The Preacher and ………Prayer
One of the most stimulating things I have read on prayer in a long time is in my Book of the Week which I have nearly finished reading and will review in a few days time. In his book, ‘Preaching that Changes Lives’, Michael Fabarez has some imaginative ideas about soaking our preaching ministry in prayer - from beginning to end - and not just by the preacher. Here’s the first of two excerpts I’ll post from this excellent book.
Over the years Fabarez has developed three prayer teams;
1. A ‘Message Prep’ team: “As part of my preparation I have made it a practice to partner with one or two men who will pray with me in my office. Scheduling prayer partners to come in the thick of the study and preparation battle can provide refreshment and perspective as they pray for God’s involvement and intervention in every aspect of the sermon…..I ventured to broaden the circle even wider. This resulted in a prayer team of over 25 people who cover every hour of my weekly preparation. My single most heartening comfort amid the labour of study is knowing that there is a godly person grappling in prayer for me, the sermon, and its impact.”
2.A ‘Pre-Delivery’ team: “I have limited this group to a small number of hand-picked men who arrive 30 minutes before the service begins. Some are church leaders, some are staff, and others are laymen….The expectations and enthusiasm generated in that concentrated half hour of prayer are contagious. We experience a heightened sense of dependence on God to work in our midst. We feel a deepening burden to see God’s Word communicated accurately. We ignite within our hearts a passion to see God’s truth transform people’s lives. It also greatly encourages the preacher to know godly men are standing with him as he goes forth to proclaim God’s Word.”
3. An ‘As You Preach’ team: “If the entire preaching process is a spiritual battle, we should naturally assume that much of it is waged while the preaching actually is taking place……find people who will forfeit their opportunity to sit under your preaching once every two or three months in order to pray for its effectiveness. In so doing they will quickly grow in their understanding of the critical impact prayer has upon effective biblical preaching.”
Fabarez closes the section with this challenge. “Choose today to renew your passion for prayer. Make it your priority. Enlist those around you to join in asking God for his transforming work in the lives of those who will hear His Word proclaimed this week.”
Have you got any experiences you could share? Have you tried something along the lines suggested by Fabarez?
A Prayer of George Whitefield:
““Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more . . . raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.”
