Listen to this audio clip: "Bless every one of you who are men and women and prayer"

Updated/shortened March 30, 2006

I was listening to a George Verwer MP3 last week, and was so struck with a three-minute section on prayer that I thought I would share it with you on this blog. This clip (which I have also transcribed into text below) comes from a message George spoke in the States in 2005, and makes up the end of a message on the Armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18).

Click here to listen to this 3-minute (2.5 MB) MP3, and be challenged!

(Click here to listen to this full message, or here to listen to one of 40 other George Verwer MP3 messages.)

Pray without ceasing. - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

The clip in text:

"I want to be honest. I’ve looked across the world for 50 years for men and women of prayer--men and women who take verses like this seriously--and I have not found many. Again, I’m sure many of them keep just it secret and there are men and women of prayer that I have met that I wouldn’t know. I’m sure many of you are men and women of prayer. I wouldn’t just know that through talking to you for a few minutes.

"So bless every one of you who are men and women and prayer – who are praying on all occasions, who are praying for all kinds of people, all kinds of situations. I’m reminded of Thessalonians: “pray without ceasing;” and many of the setbacks in the American church—and there have been many... even in these great, famous churches – have been ripped apart by every kind of sin, every kind of transgression; and I believe much of it is linked with prayerlessness.

"It’s linked with the fact that thousands of pastors threw the prayer meeting out the window 30 years ago when a theologian in a famous book said, “anything in the church you have to push, like the prayer meeting: forget it, it’s not worth it; and 1,000 prayer meeting across America—from Maine to California—were canceled.

"And today we are largely a prayerless church. And then we wonder why our young people are in such a mess. And so much, so much unnecessary divorce, so much immorality, so many people—even leaders—caught up into the world of pornography. We are paying a bitter price in our country for the laying aside of spiritual warfare in the ministry of prayer. I know these words are strong. I don’t say them lightly.

...

"Let us pray. Our God and Father, we thank you for your Holy Word. Like a two-edged sword it cuts in to the very being of our heart. And we come, we come in brokenness and surrender; realizing we have failed, realizing at times we have not worn this whole armor. We’ve left the shield of faith to one side and left the Sword of the Spirit back in the closet. And we come to you, somehow to recommit our lives: to be your men, to be your women – to go where you want us to go, to do what you want us to do. And Lord, even as we receive this, we’re still vulnerable, we’re still very human, we may not even know what to say to one another throughout this day because there’s been a strong Word to our hearts. But oh Lord, enable us not to be hearers of the Word [only], but doers. For we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen."