Power of Prayer

For those of you who are like me and have sort of taken a break from praying for your campus this summer, I would like to remind you that now is a good time to start praying that the Lord would lay on your heart His plans for the coming school year. 

Why don’t you pray daily as you spend time with Him as well as try to gather a few friends together to ask God to show you what He would have you do this coming semester to build a movement of prayer, evangelism and discipleship among the lost students at your school?  If you are alone in your town or city right now, consider using something like Skype to pray with other student believers you know who are in other locations.  I have used Skype to pray with believers in other countries and it works just fine (well, if Skype is working, it works just fine!). 

Next week I’m going to ask you to start making some concrete plans for the semester, so you will definitely want to spend extended time with God to ask Him for His thoughts and plans – so that you can be sure that you are not writing down your own human ideas, but are doing the things He would have you do!

The following is an excerpt from a book on student prayer, FIRESEEDS Of Spiritual Awakening, that should encourage you as you persist in prayer:

The Power of Prayer

By Dan Hayes

Through prayer, God has given us the privilege of being used by Him to help change the lives of men and nations. God has made available to us a vast reservoir of power, wisdom, and grace beyond words to define, if only we are willing to believe Him and claim His promises.”                  

– Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ)

Whenever God is ready to do something new with His people, He always sets them to praying.”

– J. Edwin Orr (one of the greatest authorities on the history of religious revivals in the Protestant world)

Prayer has always been the precursor to revival. If we commit ourselves to prayer, there is no limit to what we can see God do. Genesis 32:26 gives us Jacob’s instructive prayer to God: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” This is the kind of fervency and persistence that needs to characterize our prayers. Jacob was saying, “You can’t make it rough enough for me to stop. I am holding on until You fulfill Your promises.”

This is what Jesus was teaching about prayer when He encouraged His followers, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9). Knocking—by definition—is persistent repetition.

This is extremely difficult for us to do. We are addicted to the short term, and with every advance in technology and convenience, and every new button added to our ‘remotes’, that habit intensifies. We pray a while. When no obvious answers are forthcoming, we become distracted or discouraged and quit. But lasting revival is the fruit of persistent prayer: weeks, months, sometimes years of petitioning God for a spiritual brushfire to break forth on our campuses, converting the lost, quickening believers, and drawing the focus of the entire campus to Jesus Christ.

The Prayer of One Person

Consider the influence of just one person. James 5:16 states, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” James goes on to support that idea with the example of Elijah. “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years” (verse 17).

Like us, Elijah was a weak and sinful person, but he loved a great and powerful God. He prayed that it would not rain, so that the degenerate king of Israel, Ahab, would be brought to his knees before God.

God heard Elijah’s prayer, and He answered specifically. For three and a half years there wasn’t a drop of rain. In desperation the people turned to God, and Ahab himself finally admitted his need for divine intervention.

Elijah prayed again. This time he prayed it would begin to rain. And it poured. Through Elijah, James clearly makes the point that “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

Do you believe this? Do you believe that your prayer has the power to make it rain, both physically and spiritually? If so, even if no one joins with you, you need to begin praying for revival on your campus, persistently and expectantly.

 

Please know that I am praying with you that God’s mercy, like a torrential downpour, comes to lost students on your campus as you ask Him to make Himself known!