Copyright © 2018 Michael A. Brown
‘Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Jesus
Christ, sends greetings. He is always
wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God,
mature and fully assured. I vouch for
him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis.’ (Col. 4:12-13)
PAUL, the great apostolic missionary
to the Gentiles and author of many of the epistles in the New Testament, was
evidently a man who was deeply committed and completely sold-out to God’s call
on his life. He worked night and day for
the breakthrough and success of the gospel wherever he went. His description of his life as a servant of
God in 2 Corinthians 6:4-10 makes challenging reading for anyone: great
endurance, troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments and riots,
hard work, sleepless nights and hunger, and so on…
And yet we come to understand the secret
of his ability to persevere through all these things and still carry the burden
of God’s work, of his fruitfulness in ministry as a Spirit-filled and
Spirit-led man of God, and of the fire in his heart for the things of God which
consumed him and continued to burn in him throughout his life, when we discover
his commitment and devotion to being a man of prayer: he prayed day and
night. Over and over again in his
epistles he emphasises the fact that he is praying for the believers he is
writing to:
‘God… is my witness how constantly
I remember you in my prayers at all times.’ (Rom. 1:9)
‘Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer
to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.’ (Rom. 10:1)
‘I have not stopped giving thanks
for you, remembering you in my prayers…’ (Eph. 1:16)
‘In all my prayers for you, I
always pray with joy…’
(Phil. 1:4)
‘For this reason, since the day we
heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you…’ (Col. 1:9)
‘We always thank God for all of
you, mentioning you in our prayers.’
(1 Thess. 1:2)
‘With this in mind, we constantly
pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling…’ (2 Thess. 1:11)
‘I thank God… with a clear
conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers.’ (2 Tim. 1:3)
‘I always thank my God as I
remember you in my prayers…’
(Philmn. v.4)
Furthermore, he also exhorted and
encouraged believers to do the same thing and become people of prayer
themselves, much as he was:
‘Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation,
continuing instant in prayer.’ (Rom.
12:12 AV)
‘And pray in the Spirit on all
occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep
on praying for all the saints. Pray also
for me…’ (Eph.
6:18)
‘Devote yourselves to
prayer, being watchful and thankful.’
(Col.
4:2)
‘Pray continually.’ (1 Thess. 5:17)
‘I urge, then, first of all, that
requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone…’ (1 Tim. 2:1)
‘Pray for us… I particularly urge you to pray so that I may
be restored to you soon.’
(Heb. 13:18-19)
The backcloth to any successful and
fruitful ministry is the fact of prayer.
It is Spirit-filled people who pray, who see success and bear
fruit. A prayer-less ministry is always
a dry and fruitless ministry. A man or
woman (or a group of believers) who has learned the essential lesson of waiting
on God and living in intimacy with him is a person whom God can take, guide and
use. It is people who live in the
atmosphere of praise and prayer behind the scenes who are the ones who bring
heaven’s presence and blessing with them into meetings. Intimacy with God, a heart burdened by the
Holy Spirit, and prayer are the oil which makes the cogs of God’s work go round.
Wherever we turn, we find the same
thing. It is said of Wigglesworth that
he never prayed for more than twenty minutes, and yet he never let twenty
minutes go by without praying.[1] He lived daily and consistently in the
atmosphere of the presence of God, and the power and effectiveness of his
ministry, of course, speak for themselves.
Hyde would pray day and night for long periods, and also fasted for long
periods as the Holy Spirit burdened him.
He oozed the presence of God wherever he went, and God used him mightily
in revival in India.
Judson developed a personal habit of
praying frequently at set hours both during the day and during the night, and
his pioneer ministry brought breakthrough for the gospel in Burma (now
Myanmar). Brainerd, who saw revival
among several communities of native Americans, often devoted one whole day to
prayer and fasting during the week, agonising in prayer. I was reading again just the other day of
Rees Howells who, during one particular period in his life, was compelled to
regularly spend eleven hours a day in prayer over a period of ten months.[2] The examples are inspiring and endless…
In the Scriptures, both David and Daniel
prayed three times a day (Ps. 55:17, Dan. 6:10). Abraham prayed. Moses prayed.
Joshua prayed. The prophets
prayed. Ezra prayed. Nehemiah prayed. Esther prayed. Job prayed.
Jeremiah prayed. Anna prayed. And the Lord Jesus, of course, also spent
time frequently with his Father. We can
see examples of him praying early in the morning (Mark 1:35), during the day
(Mark 6:46) and during the night (Luke 6:12).
Is it any wonder, then, that the presence and power of God was with him
as he ministered to people, and also with these many other people whose lives
and ministries are recorded in the Scriptures?
Although any ministry necessarily demands both
physical activity and time to be spent in meetings or with people, yet in the
Scriptures we see that this is always balanced out with the call to and need
for prayer, as we can see in the many examples above. It is written of the early believers that
‘they devoted themselves to prayer’ as a lifestyle (Acts 2:42, cf. Rom. 12:12,
Col. 4:2). The Greek word used in each
of these three verses means ‘to be earnest towards,’ ‘to persevere in,’ ‘to be
constantly diligent towards,’ or ‘to adhere closely to,’ and such personal
devotion to prayer was the basis out of which they then ministered. So we
should really say that it is prayer which is the primary call in ministry and
that everything we do should flow out of a life increasingly lived in intimacy
with God.
We are called in the first place into a
life of close, loving fellowship with God (Deut. 6:5, 1 Cor. 1:9). So to put prayer first, and then to
minister to others, is to get things in the right order. We
minister out of the spiritual power and presence generated by a life lived with
God. To integrate our activities
into a life of prayer is to strike the right kind of balance between ministry
activities and prayer. It is better to
put it this way round, rather than to say that we should try to make sure that
we integrate some prayer into our life of activity, because, if we are honest
with ourselves, if we try to do it this way round, it never works and we
invariably fail. We simply become too
busy or too tired to pray, and we feel far from God.
In fact, it needs to be emphasised that
prayer is just as much a valid form of work as our overt activities. Paul said of Epaphras’ prayers: ‘I vouch for him that he is working hard for
you.’ (Col. 4:13). It is just that
personal prayer and intercession takes place behind the scenes and is therefore
often unseen by anyone except God himself.
It is away from the public eye and away from people’s attention. Because many people, including believers,
often do not look upon prayer as ‘being active’ or ‘doing something,’ they
often relegate it to being as of secondary importance in comparison to actual
overt ministry activity. However,
whereas people often value only what they can see, feel or concretely measure,
God himself values what is unseen and he rewards us openly for that (Matt.
6:6).
Epaphras was the person under God who was
primarily responsible for taking the gospel to the city of Colosse and seeing
the church planted there. He was gifted
as a pioneer evangelist and was evidently fruitful in his ministry. Paul commends him for his work (Col.
1:7-8). And yet we can also see what
kind of man he was behind the scenes, unseen to the public eye. He was
a man of prayer. Paul describes him
as ‘always wrestling in prayer’ (Col.
4:12). The Greek word translated here as
‘wrestling’ literally means ‘to agonize,’ and can also be rendered as ‘to
struggle,’ ‘to compete for,’ ‘to contend with,’ ‘to endeavour to accomplish
something,’ ‘to fight for,’ or ‘to strive or labour fervently.’ Such words describe the depth of intercession
which was working in the life of Epaphras to break through in the spiritual
realm and to break down and overcome the powers of darkness which stood against
the progress of the gospel. And hence
the success of his ministry…
It is always into such kinds of wrestling
in prayer and intercession that the Holy Spirit will lead a person when he
truly grips their life and has his way with them (Rom. 8:26-27). Such
wrestling and overcoming in prayer behind the scenes is the key to seeing
breakthrough happen overtly in people’s lives as we minister. Genuine effectiveness in ministry is always
accompanied by and made possible by a life of prayer behind the scenes. God
uses people who pray. If we want to
be used by God, then becoming a person of prayer behind the scenes is an
essential lesson we need to learn and master.
Any person who is engaged in ministry, or who wants or needs to see
breakthrough happen in some way or in some situation, must learn to wrestle in
prayer (and fast!) behind the scenes to see success come.
[1] See the quotation at http://www.colindye.com/2013/03/04/smith-wigglesworth-on-prayer/,
accessed 31-08-2018.
[2] Grubb, N. Rees
Howells: Intercessor, CLC: Pennsylvania, 1973, p.193.
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