Date - Jan/90

Contributor - Marc de Waard

Title - Prayer: Bold And Aggressive

Topic - Editorial

With the advent of the New Year will also come many resolutions--to quit smoking, to lose weight, to be more loving, to pray, etc. Since this is the guest editorial for this magazine's first issue for 1990, I do want to focus on a new year's resolution of praying not only more but also of praying differently. Please read on and participate with me.

My prayer life, for a variety of reasons, had become somewhat stultified and God in His graciousness allowed different writings to come across my path, letting them become teachers to me on prayer. My prayer vision has become enlarged and through these teachers, my desires to and my scope in prayer have expanded considerably.

David Wells, professor at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston, has written an article entitled, "Prayer: Rebelling against the Status Quo". He writes:

What, then, is the nature of petitionary prayer? It is, in essence, rebellion--rebellion against the world in its falleness, the absolute and undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is, in this its negative aspect, the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God.

Suddenly, prayer has become for me, combat--combat against the things that go against God, that detract from His Glory. I now concur with Wells as he states, 'To pray declares that God and his world are at cross-purposes...... As a soldier for Christ I can now through prayer declare my war on the enemy. 'ne heavens and the earth--components of the Lord's prayer--fill my thoughts as I pray rather than only praying for my food, my safety as I travel, ... my, my, my. My vision, my prayer scope had become far too narrow and far too tame.

This was reinforced in a Prayer Concert I recently attended in Grand Rapids. At this concert I was shown an overhead of two fishermen ice fishing. The fisherman on the right was sitting on his little chair with his thirty centimetre hole cut into the ice, waiting for a bite. The fisherman to the left was seated in his chair an(f had his hole cut in the ice as well, but his hole was in the shape of and as big as a whale! My prayers were like those of the first fisherman, too little and my outlook far too small when God would have me pray a'whale of a prayer'! God has now shown me that life can be otherwise and He allows me the opportunity to seek that change through prayer.

I have read those blessed Psalms over and over and with my new lenses on. I now see how David persists in his role as litigant, constantly offering prayers up to God asking Him to correct that which is wrong, to strengthen and build up that which is right. I, too, need to do what David did for he saw the world as a courtroom in which a case could still be made against what is wrong and for what is right.

I have read the many prayers of Paul and need to model my prayers after his intimate yet broad prayers. I eagerly anticipate Don Carson's forthcoming book with his analysis for further insight into Paul's prayers. I need to constantly reread Wesley Duewel's Touch the World Through Prayer (1986) to keep this new vision alive. And I will continue to use those powerful doctrinal prayers found in Mark Bubeck's book, ne Adversary (1975). The many prayers he has written and included in his book are powerful and have become models for me as well as ready prayable prayers in my devotional prayer life.

Yes, I am not asking you to make a New Year's resolution to pray, but I am asking you to pray with me in a manner which was in the past so different to me and is now so very exciting. As you and I pray, we become part of a praying people. I continue my historical and theological studies, as I visit various churches and receive letters and calls from many in the church, I sense that people are returning to prayer. Oh what a wonder it would be if through the prayers of His people, God would allow revival to break out in North America this year.

I close with a quote from Bubeck (p. 104).

Prayer is the chief means by which our faith expresses itself. Prayer is the chief means by which we employ and appropriate the victory which is ours over all principalities and powers. The mighty resources in prayer remain yet to be tapped in most believers lives.

Oh, that we would be able to tap those resources in the upcoming months not only for spiritual edification and for revival, not only to ask that thin&s which are wrong be righted, but most importantly, for God's glory. May the Holy Spirit work mightily in your and my prayer life in 1990.