Birthing Prayers

 

“I urge upon you communion with Christ a growing communion.
There are curtains to be drawn aside in Christ that we never saw, and new
foldings of love in him. I despair that I shall ever win to the far end of that
love, there are so many plies in it. Therefore dig deep, and sweat and labor
and take pains for him, and set by as much time in the day for him as you can.
We will be won in the labor.�

– Samuel Rutherford

 

 

 

This is what really goes on inside my head. I kinda throw this
out there with my eyes closed…like a designer displaces his new clothing line
or an artist opens his latest art gallery. When you see me staring off into
outer space or peering out the train window or gazing through the bus pane,
this is where I go…

 

 

Oh to see the day when prayer and missions unite…IHOP & AIM
together…as Leonard Ravenhill says, “Prayer in its highest form is agonizing
soul sweat…when holy passion has ceased to move the intercessors in the Prayer
Room, coldness ensues, power is lost, and mortification sets in. The place
still looks viable, but it is no longer a birthplace of souls.�

 

 

Oh to see missions birthed out of the place of prayer. Sometimes
I think we pray and then go…rather than laboring in prayer till the mission is
pushed through the birthing canal in prayer instead of 

merely
conceived.
All I see these days and all I
know through experience these days is the planning stage of pregnancy…the
decision to get off birth control and try to start a new life…thus beginning in
prayer or even thinking or saying I will pray…but not remaining there. As if
one quick push would birth anything sustainable.

 

But do we ever check to see if we are pregnant? How foolish and ignorant we are to merely say a sentence or
book, for that matter, before the throne of God but then leave uninterested to
hear the reply.

 

When will we get it?

When will we get on the same page as the God we claim to serve?

 

So often we are still busy
planning while God has already
wrought conception! And when the labor pains of the actual birth happen, we
are confused by the chaos rather than prepared for the new beginnings.

(gwen meharg)

 

 

We must get connected to the heart of the Father…connected to
the fullness of that which He delights to release in the NOW.

 

“Fight the thing through on your knees, wrestle in your prayer
to God, and win…Do you know what it means to toil in prayer; to labor with
painful toil in prayer? Oh, how easily most of us take our praying, how little
heart we put into it, and how little it takes out of us, and how little it
counts with God, The Mighty men of God, who throughout the centuries have
wrought great things by prayer, are the men who have had much painful toil in
prayer.� —R.A. Torrey

 

 

 

WHY DO WE SHRINK BACK FROM LABORING IN PRAYER?

Why do we only push once rather than LABOR?

 

 

I think partly because we suppress the God-given ache and anguish that sends us to our knees. We push once to pat ourselves on
the back. However we have NOTHING to show for it. We push back the pain we see around us, we shut out the
breaking of our hearts because we do not want to experience the ache, the anguish, the pain. We
think, “What good would it do to merely feel these things?� We don’t want to
cry over the death around us…somehow crying has become useless. We don’t want
to feel pain for the score of humans dying from AIDS…afterall what good would
crying do. But its this inner ache that sends us to our knees, into
travail, into laboring prayer. Its those tears
of weeping that remove coldness from our heart & allow us to actually
petition God for change until it comes.

For when your heart is involved,

when your engaged & consumed with a matter,

a mere sentence will not suffice!

Laboring, persevering prayer will be your only resolve.

 

But woe to us whose hearts are unengaged, unmoved, cold, closed
up, hardened, walled up…for what will it take to bring us to a place of
laboring in prayer before our God? What will it take
to share in the fellowship of His sufferings? What will it take to weep & mourn over someone else’s
sufferings outside of our own?

 

 

 

“Wrestling in prayer enlists all the capacities of your soul,
marshals your deepest holy desire, and by the grace of God uses all the
perseverance of your holy determination. You push through a host of
difficulties. You push back the heavy, threatening clouds of darkness. You
reach beyond the visible and natural to the very throne of God. With all your
strength and tenacity, you lay hold of God’s grace and power as it becomes a
passion of your soul.� —James Goll

 

 

No wonder our generations haven’t seen the like of true
spiritual revival…we have it shut up in our bones.