“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God (Philippians 4:6),

 

Armin Gesswein, one of the fathers of the modern prayer movement, was born in the U.S. of German parents, but his marriage to a lovely Norwegian girl and his involvement in the revival that swept Norway’s cold churches in the late 1930’s gave him an international flavor. Armin knew the value of prayer because he and Reidun, his wife, had seen first-hand how it revived a lukewarm church and changed the lives of those who prayed.

To his dying day at age 93, he never lost that fervency!  “We have forgotten that when Christ built His church, He built a prayer meeting,” Armin used to say. With the exception of his wife, I was privileged to have had about the last meaningful conversation that anyone had with this venerable man of God.

It was late in the afternoon and I was busy as usual trying to get the responsibilities of the day put to rest. Armin, who had an office in our building, stopped by to say hello. “Have you seen our upper room?” I asked. We had just remodeled an area as a place for prayer and board meetings.  “No, but I want to see it now,” he said. So, we made our way up the stairs to the upper room. The furniture had been pushed over into a corner, but Armin pulled out a chair and sat down.  I hadn’t planned on having an extended conversation, but when he sat down, I did the same thing.

There was a note of urgency in his voice, which in retrospect makes me wonder if he was not delivering his soul and that I as a younger disciple had better hear. He began, “Harold, we’ve got to get prayer into the seminaries and Bible colleges.”  Why not the churches?  I didn’t even bother to ask. We had talked about that many times. He knew that pastors control the agenda of the churches, and if the young men and women who are in training don’t recognize the value of prayer and its power, it just would not happen otherwise.

The stroke that felled this dear brother about 4 A.M. the next morning silenced his voice, but that message will never escape my memory. “We’ve got to get prayer into the seminaries and Bible colleges” so that we can get it back into the churches.

Armin said, “When Christ ascended into heaven all He left behind was a prayer meeting. The early Church didn’t have a prayer meeting; the early Church was the prayer meeting. In fact, in the early Church every Christian was a prayer-meeting Christian.”

To be very candid with you, the scarcity of prayer in the average church today is no less than frightening to me. If Armin was right, if the barometer of spiritual level is the same as the prayer barometer, we are in deep need of a spiritual awakening today.

In Russia, churches are known as houses of prayer, a term far closer to how the infant church, read about in the book of Acts, was than our churches today.

In our quest to be seeker sensitive, have we focused on program, on entertainment, or meeting the needs of people, without giving them Jesus’ response to the plea of the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray”?

I have stopped asking pastors, “When do folks in your church meet for prayer?” Too embarrassing, too difficult, too invasive.  My fear, however, is that we may be driven to learn by devastating circumstances threatening our homes, our lives and our freedom. How much better to know how to pray because prayer is a normal part of our lives, our worship, our churches, our families! Indeed.

Resource reading: Philippians 4