GROWTH IN GODLINESS
The Purpose of Prayer
The purpose of prayer is to worship and glorify God by valuing His divine nature, eternal existence, unchanging character, and incomprehensible attributes. However, valuing God is something that sinners will not do. At the cross, humanity proved its propensity to call for God's death in the light of countless encounters with His compassion and mercy for sinner's infirmities and demonic possessions. Prayer only arises from repentant sinners, never from fraudulent saints.
The Purpose Of Prayer Is God's Glory
Here are a few quotes from The Bible College of Wales about the Welsh revival in 1904.
"It truly was a revival where God poured out His presence unilaterally and without focus on any man. It is a divine visitation in which God moves in answer to a praying people."
"All over the country, testimonies of hardened souls receiving salvation and lives being changed were the talk of the town. The impact of the Lord's hand was noticed evidently in the lives of people. Stories of profanity silenced, theaters deserted, courts abandoned due to a lack of crime, and bars shutting down were commonplace. Sales of beer and alcohol declined steeply while pocket testaments were snapped up like hot cross-buns as people hungered for the Bread of Life and true living waters."
The undeniable distinctive of revival is the authentic repentance of sinners that is noticeable, tangent, and without pretense of any kind.
God is glorified in His answering the prayers of His children. God calls for obedience; when His children are disobedient, it is difficult for them to know His will. Faithless people do not pray prayers that get answered.
Matthew 17:19-20, "Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not drive it out?" And He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith." The littleness of their faith proves their self-sufficiency and lack of praying. Mark 9:29, "And He said to them, "This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer."
The Purpose of Prayer Is Lost By Pretenders
Assemblies of God Newspaper Article, 1999
"Expectancy of revival intensified in Los Angeles, California, when believers there heard about the remarkable revival in Wales, where from September 1904 to June 1905, 100,000 people were converted to Christ. For the evangelicals worldwide who had been praying for the outpouring of the latter rain of the Spirit as promised by the Old Testament prophet Joel (2:23–29), the spectacular results in Wales suggested that the great end-times revival had begun."
The Azusa Street Revival was a Pentecostal religious movement in Los Angeles, California, from 1906 to 1915. African American preacher William J. Seymour led it. The revival was characterized by Speaking in tongues; Participants spoke in other tongues as a sign of being baptized with the Holy Spirit. Miracles and Ecstatic experiences were also said to be a part of the revival.
Revival, as seen during the Pentecost of the Book of Acts, was one of calling sinners to repentance and the astounding transformation of those who called for Christ's crucifixion into men of God willing to sacrifice themselves to death for His sake. Revival is not calling church people to practice self-awareness by spotlighting them as spiritually unique.
Praying is sacrificing oneself in private for the spiritual betterment of the brotherhood and the salvation of the lost. The individual always benefits from praying, but that is not the chief intent. A quote from Edward McKendree Bounds would be helpful at this juncture.
"The earthly career of our Lord Jesus Christ was no mere episode, a sort of interlude, in His eternal life. He is "the same yesterday and today, and forever." This statement is the divine summary of the eternal unity and changelessness of His character. His earthly life was made up largely of hearing and answering prayer. His heavenly life is devoted to the same divine business.
Much demonic harm has been inflicted upon the regenerate in the 20th Century by the fakery of the Pentecostal movement. Faith has become a red flag to wave off an act of putting God to the test, being selfish and worldly, or bypassing the divine will. Let us make no mistake that the absence of faith in prayer is the cause of much loss of God's power toward us who say we believe. It is almost shocking to hear about what Jesus could not do in Nazareth. "And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them" Mark 6:5.
Many are the suggestions offered to us by Satan as to why we lay our faith aside as a means of obtaining the will of God. Nevertheless, the just shall live by faith, and such faith that we should expect God to work on behalf of others as ourselves. Expectation is the very means of activating faith. "Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen; it will be granted him" Mark 11:23.
The purpose of prayer is to glorify God who is always faithful to His word. What Jesus said 2,000 years ago is no less trustworthy today.
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