This article appeared in the April, 1964 issue of the Moody Monthly.  It will appear dated since so many churches do not have prayer meetings any more.   A sad commentary on our churches.



                 Which of these habits hinder others  When You Lead in Prayer




        SOMETIMES I cringe inwardly when
certain people begin to pray ­not because they are not earnest or that God does not hear, but because I have to listen. It isn't that God does not answer prayer, though I fear that many. Christians go through the motions of "praying" for years without having experi­enced an answer from God. Nor is it that I do not pray myself, for I do. However, as I look at my own prayer' experience, I feel that we Christians have fallen into a rut in our prayer habits.
Let's take a flashback look at last week's prayer meeting. Listen to Mr. Still-Small-Voice. When he be­gins to pray, he speaks so softly that even in the hushed atmosphere of prayer meeting his voice can scarcely be heard. You never know what he is praying about so that you can  pray with him or when he's through so that you can pray audi­bly yourself.
On the other extreme is the booming voice of the deacon. When he opens his mouth to pray it seems as if he is trying to holler all the way  to heaven!
We must settle somewhere be­tween the two extremes. Unless others hear, they cannot pray with us. But neither do we have to shout. For God is much nearer to us than our own souls are to our bodies.

        + No matter how much the pastor preaches on prayer. And emphasizes that we should be specific about our requests to God, we aren't!
Before we have opened our prayer time together, for instance, I have often said explicitly, "Now let us be 'very specific and concise. Limit your requests to people, not gen­eralities; to needs, not ambigui­ties."
What happens? Someone will start like this: "Dear Lord, we thank Thee for the blessings that You have given to us. Forgive us of our every sin. We pray for our church that it might be a beacon to our community. Be with those who could not come tonight. Be with those who are sick among us. We pray for our leaders in the na­tion's capital. We pray for our mis­sionaries as they labor on the for­eign fields. We thank Thee that we could come tonight and pray that You will bless everyone every­where. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen!"
By the time the person has fin­ished praying, he has covered everything under the sun and there's nothing left for anybody else to pray about! When Jesus said, "Ask and ye shall receive," it is my conviction that He meant something in the way of a specific request.

        + THEN there's the habit of dupli­cation in our prayers. After the first person has prayed, three or four people pray for the same things, quite often in the same  words. Perhaps the practice is based on the theory that many words will please God or that He needs to be reminded very emphati­cally that this request is needed.
When the spirit of prayer pre­vails and one request is offered as the corporate utterance, to ask again for the same thing is just verbosity. It is true that George Miiller prayed sixty years for the conversion of some men, but he did it in sixty years, not in a "world's record" fashion.
This naturally leads me to the "longness" of our prayers. It thrills me to have a dozen people praying briefly and to the point.  But what actually happens? One ­of the group prays for ten minutes .­and the rest of them miss the joy of fellowship in prayer.

        + LEAVING our prayer meeting for a minute, let's take a look at our services. It has often occurred to me that there is too much praying in church. That may seem heret­ical to you at first, but examine your program in Sunday school, morning worship and young people's meetings and you, will dis­cover that prayer sometimes be­comes only a "time-filler."
Here's what happens. We open our Sunday school with prayer. We have prayer after the reading of the lesson in the opening meeting, prayer before we go to class, and then in class again. When the class is brought to a close, it is with more prayer. Back in the closing exercise we have another prayer before Sunday school is officially over.
The invocation starts the morn­ing service. The pastoral prayer follows the responsive reading. The offering is dedicated in prayer. Be­fore the sermon often the pastor will say, "Let's pray before we look into God's Word." A brief prayer concludes the sermon. Then prayer is often used as a "decoy" for the beginning of an invitation and for the conclusion. Finally, still another prayer is offered before the congregation is dismissed.
Now I would rather my church be known as a praying church more than anything else - either rich, beautiful, active, great or growing. But how much of this prayer time is "filler" and how much is real prayer?

        + CONNECTED with prayer in the church is a habit some preachers have of calling upon people to pray without giving them any warning. Of course, some good brother will now say, "Well, the Christian' ought to be ready to pray any time!"
But that isn't the point. Even as a pastor I do not like to visit another church and be asked to pray without warning. Prayer is not like putting a nickel in the juke box and having the record come out. Too many prayers sound just like that--mechanical. I like to be in a meditative attitude be­fore I attempt to lead anyone into the presence of God.
The danger of prayer becoming a routine is also a problem for the home. As the head of my home I find it difficult to keep out of the rut in giving "thanks" at our daily meals. Often we mumble something about "blessings" for conscience's sake, but this kind of prayer never stirs the heart.

        + ALSO disturbing to me is the vocabulary we use in our prayers. If I could have been in the prayer circle on the day of Pentecost and, then have been transplanted to a modern day prayer meeting, I am sure that in many I would feel lost. We use trite expressions and meaningless phrases in prayer that we never use in everyday life. We speak in prayer in a form that is absolutely ridiculous in conversa­tion.
I remember a pastor that prayed something like this (the form, not the substance): "Lord, we thank Thee, Lord, for this day, Lord, because, Lord, You have been good, Lord, to us. Now, Lord, as we study, dear Lord, Thy Word, dear Lord, give us strength, dear Lord, to understand, Father, Thy Word of Life, dear God. We ask, dear Father, this in Jesus' name. Amen. "
We would never hold a conversa­tion with a friend in this manner. Can you imagine saying, "Joe, I want you, Joe, to know, Joe, that you, Joe, are one of my best friends, Joe, and I consider, Joe, that I, Joe, have much, Joe, to thank you, dear Joe, for"?
This may seem exaggerated but it is actually the form of many of our prayers. If we don't know what to say next, we throw 'in the name of the Lord. If we could hear our­selves as God does, it would make us cringe at the way we pray.
Have you ever thought about such rhetorical expressions as "bless the hands that have pre­pared this food" or "bless this sermon" or "set us on fire for Thee" ?
Some modern expressions creep into our prayers: "Keep us on the ball" or "help us to stay on the firing line."
Distortions of doctrine also slip in, like: "Make us worthy of Thy blessings" (we are never worthy of them). Or we demand of God that He do something without in­serting that vital clause, "if it be according to Thy will." Prayer is sometimes made for the healing of someone without this provision. We must be careful to pray for those things that are in accordance with His will.
      
           + .Now I need to put the record straight. I am not against prayer. God has commanded us to be in a spirit of prayer all the time. I do not need to tell you that often I fail. I am not discouraged to the point that I will never go to a prayer meeting again. I do not know that we can point to some of our church functions and say that we have apostolic sanction for them. But the prayer meeting has strong apostolic precedent.
I think that many of the early Christians would have given up a week's wages, a big fat dinner and an evening's enjoyment of TV just to be in prayer meeting for such a day as Pentecost.
I feel that when the twelve prayed, they prayed with simplic­ity, talking to their risen Lord about specific problems they were laboring under in His kingdom.
When they prayed they didn't fumble around with meaningless phrases. Heaven responded to their prayers. The place was shaken and the disciples were possessed by the Holy Spirit. Their vigorous prayer life was contagious. I would like ours to be also.
END



Dallas Roark, a former pastor in Illinois and Iowa. is on the faculty of Wayland Baptist College. Plainview. Tex.

Moody Monthly , April,  1964