A Call to Extraordinary Prayer

Have you ever wanted to study the prayers in Acts? I can't say this issue ever arose in my mind, but when someone has written a short book on it, I thought it may be interesting to read. I thought this book would have been more exegetical or technical than it was. Eg, I thought we would look at one prayer, dissect it, put it in a category or two an then move on to the next, then at the end wrap everything up. Instead, this was more looking at the prayers in Acts as a stepping stone to being more pastoral or personal. It moves from a prayer in Acts to other passages in the Bible giving a wider and practical focus to prayer.

Topics looked at in this short book are prayers for mission/evangelism (it is the books of Acts after all), gathering together to pray, prayer as a mark of holiness (I was please J.C Ryle was cited in here), the balance or connection between Word and prayer, prayers for healing and praying for leaders.

Throughout the book, Steve is succinct, clear and offers good frameworks or systems or ideas to help you to pray more. He also shares a little about himself and his struggles with mental illness, and how the church should be willing to make changes if necessary.

I don't highlight books, I can't bring myself to do that (and this copy I am just borrowing from my church), but if I did I would have highlighted the following passage, talking about moving from the guilt of not praying to seeing what prayer is:

"The biblical reasons given for praying are the privilege of communicating with the living God who we can call Father; the privilege of being in intimate and transformative relationship with God and one another; the privilege of having someone we can give thanks to for every good gift; declaring our love to our Lord Jesus; casting our individual and collective burdens on our good and kind God; praying for His kingdom to come in our family, friends, neighbours, city, country and world; asking the Lord of the harvest for more workers to be raised up and sent out; prayer for healing to the God who can heal; and many more." (p70)

Now I should be clear that Steve Nation is a minister at my church. Technically I share an office with him, although so far this year that hasn't happened much due to our holidays being on different times and him recently falling sick. For the last two weeks while Steve has been at home sick he has been praying and asking for things to pray for, and I have given him a whole bunch. Steve practices what he preaches in this book. He is a man of prayer and dependence of God, something I need to work on. Believe it or not, in the last two weeks I have seen two direct answers to prayer (we got a bus for a camp at half price when all other options had previously failed; our Youth Group on Friday night is bringing new people and our small group discussions are going well). I'm not saying it was because Steve prayed and things got done, I am saying it is because people prayed and God heard them and saw fit to grant our requests that they got done.

This year I have made it a priority to attend our Monday lunchtime prayer meeting. I can honestly say, when I come home on a Monday, even though I mostly have a staff meeting and a prayer meeting (and now I meet one-on-one with a year 12 student), I feel like I have had a good day. In one part of this book, it talks about our small group time and Steve wonders why don't we just briefly look at a passage and then pray for the rest of the time. I did that in my group on Tuesday, I don't think it was a waste of time. This book has been helpful in reminding me of these things.

This is a short book that could be read in 3 or 4 sittings and it is worth a look if you want to relook or be remotivated to pray.