Prayer: Putting It into Practice [FrontLine]

FrontLine Volume 32 • Number 6

Prayer: Putting It into Practice

Few topics are more important to the Christian life than prayer. At the same time, there are few areas of the Christian life where we feel as much the gap between what we ought to be and what we are. Books on prayer abound, and many passages and principles of Scripture are worthy of our attention. Prayer, like everything else in the Christian life, rests upon what God has revealed about Himself and His will. God is infinitely powerful, wise, and good. He wills for us to have fellowship with Him and to participate in His work through communicating with Him. With this firmly in mind, our hope is that this issue of FrontLine will offer practical help and encouragement to pray.

The Scriptures repeatedly urge us to pray for one another. This often leads to a difficulty, however: precisely what should we pray for fellow believers? When we hear petitions for unsaved relatives, neighbors, or coworkers, we know that regardless of their temporal difficulties, their greatest need is to come to Christ in salvation. Sometimes, however, we are at a loss as to how to pray for Christians beyond their physical or financial needs. In this issue Robert Vincent helps us understand God’s prayer priorities by looking at Paul’s prayers for believers. In these wonderful passages we are introduced to the unfathomable riches of grace that are our inheritance in Jesus Christ. It is God’s will, and it should be our earnest petition, that we would understand and appropriate these blessings.

Such spiritual blessings can be a great encouragement to us in dark seasons, as demonstrated by the powerful testimony of Jeanna Kamp, who has been witness of the great grace of God in prayer in difficult circumstances. Through what the world would call tragedy, she relates how her relationship with the Lord has been deepened and her prayer life strengthened as He has given her “songs in the night.”

Continuing in this practical vein is David Shumate’s contribution, encouraging us to pray for the servant of God who preaches His Word. Every preacher engages in spiritual warfare. Psalm 20, written to invoke the blessing of God upon Israel’s king on the eve of physical battle, yields rich principles that we can apply to praying for the men of God in pulpits today. The first part does the preliminary work of demonstrating the theological connection between Israel’s national conflict and the church’s spiritual struggle. The second shows why we must earnestly plead with the Lord for those who open His Word to us.

The vital importance of prayer in the ministry is then illustrated by testimonies from two mission fields. Ron Cochran, who serves in Mexico, writes of the extraordinary blessings that have come from the long-standing cooperative prayer meetings of the fundamental Bible-believing churches in his city. Half a world away in Japan, missionary Kim Melton relates how God, in gracious response to her prayer for one new soul, wooed the heart of a lost man, gave him an insatiable hunger for the Word of God, brought him to Christ, and brought new vitality to the church. Finally, Nathan Mestler suggests two practical ways that we can have more energetic and effective times together in prayer. He writes that these two approaches have greatly enriched prayer with the students of the Bible college where he serves.

It is our earnest desire that these ideas and testimonies will encourage and instruct us to converse more frequently, more earnestly, and more effectively with our Heavenly Father.

— David Shumate

Features:

PRAYING UNSEARCHABLE RICHES FOR TREASURED BELIEVERS
Robert Vincent

Without Paul’s skilled help we would know far less of all that God has prepared for those who love Him.

SONGS IN THE NIGHT
Jeanna Kamp

God alone can give us songs in the night.

PRAYING FOR THE PREACHER FROM PSALM 20
David Shumate

We can legitimately apply the spiritual blessings of Psalm 20 to our minister.

BUT PRAYER …
Ron Cochran

Prayer can and should be made without ceasing, fervently, for the many and varied needs that the Lord allows us to experience daily.

PERSEVERING IN PRAYER
Kim Melton

We often believe that God is able to answer our prayers, but do we believe that He will?

PRESSING INTO PRAYER
Nathan Mestler

Many people have dynamic prayer lives, but few who would say that they could not deepen their prayer life.

Departments:

MAILBAG

ON THE HOME FRONT

NEWS FROM ALL OVER

HEART TO HEART: I Know My Mom Prays
Carol (Bumgardner) Deatrick

AT A GLANCE: Praying to Our Father (Matthew 6)
Layton Talbert

WITH THE WORD TO THE WORLD: Does Prayer Matter?
Jim Tillotson

REGIONAL REPORTS

CHAPLAIN’S REPORT: Finding Life-Giving Peace
Brittany Torres

EVANGELIST’S PERSPECTIVE: The Great Price Paid
Jerry Sivnksty

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