A CALL TO EXTRAORDINARY PRAYER
By Steve Nation
Christian Focus. 111 pages. £5.99
ISBN 978 1 527 100 893
The great challenge for the contemporary church is to pray. It’s not about preaching, but first about praying.
The situation is summed up in a telling paragraph in the middle of this excellent book: ‘Prayerlessness is a mark of someone who is not taking the Bible seriously, nor the life God calls us to. One implication of this for many of our Bible-believing, gospel-declaring churches is a much needed rebuke. Contrary to prevailing opinion, churches that are strong on sound theology and expository preaching, yet poor in prayer, are not strong churches, but weak. They are weak because there is a distinct lack of trust in God, reliance on God, humility before God.’ And so it is that so many of the churches of our country are involved in a zero-sum game. They grow, not by conversions, but by taking people from other churches. There is much activity at the human level, but little from above.
Aussie bluntness
Steve Nation is a blunt Aussie, pastor of an Anglican church near Canberra, and he hits us in the face with our need, but encourages us too. In this slim paperback, he takes us on a whistle-stop tour through Acts, looking at the importance of prayer in the life of the burgeoning early church. He shows us what can happen when Christians devote themselves to prayer and when leaders devote themselves to prayer before they preach the Word. There were a couple of stand-out chapters for me. The first was about how leaders should pray for their church members – ‘Paul’s prayers were infested with pleading for power’. The second was about how congregations should pray for their leaders. Spurgeon said: ‘Let me have your prayers, and I can do anything! Let me be without my people’s prayers and I can do nothing.’
The book is full of practical advice as well as big-picture strategy. It would make an excellent book for churches to use to study through Acts in small groups and learn again about how to pray.
