No Time Lost Prayer — E.A. Johnston

Prayer Replaced by Activity

We live in a day that's bankrupt of prayer. We live in a day of a prayerless church. We as a church have replaced prayer with activity, and activity is the death of revival, friends. Allow me to share something with you.

The “No Time Lost” Illustration

There's an old painting which hangs in a Spanish gallery. It depicts the following. In the foreground is a man, a peasant farmer who's kneeling in the attitude of prayer. He has removed his straw hat, and it lies beside him.

Behind him is his team of mules and plow, which he also has laid aside for a time of prayer. In the background of the painting is a town village and a steeple with a bell tower, and it's obvious to see that the bell has rung, calling the village to a time of corporate prayer.

But if one looks closely at the painting, in the far right-hand corner is the form of an angel, and the angel has picked up the plow and seems to be moving the team of mules as if to make a fresh furrow in the field.

While the man kneels in prayer, there's a caption at the bottom of the painting in a brass frame, and it has three words, and those three words read, No time lost. Do you get it? When we pray, it's as if all of heaven's resources are enlisted on our behalf.

It's no time lost. Some of our best work is done on our knees, friends. Because when we pray, the forces of heaven are with us. We can get more done in prayer than out of prayer. With this in mind, when will the church rouse herself from her stupor and realize that her full potential lay not in strength of its members' bank accounts or talents or manpower, but in the strength of its members' hell-wrecking prayers?

Prayer as the Church’s Foundation

Without the vital prayer, the church is a weak and uninfluential institution. Without vital prayer, the church is asleep while people perish into hell's fires. Shame on the church that does not have as its center and foundation a vibrant, heaven-wrenching prayer.

We find fault with the disciples, who could not stay awake an hour within a few yards of the divine nature. Christ finds fault with us today because we will not make the time to fall on our faces in desperation and cry out to him for the evils in our land.

We're too busy watching television. We're sitting at our favorite ballgame. When will we awake? When will we count the cost and get on our knees and lay hold of God in hell-bending, heart-wrenching, heartbroken, contrived prayer?

The world waits while the church sleeps. How can we expect, friends, to see a genuine heaven-sent revival if we're not a praying people? Our laziness in prayer is the church's main bane today. She's weak because we are weak, and her weakness lies in our apathy and indifference towards a perishing world and a wicked nation.

The Cost of Discipleship

Listen, friends. In Great Britain and America today, the bane of the church is self-indulgence, self-preservation, and self-centeredness. The gospel message is all about us, served on a man-centered platter at a sumptuous banquet table laden with delicacies.

Other generations knew the price of discipleship and the cost of following a crucified savior. John the Baptist had a platter with his head upon it. Stephen was baptized with stones as he saw Jesus rise from his throne.

Paul finished his ministry not with accolades and applause, but with a fallen ax. The blood of the martyrs cries out against the self of George Church and our generation. I believe the most important thing we can do as a church at this hour is to restart the weekly prayer meeting in old-fashioned, weeping, earnest, God-seeking prayer meeting, not just to pray for Aunt Emma's bursitis, but to pray for the sins of our nation.

The sins of the church, the sins in our own lives. Heaven help us. I can guarantee you one thing, friends, that Satan worshipers are praying. They're praying for the destruction of Christian marriages.

They're praying for the ruination of this country, the ruination of Christian testimonies. They're praying for division and disruption in our churches, and they're praying that believers will have moral failure and a rune witness for God.

Darkness is winning the battle in many areas of the world today where the church exists in name only as its impotence is measured by its lack of prayer. If we truly desire to push back the darkness within our community, then the only way is the pathway of prayer, and that's what we need today, friends, the pathway of prayer when believers unite in one accord, praying with a commitment that they will not cease until they, like Jacob, obtain a blessing.

Then God will pour out his blessings in a heaven-sent answer, in power and in favor. Just take a look at what happened at the Noonday Prayer Meeting in New York and how that impacted the entire nation back in the 1800s, where a young layman by the name of Jeremiah Lamphere set out a weekly message to host a prayer meeting in the North Reformed Protestant Dutch Church.

The Noonday Prayer Meeting and National Revival

And one day, there on Fulton Street in New York City, that Noonday Prayer Meeting was started, and the first day only a handful showed up to pray. The next day a few more came. Soon, there were 20 men in prayer at the noon hour.

In three weeks, this grew to a hundred men gathered from the busyness of their work day to pray before God in the noon hour. Within six months, the city was shaken for God. Over 50 ,000 businessmen were gathering for Noonday Prayer Meetings throughout New York City.

And that revival spread like a prairie fire, friends, going all across the country. But it began with one man. One man's desire to see God move in his city. He wasn't even an ordained minister, but a layman.

And he called together a group of people to pray. And that's what we need, friends, because Psalm 51 -17 declares, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, that will not despise.

Prayer for Healing, Holiness, and Renewal

We should ask God to heal our land, heal our churches, heal our homes, heal the lives of our teenagers, and ask him to tear down the strongholds of the enemy and ask for harmony and holiness among his people.

Oh soon, we could be refreshed from above if we only got together long enough to pray. Listen, friend, you can stand amazed at what God can do when we laid hold of him, when we laid hold of him in bold believing prayer.

Then we will cry out, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, honor, and power. Let us pray.