Why should I pray with a group at church when I can pray at home?

It is Throwback Thursday! I hear this all the time in my church when trying to recruit people to pray with me. We live in a prayerless generation. Our nation wants instant coffee, drive-thru restaurants and pharmacies, online degrees, and e-mail rather than snail mail. We are all about instant gratification, but there are some things in life which have to be done the old-fashioned way. Praying for revival is one of those things which takes time and effort. The Lord does not bless laziness or sin so if we want Him to intervene in our lives and society, then we are going to have to reach out to Him His way and not our way.

Praying at home is a wonderful discipline to have and can bring much satisfaction and answers to prayer, but sometimes we need to pray together. The early church prayed together as well as the churches of other generations. Many churches today do not have prayer meetings because they are dead and people do not want to attend. Perhaps the problem with the prayer meeting is with the people praying and not with the meeting itself. If we want to see power in the churches to win lost people, then the right kind of praying needs to return to the churches. Here are a few words from R.A. Torrey (1856-1928) who was a great preacher of revival around the world.

Worldwide Revival
After finishing the week of prayer at the Bible Institute of Chicago, a woman came to R.A. Torrey and said, “Why not keep up these prayer meetings at least once a week after the week of prayer is over, and pray for a worldwide revival?”

A prayer meeting was established every Saturday night and 300-400 people began to pray. When asked how long they would conduct these meetings, Mr. Torrey’s response was, “Until it comes.”

After they had prayed for some months, he was asked to go to Melbourne, Australia. When he arrived, he learned that a prayer group of 10-12 men who had been praying for years for a great revival in Australia.  He also found a woman who had organized 1,700 neighborhood prayer meetings who met weekly to pray for revival. After preaching for 4 weeks, 8,642 people had made a definite profession of faith in Jesus Christ. When he returned months later to Australia 6,000 of these converts came to hear him again. This revival spread to England, Scotland, and Ireland. This worldwide revival began as a prayer group of 10-12 men. p. 62

What would the Lord do today, if we could get people to come together and pray? I have a difficult time getting a few people to pray, much less 1,700 prayer groups.

Please form a prayer group and pray for Revival and Spiritual Awakening for America. The same God who sent this revival to Australia can send revival to America. Only the Holy Spirit can awaken a dead church. If you are unmotivated to pray, then take a look at my Sin List from A-Z and confess all known sin. Then pray that the Holy Spirit will light your fire for prayer. If you need motivation, then read R.A. Torrey’s book, The Power of Prayer, it is the best book on prayer that I have ever read, which is saying a lot because I read books on prayer all the time.

Torrey, R.A. (2000) The Power of Prayer. Whitaker House, p. 62.

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