Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're talking about the power of prayer.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you with Andy Brinkley and Glenn Stricker.
SPEAKER_01Andy's got a new gadget.
SPEAKER_03Downloaded this app which has lots of buttons you can press on.
SPEAKER_01No! We've got a full studio audience. Just loving it. Loving it up. And what's what's that?
SPEAKER_03I got another hit.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Uh, very good. That's a bit louder than this. And then nasty, isn't it? Do we do we have like like we I've I've got an app now that's got like womb noises, and so it's a whoom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. To help the baby get up.
SPEAKER_03I haven't got a womb noise on here.
SPEAKER_01No, what's the wrong with you? Or white noise. No, it's really scary, actually. You you sort of put your baby to sleep. And actually we've got this thing called you and the sheep that glows red. And um you you push one of his different hoofs, and each of the different hoofs does a different, really scary noise. And sometimes it's like and sometimes it's like and he glows red, and he I I don't know, it looks uh it looks a little weird, but you know. She seems to like send the baby to sleep. Yeah, it sends the baby to sleep, it's weird. So anyway, what what else have we got to do? Do you have another button? We'll save that one for the for the cracking gag at the end. Yes, but you're gonna tell. If we've got one. Yeah, that's down to you.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so Glenn, we've this is uh our seventh in an eight part series on power evangelism.
SPEAKER_01Power evangelism. Yes.
SPEAKER_03And we've come to uh this one which is on prayer.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03So but why didn't we have this one right at the beginning, Glenn? Because surely this is uh you know, everything starts with prayer.
SPEAKER_01Starts with prayer and it should be yeah, you can always feel like that and and always when prayer becomes one point in many. That's always a point. Like even like wherever you put it in the list, if prayer is just one like one kind of uh slot slots in in in you know, a bigger thing, then y you're already in trouble. Um so I'm not trying to say that prayer is like one thing we do and then we go off and do other things, or we do a whole bunch of other things and then we pray as the seventh out of eight things. Um but it is the whole context for it. In in the same way that you know we we could say being a regular member of your local church is absolutely vital in you know in evangelism. And in some ways that should go without saying. But sometimes it doesn't, and actually there are loads of evangelists who aren't, you know, regular members of local churches, and for them it needs to be a particular point that's said. Or you could say, you know, um loving your family is really vital in evangelism. And in one sense, that should go without saying because it's kind of there in the commandments. It's got quite a high profile. Um but in other in another sense, you know, you might be speaking to a p a particular audience and you realize that actually people are neglecting their families and it's it's doing great damage to their witness. In the same way, I think prayer should go without saying. Yeah. But none of us are very good at it. So maybe we just need to remind ourselves.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yeah. Um when we think of of prayer as a separate thing, you know, it's something we need to or we decide to to give it a go to try and increase our effectiveness. Yes. Is that what you're talking about?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh absolutely not. And then and you know, if if you know the message that comes across is, you know, we need to tick off the things in our power evangelism list. We need to, you know, believe in the power of ordinary Christian living and the power of church and the power of preaching and the power of words and seasons, the power of illustrations, the power of stories, ah, okay, item seven on the list, let's tick off prayer. And once I've done that, I will be seven-eighths effective as as a as an evangelist. Um it's not like that at all. What what I really want to talk about, really, is the there's an organic unity to evangelism and prayer, and they just just they just belong together. And just as I don't really want to think about evangelism as this detached activity that happens for two hours on a Wednesday evening once every other week, um it's not this detached activity, it's it's the life of being with the missionary God. The missionary God calls us to himself, and as he calls us to himself, he is the ever-outgoing God who sends us out as priests to the world. Um and so my life before God, a life of prayer, is also a life out to the world, a life of evangelism. And so those two things, they should just they should just organically go together, so that talking to people about God just goes naturally hand in hand together with talking to God about people. And it's it's just part of that ongoing life. So I'm not talking about becoming, you know, twenty percent more effective if you give an extra five minutes a day towards praying for unsaved neighbours. I am saying it is the absolutely essential undergirding of your life with God if your witness is ever going to be uh from the overflow of the heart your mouth speaks, as Matthew twelve thirty-four says, then it's got it's got to go hand in hand with a warm, vibrant prayer life. Um otherwise you're just you're just faking it. Yeah. So I I think, you know, prayer far from being this item on your list that you take tick off in order to be more effective, actually prayer is saying, I can't tick off the items on my list, um, I fall short of all the items on my list, I'm completely useless at this whole evangelism thing. Help me. Help. And so prayer is really engaging in your weakness, which is why you know we're thinking about you know, power evangelism. The the joke of the whole series is power evangelism looks really weak. And prayer really engages in our own weakness and says, God, I can't do it, I can't even get out of bed without you. And I call on your strength, not my own. So being a prayerful evangelist is actually getting in touch with your weakness, which as as we'll see as we wrap up the series next week, is is absolutely vital in evangelism. Being in touch with your weakness is where the strength is found in evangelism. And prayer absolutely uh absolutely helps you to do that. You know, you can't you can't you know, if I told you to go away and pray for twenty minutes, you couldn't come back after that twenty minutes and feel great about yourself and your own abilities at praying because it would actually be hard work and you'd be getting in touch with being a a child, a little child before your father and all that kind of thing. If I told you to go and for twenty minutes, you know, Andy, I I want you to go and speak to non-Christians about Jesus, you know, you might find a little bit of success, you might find no success, but it would be something that w you would be doing, it's something that would be in your powers to be able to do. Um whereas when you're called to pray, you're called to engage in your helplessness, not in your strength. So that's absolutely vital. Um a a praying evangelist is one who feels their weakness very strongly. But a praying evangelist is also someone who is in communion with God because that's what prayer is. Yeah. We forget that.
SPEAKER_03And we sort of uh sometimes treat prayer as something uh other than uh basically a channel to God, you know, communicating with God. Yeah. And uh, you know, we have ki prayer conferences and you know that's good. But you always think, you know, let's just talk to God. Let's just talk to God. Just talk about talking to God.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly, exactly. And even when you go to the prayer conference, which is can be a good thing to do, you come away thinking, right, well, now I need this regime, in which I block out, you know, half an hour in the morning and and do that, and I have my quiet time as this kind of herm hermetically sealed bit of my calendar where I do the prayer thing, and then on you know, off you go into the rest of the day. It's been very interesting, um, having a newborn baby and and routine kind of being out the door, really. Um it's uh as as a friend of mine sort of said to me, you sort of get in touch far more with the pray continually thing than you do with the quiet time thing. And it's interesting, pray continually is in the Bible, the quiet time isn't. Um it's a good thing to do. Yeah, or the noisy noisy time. The noisy time.
SPEAKER_03But Jesus had noisy times, not quiet times. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Or when Andrew Wilson was here, who he was good about talking about having happy times, you know, like like George Muller would would not enter into the day until he got his soul happy in God. Um and maybe it should be more like that. But but it's it's not about this cut-off part of my life where I do the prayer thing. And you know, I don't know what people thought of when they clicked on the link that said, you know, prayer and the power of prayer in evangelism. Probably you're thinking, ah, that means okay, it is effective if you have a list of unsaved loved ones and you make your way through that list every week. Yeah, that is. That that's that's a really good thing to do. Do that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um but that's a very good app for doing that.
SPEAKER_01The prayer mate app. Yeah, yeah. Download the prayer mate apps and uh um and get in touch with uh some of Revival's own prayer points on the Prayer Mate app. But it's far more it's far more than this separate thing. It is like you say, it's life before God, life in communion with God. Um and you know, uh on prayer I always go to Luke 11, where you know, there is Jesus, he's praying to his father on a mountaintop, and his disciples see that and they like what they see. There is the Son communing with his father, and they say, Teach us to pray. And then Jesus teaches them the Lord's prayer. So it's this lovely thing where Jesus is is sort of forever saying, My Father, my father, my father, my father. And we look on that and we think, Oh, that that's brilliant. And prayer looks fantastic. It doesn't it doesn't look like um perhaps the the sort of a religious imagery that if you clicked on Google Images and prayer, you know, that's what it looks like. What it looks like is the life of God, the spirit flowing between the Father and the Son, the Father, you know, filling his son with joy, the Son responding in love and saying, Abba Father. That's what prayer is. The disciples look at that, they say, We weren't in on this, and Jesus says, Oh, come on in. I've been always calling God my Father, now call him our Father. And what a privilege to sort of come in on the perfect prayer life of Jesus and just spend time with God. That's what I'm talking about, really, in being a prayerful evangelist.
SPEAKER_03So, what kinds of prayer should we be praying as evangelists?
SPEAKER_01I think that's where it begins. It it begins with enjoying your communion with God. It begins with um spending time with your father and realizing that before you are an evangelist going out to win the world, um, you are a child of God before your heavenly father, wrapped up in the Son, filled with the Spirit, and able to commune with God and call him Abba. That's that's who you are, that's your identity. Um and if your evangelism doesn't flow out of that, then it'll flow out of a a busyness and a coldness and a detachment that won't be very attractive to non-Christians anyway. So it's it's gotta it's gotta begin with enjoying God.
SPEAKER_03I often think of uh David um King David, you know, before he was famous, he was on the on the hills there with the sheep, you know, with his harp, and uh just sort of l enjoying creation and um writing his songs on his harp, um like living a a a constant communion with God. Yes. Which which carried on throughout you know his his life, um even after he became king, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And uh and that's why like one Samuel th one Samuel thirteen calls him a man after God's own heart. He's a man after God's own heart. And so so of course he pictures for us Christ, the Messiah, who is the man, the the son of the Father, who is always after the Father's own heart. And wonder of wonders, we don't just have to be like David, or we don't just have to be like Jesus. By the Spirit we are adopted into his communion with God. And so and so we just get to enjoy that for free. So that's the first kind of prayer that I'm talking about. Uh enjoying God. But yes, I'm also talking about interceding for our friends. And I'm also talking about not just putting them on your prayer mate app, and do download that. So it's it's a great little uh uh tool. Um but you know, you can write down your unsaved loved ones that you want to pray for um day by day and uh and swipe through it. But not not so as to tick things off a list, but when you're interceding, you're really kinda You know, Spurgeon used to talk about interceding and and and he in the in the book The Soul Winner, he's he said, you know, imagine the tone that you would take if your friend was on trial for their life and you were kind of their counsellor, you were you were their barrister, you were their lawyer, and and you uh like em imagine that. And at that point you're really entering into the plight of your friend, and you're really entering into oh father please, father please. You know, and that's kind of intercession, not just, you know, God please bless Bill, you know. So yeah, so re a real I really want to call us to enter into communion with God, but also then as we're praying for our friends, enter into their situation and their plight. And like Jesus, he looks at the crowd and they're harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. You know, do I look on my friends like that and enter into the oh gosh, they're lost. They're just lost, they're blind. And say, Oh Father, have mercy. Oh Father, please open their eyes. That's the second kind of prayer I want to call us to communion with God and then intercession for our friends. Uh but then a third kind of prayer that like we we always need in evangelism is just the help in the middle of you know your conversation and pfft, man, this is all the time just oh help, I have no idea what to say. I have no idea what to say. That's probably Yeah, that's probably the number one thought going through my head in any evangelistic encounter. I have no idea what to say. God, if you don't give me something, I've got nothing. I've got nothing. Um and again, God answers those prayers and he gives you things to say, and that's brilliant. But it also it also helps you to enter into your helplessness in evangelism, and so that you don't just trot out the pat answer that you always do. When somebody s you know speaks about the suffering question, you always trot out X, Y, and Z. Actually, someone's trotting out, you know, someone's asking suffering question, you're going, Oh help Lord, I don't know, help, I don't know. You know. At that stage, even aside from the ways in which God might answer that prayer, you're you're actually entering into the fact that you don't have all the answers. You're not the great shepherd, you're more like a sheepdog um who's who's just trying to who's just a bit of an idiot, really, just trying to yap around the heels of some stray sheep and trying to, you know, in some way get them back to the shepherd. But you're entering into that, you know, your stupidity at that stage, which is a good thing. Enter f enter more fully into your stupidity, if that's if that's the take-home message, I think. Yeah. Okay, so that deserves a round of applause, I thought.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, uh hang on.
SPEAKER_01Enter into your stupidity. That's what I say. It's very English applause. Golf golf applause. Yeah, cricket. Do you have any American applause? Woo!
SPEAKER_03Sorry, that's no.
SPEAKER_01No, no, that's not very English at all.
SPEAKER_03Um okay, so types of prayer, enjoying communion with God, intercession for friends, help prayers in evangelism. And so what difference does prayer make in our evangelism when you finish your biscuit? Mm. Excuse me.
SPEAKER_01What prayer is all about is talking to God. Talking to God, entering into the Son's communion with the Father by the Spirit. If you are a praying evangelist, then you are someone who is wanting to extend the invitation. So just like in in Luke 11, Jesus extends the invitation to the disciples and says, Why don't you call call him father? What's our evangelism? It's going out to the world and saying to the world, why don't you call him father? Come on in on this thing. Um so it just it just orients everything in in in in the right kind of way. Um it hopefully our heartfelt communion with God overflows with words to the world. Our intercession with God uh actually makes a difference. You know, yeah in church on on Sunday we had the the the the importunate widow, the um the never giving up widow who's just asking for justice. Um in uh in Luke 18. But there she is, like never giving up, never giving up, never giving up, and and you know, the unjust judge gives justice because of the importunate widow. You know, how how much more the loving father who longs to to increase his family. And and I I think if yeah, I think non-Christians can smell on you when when you're just giving a pat answer. Can smell on you. They can s yes. Let me let me finish the sentence. They uh they can sense Hang on the United States. That was not worth that was not worthy of laughter, honestly. Um they can sense when you are just going through the motions, they can sense when you're just saying the thing that you always say. And I and I think actually a prayerful evangelist has that authenticity and openness to God that then allows you to be uh someone who is actually more human. Um which is a strange thing. Spending more time with God makes you more human. Well, I kind of I guess that shouldn't surprise us if we're spending time with the incarnate Son by the Spirit before the Father. Then we know who we really are, and then our evangelism to the world um feels more authentic, I think.
SPEAKER_03So uh it helps put us in touch with our weakness and with God's strength. Yep. Have you got any illustrations of uh when that's happened?
SPEAKER_01Well I g I guess you know, the whole hopefully the whole life of prayer before God infuses everything about you know what what our evangelism is about. But but certainly in terms of those those kind of help prayers, you know, I I've said on the podcast before about um, you know, packing a Luke's gospel in in my bag and and praying. Specifically, you know, God, can there be someone who crosses my path on this journey that I can give this Luke's gospel to? And within half an hour I meet a taxi driver called Luke, who um who says, It's a funny thing, you know, you you say you're a Christian. There were some people in my taxi about three months ago who said, Oh, there's a book of the Bible called Luke. They were gonna send me a Luke's gospel. And uh, you know, at that moment my my hand was on my Luke's gospel, you know, in my bag, and I sort of threw it on the on the dashboard. You mean that Luke's gospel? I says, Is that the Luke book? Yeah, that's the Luke book. Um So I mean that there was a very instantaneous answer to prayer. Um and I I think all of us can testify to the fact that when we when we really ask the Father, please, will you give me evangelistic encounters? Like he answers those prayers, which can be quite scary. But he does, he does answer those prayers, and so yeah, I just I just encourage us all to continue our communion with God in prayer, to pray and intercede for our friends, entering into their lostness, to pray specifically for opportunities, to speak to someone about Jesus today, to specifically pray that. And then in the midst of it to to cry out help. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, great. Well we'd better leave it there. We've got one more to go of this series, and we're gonna be talking about the power of weakness next time. Excellent. Interesting. But before we go You've got a joke for us.
SPEAKER_01No, I haven't. Really? I was just gonna You almost promised. Well, I promised on your behalf, but it's probably not the same thing.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I've got a great I've got I've got a great kind of um knock knock joke, right? But you've got to start it off, okay? Okay.
SPEAKER_03Knock knock.
SPEAKER_01Who's there?
SPEAKER_03Andy!
SPEAKER_01I don't know. You see what I did there? No, never mind. Okay, okay, here's what you do, Andy. Um uh pump your fist and and shake it around. Okay, so okay, and now keep keep doing it, keep doing it. Okay, okay, keep going, keep going. Knock knock. Who's there? Yah. Yahoo. There it is. Go on, go on, there it is, there it is.
SPEAKER_03Anyway. Oh dear. Um I probably I can't think of a j any joke. Dear idea. Dear. Anyway, we better finish. So anyway, thanks for uh putting up with us for the last uh twenty minutes. Thanks for listening to the Evangelist Podcast. Special thanks to everyone who's left a rating on iTunes uh and a review. If you haven't given us a review and we'd like to, uh we've made it really easy, just go to revivalmedia.org slash iTunes, or if you use Stitcher Radio, go to revivalmedia.org slash Stitcher. We'd be really grateful if you could do that for us. It helps us to get seen by more people and uh hopefully more regular listeners. So if you want to go to the web address for this episode, just go to revivalmedia.org slash TEP eighty seven. Thanks very much for listening. See you next time. See ya.