Peter Wagner says, "The central, foundational activity for spiritual warfare is
prayer. In one sense prayer is a weapon of warfare, and in another sense it is
the medium through which all of the other weapons are utilised." Without prayer
we will live defeated Christian lives. That is why Paul exhorts us in Ephesians
6:18, to put on the whole armour of God, "praying always with all prayer and
supplication in the Spirit…."
Pastor Ha's church in Vietnam grew from twenty-nine to over 5,000 in just a few years during the communist regime in the late 1970's. When asked the secret of this phenomenal church growth, Pastor Ha replied, "I have a very simple theology. When you have problems, pray! When you have more problems, pray more!" Every morning this church had a well-attended prayer meeting at six A.M. And the church grew and grew. Although they were constantly living under pressure, there was one Scripture text chosen for the wall of their sanctuary, "In everything give thanks."
And yet after his years of imprisonment, Pastor Ha said, “When I had my freedom, I worked with prayer sometimes in the background. In prison, I discovered that prayer is everything. It's like a pilot using a checklist before he takes off. If he skips the first item, many lives might be in danger. The first item on our checklist should always be prayer. If we skip it, the whole mission is in jeopardy.”Vietnamese Pastor Cuong also spent over six years in prison. He says this about prayer:
“In my work I was so busy I had no time to pray. But in prison, I was thankful to God that He gave me time for prayer. I had about six hours of prayer every day. I had time to recall every member of my congregation to pray for them. Before that, although I served the church, I didn't have enough time to pray for them. I learned about the real presence of God in prayer there. When you kneel down and pray wholeheartedly with the Lord, you feel His answer right there.”
Even in the
difficult conditions of imprisonment, Irina Ratushinskaya continued to write poetry,
scratching out verses on a bar of soap and committing them to memory before
washing them away. Later she said that writing helped her to survive her ordeal.
While still at home in Kiev following her release, she was interviewed over the
air by Chicago radio station WBEZ. Asked if she would consent to read one of her
poems, she replied: "I will read a poem which I wrote already in freedom . It
is dedicated to all those who thought and remembered about my fellow prisoners
or about me." The following is a literal translation of the poem, submitted by
one of our readers.
Believe me, so it happened often:
In solitary confinement, on a wintry night
Suddenly an embrace of warmth and happiness,
And a note of low would sound.
And then I sleeplessly know,
Leaning against the ice cold wall-
Now, now they are remembering me,
They are begging the Lord for me.
My dear ones, thank you
All, who remembered and believed in us
In the cruelest prison hour.
We, surely, could not have
Gone through all from end to end,
Not bowing our head, not faltering,
Without your lofty hearts
Illumining our way.
“I am a part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The dye has been cast. I have stepped over the line. I am a disciple of HIS. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed! I’m finished with low living, sight walking, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, and dwarfed goals! I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, walk by patience, lift by prayer, and labor by power! My faith is set. My gait is fast. My goal is heaven. My road is narrow. My companions few. My Guide reliable! My mission clear! I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, or delayed! I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, or negotiate at the table of the enemy! I won’t give up, shut up, let up until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ! I am a disciple of Jesus! I must go until He comes, give until I drop, preach until all know, and work until He stops me. And when He comes for His own, He will have NO problems recognizing me. My banner will be clear!” -- this text was found on a scrap of paper in the home of an African pastor shortly after he was martyred.
At the beginning of 1935, Rees Howell had a new burden to pray for world missions. He shared this with staff and friends at SIM and they agreed to intercede for any nation and country, as well a missionaries, as the Lord indicated.
With the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, Rees and his intercessors were called to ‘stand in the gap’ in prayer; as prayer warriors they were to have no more claim on their lives, time or possessions than if they had been drafted into the forces. Particular prayer was made for Ethiopia when Mussolini invaded. Rees experienced a great trial of faith when Addis Ababa fell, but the outcome of their intercession was seen when in later years S I M missionaries returned to Wallamo Province, where they had anxiously left 48 young believers, to find a church of 10,000 Christians.
Two sisters in southern China came to Christ in a house church meeting. Twenty months later a friend from Hong Kong visited them and asked what they had been doing since their conversion. "Starting home meetings," was their timid response.
"How many home meetings?"
"Only thirty," was their halting reply.
"How many attend your meetings?" was the next nonchalant question.
"Well, at the smallest one about two hundred and eighty!"
Now the questioner was totally involved and quickly continued,
"How many attend your largest meeting?"
"Not even 5000, only about four thousand nine hundred!"
The Hong Kong Christian was flabbergasted. And in his excitement quickly asked, “How do you ladies—both new Christians—know what to do?"
They simply replied, “We pray. And after we pray, the Holy Spirit tells us what to do!”
Paul Youngi Cho, of South Korea, has one of the world's largest churches, with over one million members. When asked about the secret of his success, he says, "I pray, and I obey." His whole ministry is marked with prayer. They have a whole mountain for prayer, not just a room in the church. It is called Prayer Mountain. The mountain is covered with small caves where people from the church will go and hide themselves to pray for days at a time.
Every morning, Cho prays for five hours before starting any
other work in the church. Many have asked him how he can find time to pray that
much. He answers, "You don't understand. If I don't pray for five hours, I don't
have enough time to do everything. But when I do, then God does everything I
need."
James declares that prayer is powerful and effective" (James 5:16) John assures us that "God hears and answers" (1 John 5: 15). In the book of Acts there are 36 references to the church growing. Fifty-eight percent [i.e. 21 of those instances) are within the context of prayer. We would all love to see growth in every church in the world like it was at Pentecost and immediately thereafter. The key to what happened is found in Acts l:14 when it says: "They were all joined together constantly in prayer. They were all joined together - one mind, one purpose, one accord. That is the prerequisite for effectiveness. Then, they were all joined together constantly in prayer. The word used there means to be "busily engaged in, to be devoted to, to persist in adhering to a thing, to intently attend to it." And it is in the form of a present participle. It means that the practice was continued ceaselessly. The same word is used in Acts 2:42: "They devoted themselves ...to prayer." Over in Colossians 4:2 Paul uses the same word again in the imperative form "Devote yourselves to prayer. Most significant expansion movements of the church through its history took up that imperative.
Pastor Cho from South Korea also shares this story - "The place where I went to plant my church - there were already shrines, and the
priests from the shrines tried to intimidate me. They tried to burn up the tent
churches. So to combat this, I spent five hours every day praying. But now a
days I usually spend three hours every day praying, and if I don't keep praying
regularly in such a way then I can't maintain the fellowship with the Holy
Spirit. I believe ministers cannot maintain their ministries without the
anointing of the Holy Spirit. For me, that means three hours a day to maintain
my intimacy with the Holy Spirit."
