.3 (ebook) | LCC BV210.3 .O67 2018 (print) | DDC 248.3/2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003481

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2023-09-22 10:08:29 AM

To my mom, who taught me to pray.

To my dad, who modeled the courage that came from prayer.

To my wife, Shawndra, my lifelong prayer partner.

To Ava, you are the ripened fruit after a long season of prayers sown.

To Cornerstone Church, your faith and love have increased mine.

Contents

Series Preface

Introduction

1 Breathe Again: The Problem of Prayerlessness

2 A Class Act: Teach Us to Pray

3 The World Is Yours: A Family Led

4 Soul Food: A Family Fed

5 Roots: A Family Bred

6 Glory: The Role of Prayer in Corporate Worship

7 Lean on Me: The Role of Prayer in Corporate Care

8 Doing the Right Thing: The Role of Prayer in Missions

Conclusion: Fighting Temptations

Notes

General Index

Scripture Index

Series Preface

The 9Marks series of books is premised on two basic ideas. First, the local church is far more important to the Christian life than many Christians today perhaps realize.

Second, local churches grow in life and vitality as they organize their lives around God’s Word. God speaks. Churches should listen and follow. It’s that simple. When a church listens and follows, it begins to look like the One it is following. It reflects his love and holiness. It displays his glory. A church will look like him as it listens to him.

So our basic message to churches is, don’t look to the best business practices or the latest styles; look to God. Start by listening to God’s Word again.

Out of this overall project comes the 9Marks series of books. Some target pastors. Some target church members. Hopefully all will combine careful biblical examination, theological reflection, cultural consideration, corporate application, and even a bit of individual exhortation. The best Christian books are always both theological and practical.

It’s our prayer that God will use this volume and the others to help prepare his bride, the church, with radiance and splendor for the day of his coming.

Introduction

If you were to walk into most churches next Sunday, what would you find?

You would hear music and singing. It might be loud or sparse, the songs new or old. Yet the basic structure would be almost identical whether you were in Billings, Montana, or Atlanta, Georgia.

There would be some sort of sermon. It might be topical, brief, and generally lighthearted. Or it might be expositional, long, and generally serious. Depending on the Sunday, you might see a baptism, participate in the Lord’s Supper, or engage in a corporate Scripture reading.

But you know what you probably wouldn’t see a lot of? Or participate in?

Prayer.

I don’t mean that no one will talk to God. But the prayers will likely be brief and few, a couple of cursory words as musicians and speakers shuffle on and off stage. They will likely be biblical but vague, focusing on the general promises of God for an undefined subset of people. They will likely be informative but territorial, rarely going beyond the immediate needs of those within earshot. They will likely be emotionally intense, springing forth from the hearts of people who really do have an earnest desire to communicate with their God.

The thing is, the prayers won’t slow down and linger on the glories of God, his attributes, and his character. They won’t meditate unhurriedly on his Word. They won’t ask hearers to study their own hearts and confess specific sins. They won’t ask God for help to do what only he can do: save the lost, feed the hungry, liberate captives, give wisdom to world leaders, fix broken institutions, sustain persecuted Christians.

This is a problem—and it seems many churches simply don’t realize how little they pray together, or how little their prayers reflect the bigheartedness of God. I’m reminded of John Stott’s description of a prayer service he once visited. Does it sound familiar to you?

I remember some years ago visiting a church incognito. I sat in the back row. . . . When we came to the pastoral prayer, it was led by a lay brother, because the pastor was on holiday. So he prayed that the pastor might have a good holiday. Well, that’s fine. Pastors should have good holidays. Second, he prayed for a lady member of the church who was about to give birth to a child that she might have a safe delivery, which is fine. Third, he prayed for another lady who was sick, and then it was over. That’s all there was. It took twenty seconds. I said to myself, it’s a village church with a village God. They have no interest in the world outside. There was no thinking about the poor, the oppressed, the refugees, the places of violence, and world evangelization.1

What Stott describes here is likely true for so many churches: village prayers to village gods.

I’ve heard Mark Dever say that we should pray so much in our church gatherings that the nonbelievers get bored. We talk too much to a God they don’t believe in.

Maybe that’s hyperbole, but certainly we—by which I mean we as Christians and church members together—should pray bigger and better and more biblical prayers.

In a sentence, that’s the goal of this book: learning how to pray better and more as churches. Just as our private prayer lives can be improved by God’s grace, so too can our corporate prayer lives.

The Road Ahead

No single book on prayer can say everything that needs to be said about prayer. Plus, a fruitful prayer life is cultivated by constant practice, not the comprehension of propositions. Yet as we take this journey together, I want to make sure that you’re aware of my intended destination. My hope is that this book will be a guide and a springboard that helps you enjoy the amazing gift of prayer we have as a church.

Of all the books that have been written on prayer, this one has a very specific purpose: examining how prayer shapes the life of the church. So much has been written about prayer as an individual discipline. Not much has been written about prayer as a necessary and communal activity that shapes local churches, either by its presence or absence (though Megan Hill’s Praying Together is helpful [Crossway, 2016]).

Think of this book as offering a few crucial puzzle pieces that were missing from an already assembled, five-hundred-piece puzzle on prayer. I’m the beneficiary of others who have done the hard work of assembling most of the picture.

Let me give you a preview of what we’ll cover in this book. Chapter 1 will present our problem: corporate prayerlessness. Chapter 2 offers a road to a solution. We’ll take some time understanding what we mean by prayer so that we can move forward together.

Chapters 3 and 4 examine how Jesus talked about prayer, which offers us a template. Chapter 5 moves from propositional truths about prayer to examining Jesus’s powerful practice of prayer in the midst of crisis.

The last part of the book, chapters 6–8, will be more practical. Having established the benefits of corporate prayer and how it shapes the church, these chapters will discuss how to incorporate prayer into the life of a church. We’ll address various topics: prayer in corporate worship, prayer meetings, and how corporate prayer shapes both our corporate mission and our pursuit of diversity.

May you take this book for what it’s worth, and may your church flourish through robust and regular corporate prayer.

1

Breathe Again

The Problem of Prayerlessness

Prayer Is Breathing

Well, here you are reading another book on prayer. Maybe the last one didn’t make you feel guilty enough, and you’re a glutton for punishment. What good is a book on prayer without an initial quote that surfaces your shortcomings as a pray-er? Without further ado, here it goes: “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing!”1

All jokes aside, that may be the most potent and challenging statement on prayer I’ve ever read. Breathing—as a metaphor for Christian prayer—captures so much of what prayer should be. It reminds us that prayer is something essential to our existence. Breathing is necessary for everything we do. It enables every activity. Likewise, prayer is basic and vital. It’s tied to both our present existence and perpetual endurance. Prayer is breathing. There’s no better metaphor of what prayer should be for the Christian.

That’s why the struggle many Christians have with prayer is so puzzling. Isn’t it strange how so many Christians believe this truth in principle, but so few churches ratify it in practice? Our problem isn’t the way we talk about prayer. We talk about it with all the fervency and eloquence it deserves. Our problem is the way we treat prayer. Our practice doesn’t line up with our proclamations, which is always a sign that something is off (see James 2).

A total absence of prayer in the church isn’t a likely problem. Maybe a church somewhere out there never prays at all, but I don’t assume that’s happening in yours. I don’t know your church, but I bet there are times you come together to pray. Such praying may be sparse and sporadic, but it happens.

And therein lies what I think is the biggest problem: not a complete lack of prayer, but too little prayer. Here’s another quote to surface more of those prayer-related insecurities: “So we come to one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times—little or no praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salvo for the conscience, a farce and a delusion. The little estimate we put on prayer is evident from the little time we give to it.”2

When prayer is sparse and sporadic, when it’s done just enough to ease the conscience and not much more, we’ve got a problem. We’ve all been a part of churches where prayer is present but neither purposeful nor potent. Unfortunately, our prayers in the church too often feel like prayer before a meal: obligatory and respectable, but no one really gets much out of it. Our church prayers get reduced to a tool for transitioning from one activity to the next. Let’s have everyone close their eyes and bow their heads, so that transitioning the praise team on and off the stage isn’t so awkward.

Do you see the danger in too little prayer? Where prayer is present, it’s saying something—it’s speaking, shouting. It teaches the church that we really need the Lord. Where prayer is absent, it reinforces the assumption that we’re okay without him. Infrequent prayer teaches a church that God is needed only in special situations—under certain circumstances but not all. It teaches a church that God’s help is intermittently necessary, not consistently so. It leads a church to believe that there are plenty of things we can do without God’s help, and we need to bother him only when we run into especially difficult situations.