Prayer: Glory, Fruit, and Joy

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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Prayerlessness as Unbelief and the Need for a Biblical Framework

I struggle some with what we would call relative prayerlessness. What does prayer do? Why is it here? Why do we pray? And several years ago, a theologian named D .A. Carson said, if you want to embarrass the average Christian, ask them about their prayer life.

And he references a large conservative seminary that did a study of men and women preparing to go overseas. And about six out of a hundred of them had anything close to what he considered a vibrant prayer life.

And that would be, by the way, that they prayed more than five minutes a day. And so most of us would consider maybe some seminary students to be, you know, sometimes they're like varsity level Christians and they should just know better because they're going overseas and they're going to ministry, kind of special ops, special forces.

And so numbered among them is the rest of us. And let's just be honest. Why do we struggle with this? Why do we struggle with prayer? Most of us might say, well, it's just a self-discipline issue. If I'd grit my teeth and just force myself to do it more often, it wouldn't be a problem.

And we think it's discipline, but we treat it almost like it's the reason why we don't exercise on a regular basis or why we have that New Year's resolution that I know for most of us has already broken that resolution.

And so this self-discipline doesn't help us. Others would say that we just struggle with making it meaningful. It's like we have this expectation of this sweet hour of prayer that where we'll kind of like get swept up by Jesus into the third heaven where he'll pour kind of Holy Ghost oil on our head and we'll just have this sweet hour of prayer.

And again, if we're honest, most of us try to pray and we come to about maybe the 20-minute mark and then we start thinking about world events. Say the Canadian military deciding that it's going to use a citizen guerrilla warfare strategy against the states should they invade.

And it's hard to imagine they'll do that since they're taking all our guns. But anyways, and then we have no idea how we got into that situation. Thank you stream of consciousness. And so we're just praying and our mind just wanders.

And I've spoken to some of the people in our church and they tell me that every time they hear the old hymn, sweet hour of prayer, that they're just like this just isn't my experience. Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer that calls me from a world of care and bids me at my father's throne make all my wants and wishes known.

In seasons of distress and grief, my soul has often found relief and often escaped the tempter's snare by thy return, sweet hour of prayer. Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, the joy I feel, the bliss I share of those whose anxious spirits burn with strong desire for thy return with such a hasten to the place where God my savior shows his face and gladly take my station there and wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer.

And that's what our experience is every time, right? It's okay to admit it's not. I mean we come here to confess our sins one to another so that we can be healed. But this is what we understand. The point is that it's just not always a sweet hour, rapturous hour of prayer like we want it to be.

And others would say that they're just not sure what prayer does. And no one wants to admit this in church, but we just don't know what it does. Sometimes we pray and things happen. Sometimes we don't pray and things happen.

Sometimes we pray and things don't happen. And sometimes we forget to pray all together and they happen anyway. And I'm just not sure we would say what prayer is about. And so you guys have to stop looking at me like that.

Like this is, I'm the only one that experiences this. But I know that sometimes this is the way it seems. And yet prayerlessness at its core is a gospel problem. It is not believing what God has said about you or what he has said about himself.

These are two of the points that one of our elders spoke to the youth just a couple years ago. And he asked one of the youth, he said, and I think what he was saying is he asked them what is the basis for our prayerlessness?

And the answer was unbelief. But if we're to be a people who pray just as we prayed we would be, then we must become a people who know what and why we are to pray. And I don't have the time this afternoon to give kind of a comprehensive message on prayer.

But I do want to take and look at, deal with three things that God gave us in the gospel of John about prayer. So let's first, let's sketch the part of the picture that John gives us about prayer. He deals with our praying mainly in three places and I'll read them to you.

And then sketch some of the picture that emerges. The first one is that God would be glorified. So you'll see this and you can you can write it down. You're going to have to keep your fingers in these three passages because they're not all in the same.

But it's in John chapter 14 verses 13 and 14. And it says, whatever you ask in my name this I will do that the father may be glorified in the son. If you ask me anything in my name I will do it. The second passage we'll look at in John that shows us that one of the things we're supposed to pray, why we're supposed to pray is we would bear much fruit.

So he says this in chapter 15 verses 7 and 8. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and now it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

You did not, you did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name he may give it to you.

And then the last one is chapter 16 verses 23 through 24. That our joy would be full. Truly, truly I say to you whatever you ask of the father in my name he will give it to you until now you have asked nothing in my name.

Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full. And so as we look at this I want to look at the first one. That the father may be glorified in the son. And Jesus connects our prayer with the glory of God.

We'll get to that in a second why that's so important. But Jesus connects our prayer with the glory of God and with our own role as the mediator between God and and us. And so verse 13 says whatever you ask in my name this I will do that the father may be glorified in the son.

I want you to notice first that we pray in Jesus's name. We end our prayers that way all the time don't we? In Jesus's name we pray amen. We pray in Jesus's name. Sometimes we do it all muscle memory more than realizing the weight of what we're saying when we pray that.

We pray in Jesus's name not our own and it's because we have no right to do anything good from God to get anything good from God apart from what Jesus has done for us in taking away our sins. We have no right.

And also in providing us a robe of righteousness that God finds acceptable. And so we are accepted in God's presence only because of Christ. And we can only come to God through Christ. He is the only mediator.

That's true for salvation and it remains true for supplication. The second thing in this text I want you to notice is that God is glorified in answering our prayer. Oh and I can't wait to tell you at the end why this is important.

But notice what he says. Whatever you ask in my name this I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. And so when Jesus says that the aim of all prayer is that God the giver might be glorified in Jesus the mediator.

He puts prayer in this radical God-centered context. And that explains why he does not need to qualify the word whatever. Because sometimes we're like we're going to pray whatever and he'll give it to me.

A Ferrari? A great job? A spouse? Like we whatever. But he doesn't need to qualify that. Because in 1 Corinthians 10 31 what does he say? Whatever you do, do to the glory of God. And by the way he includes eating and drinking.

You don't pray that mom makes the best meal tonight because I'm hungry. He says whatever you do whether eating or drinking the most mundane thing we do, do to the glory of God. And so he says in this passage whatever you ask God will do.

And this isn't health and wealth gospel. We all wonder how extensive though that whatever is. So if we if we make it absolute we deny the glory of God as the aim of the prayer. And you say why is that?

Well it's because we can all think of prayers that do not glorify God. Like if I were to pray for a Ferrari. You said how is that not glory for God? I would have fun driving it. That's not for his glory though.

So he if God answered them in other words he would not be glorified. So he would be discredited or dishonored. Another example okay. God my mother-in-law. No I'm kidding. I have unbelievably good wonderful in-laws and some of you don't but that's okay.

But God please make me more important to myself for instance. He wouldn't answer that. But if I said God please make you more important to me God would be glorified. We could say God wipe off this ethnic group or that ethnic group off the planet.

God would not answer that because he would not be glorified. And you can choose your hatred whatever it is but God wouldn't is not going to support it. God please make this or that thing godly to me. This one sin that I have make it godly to me so I can do it once a week.

God will not answer it. God blind the CRA to all the times I've lied on my taxes. God is not going to answer it. God please put my competitor out of business. Do you get what I'm where we're going? Jesus says whatever you ask and the whatever is qualified by the end of the verse that the father may be glorified in the son.

Prayer exists like everything else to show that God is supremely glorious. And therefore any prayer that does not imply hallowed be thy name as the main desire has no claim to this verse. The second thing in verse in chapter 15 that we may bear much fruit.

Abide if you abide in me. In my words abide in you. Ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. For by this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. And here's the qualification in this verse is explicit.

If you abide in me and my words abide in you. That's the qualification. Then your prayers are heard. And this is not an all or nothing statement but it's a matter of varying degrees. In other words no one is ever so completely full of Christ's words that every request they make always is accordance with God's will.

What I'm saying is as we prayed earlier we all fall short of the glory of God. Which means we never go into prayer completely so full of God that that that he is bound to answer our prayers exactly the same way.

But it's in varying degrees. One writer said that God often answers our prayers the way we would have prayed if we knew what he knows. But there are degrees. You are more or less saturated with the word of Christ and more or less in tune with God's will when you pray.

And that's true almost every day. And so verses the verse verse eight links the praying of verse seven with the glory of God through fruit bearing. By this my father would be glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

So it seems that the answered prayers of verse seven are prayers that mainly have to do with fruit bearing. Ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit.

So here's the mission. Enjoy answered prayers. And this connection is is powerfully reinforced in verse 16. That you in verse 16 it says you and you have to read it carefully and watch the connections.

You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit that your fruit should abide. So far as he says that he chose his disciples to go and bear fruit. That's what he said so far.

That's our mission. Go and by the gospel change people so that they believe in Christ and become loving people who join you in bearing fruit of the spirit. And then he adds at the end of verse 16 the reason they are given this mission.

So that whatever you ask in the father ask the father in my name you may he may give it to you. I mean that's amazing. You're chosen for a mission of fruit bearing. All of us every one of us are chosen for a mission of fruit bearing.

Why? So that the father would answer your prayers. I mean this isn't too much different than the great commission where where Jesus there Jesus is with us in a unique and supernatural way when we are on mission.

Go make disciples and I am with you always. I was extremely convicted with this when I when I was when I was considering these things a little while ago and then this week when I was looking over it again.

And I thought to think for instance how often do I pray that God would cause me to bear fruit in parenting? You know and some of you think you you go this kind of figure this out because you know we're using the old Puritan principles of parenting so it's going to turn out right.

But I can tell you that God is more powerful than the Puritans. And I love the Puritans by the way. If you get into the Puritan paperbacks it's a good thing. But some of you think that God couldn't use you at all because of your past and even in the present state of your obedience and sanctification.

Both of these ignore God. Whether you think you're doing really well or whether you think you can't do well at all. How often do you pray that God would cause you to bear fruit in your home, in your work, in your church, in your neighborhood?

How often do you pray for this? And let me just repeat this and allow the Spirit to convict you the way He did me this week. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done.

By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Don't you want that? Don't you want a life that before the Lord it proves that you're His disciple? This is one of the things people say, I struggle sometimes with my salvation.

Well abide in Christ and let His words abide in you and pray that God would bear fruit in you. And so as He does it proves He says that you're His disciples. So go bear fruit so that whatever you ask the Father in my name He may give it to you.

You have a mission so that you may enjoy having your prayers answered. You say, well I don't know about that. This is where I get the image that prayer is, as one author put it, a wartime walkie-talkie.

Not just a domestic intercom. Anybody ever have a house that had an intercom? Nobody? Just me? That was an old house. And so what happened would be in every one of the rooms there's an intercom and it's connected all the way through the house.

So mom instead of saying it's supper time, she would just go it's supper time. And so we'd be in our room and like what's that? What mom? There's an intercom and that's just kind of in the house and there's nothing nothing really about that.

But a wartime walkie-talkie is different. We had an elder that moved to Colorado recently. Again, as I mentioned, he was teaching our youth about this. But this is where prayer is. It exists for advancing the mission, not for calling the butler to turn up the thermostat.

Prayer exists for the mission, not something domesticated, not to tell you it's dinner time. Not that God is opposed to practical kind of nitty-gritty daily prayers, but He simply wants all of them to relate to the mission of your life, which is that His name would be glorified, and that people live for fruitful ministry.

And that's the first petition in the Lord's Prayer. Hallowed be your name. The second is bring your kingdom. The third is cause your will to happen here in the same way that angels do in heaven. And only now under the mission comes the fourth petition, give us this day our daily bread.

And so Jesus says that our prayers get answered in proportion to the way that the Word of Christ is shaping our requests according to His will. And we'll get to that in a moment. And that that prayer, that kind of a prayer exists for the glory of God, and that kind of prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie, not a home intercom.

Prayer as a Means of Grace and a Duty of Faith

All requests serve the mission, or the thing malfunctions in our hand. And the third thing I to see is that our joy would be full. Third John, or third, sorry, John brings in John chapter 16, he brings to us another great purpose for prayer, and that is our joy.

And I want to stop for a second there, because sometimes we get into this place where we don't think that God wants us to have joy. Sometimes it's kind of like we have to be in this kind of, you know, our brow furrowed, you know, and kind of like say, I got to, I got to be there in this kind of state of mind, and it's like God actually wants our joy to be full.

And He says this, truly, truly I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He will give to you. Until now you have nothing, you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive that your joy will be full.

Everything that we've said so far applies here. Only here Jesus says that God answers prayer for this reason also, that your joy may be full. How does the aim of, how does the aim of prayer to glorify God and the aim of prayer to bring us joy fit together?

They fit together because if we find our joy in seeing God's glory, and in the manifestation of that glory for others to see, then when He's glorified, we get glad. You follow? And when we are glad in His glory, He's glorified all the more.

Amen. I mean, think, you've heard this maybe from, from John Piper before, that God is most glorified when we are most what? Satisfied in Him. All right, this is, this is the reality. God says, I want you to pray, and this is one of the reasons I want you to pray is so that your joy will be full.

So in all these three texts, Jesus is calling us to, to be, to serious, I think, but joyful, Christ-dependent, God-glorifying prayer. So I'm joining Him in this call, and I'm asking you, would you set your heart to pray more earnestly, more seriously, more joyfully, and with greater discipline as you put your faith in the mediator who is Jesus Christ and seek to exalt God as glorious in your life?

Now, here's some practical suggestions. I have three. First one is to set a time every day to pray. What I mean by that is don't leave prayer to chance. There are times for that, right? There are times where something happens, and then, oh, God, help me.

But don't leave prayer to chance. Set a time to do it every day. You say, every day? I haven't been doing it twice a month. Every day. You can start tomorrow. You say, well, what if I skip a few days?

We'll start again. There's never a wrong time to start doing right, amen? The second thing I would suggest is that you combine it with reading the Bible and that you take what you find in the Bible and pray through it, and there's a lot of ways to look at that.

Sam and I were talking earlier about Don Whitley's book on praying through the Bible. I would consider, I would suggest that for you. The third thing that I would suggest is to pray in concentric circles and make the aim of each circle the glory of God.

So what I mean by that is you can work from the outside in or from the inside out. For example, pray for your own soul, then for your family, then for your friends and your colleagues, and then for your church, and then for the wider ministries and the global ministry of Christ, and then, as we did earlier, for the political leaders of our land, and let what you ask be at least partly shaped by what you just read in the Bible.

And so I think the hard, the hard truth is most Christians don't pray very much. I mean, we pray at meals, right? Unless we're still stuck in our kind of adolescent age stage of like calling good habits legalism.

But we whisper prayers before a tough meeting. You know, we say something brief as we crawl into bed, but very few set aside a time to pray alone, and very few, even more, think it's worth it to meet with others to pray.

And we wonder why our faith is weak. We wonder why our hope is feeble, and our passion for Christ is small. Even as I say this, the devil is whispering to us all over this room saying, Tim's getting legalistic now.

He's starting to guilt us. He's getting out, he's getting out the law now. And it is true that intentional regular discipline, earnest, Christ-centered, God-glorifying, joyful prayer, is it true that all that is just a duty?

Do I go to prayer with many of others all the week, whether it's on the phone or other places in their hour of trial? Do I just do that out of duty? Is it just discipline? You can call it that. I think it is a duty in the way that it's a duty of a scuba driver.

Scuba diver to put on their air tank before they go into water. I say that prayer is a duty in the same way that it's a duty for soldiers in combat to clean their loaded rifles. Actually, you should unload your rifle before you clean them.

Pro tip. It's a duty in the same way that hungry people eat food. It's a duty in the same way that thirsty people drink water. It's a duty in the same way that diabetics take insulin. People use theology, even good theology, to dismiss the importance of prayer.

And there are some, and I've heard these arguments, that would say that if God is sovereign, what difference does it make to pray? And if you think that tonight, I would say that you don't know what it means for God to be sovereign over all things.

But to help you, think about this. You understand that the early church got this, don't you? Like they prayed all night for the release of Peter. All night. When's the last time one of us prayed all night?

They prayed all night for the release of Peter. And they didn't just mention it once and then switch to sports center and leave it to the will of God. Paul got it. God had to send a messenger to Paul, in fact, to tell him to stop, let it go.

Because he was praying and praying and praying and praying. And God sends an angel, a messenger to him and says, hey, listen, just stop. God says stop praying, to let it go. He has a different plan. And this is how God works.

And so how does this work with God's sovereignty? I don't know. I know that Isaiah 46 .10 says where it says that God knows the beginning from the end, which means that He knows my prayers before I pray them.

I know Philippians 2 .12 and 13, where God works in me both to will and to do of His good pleasure. And that means that the very impulse in me to pray comes from Him. And I start thinking about that and my mind just wants to explode.

And I know that it all works together and I don't know how. But what I do know is that God has sovereignly decided to enact His will through prayer. And there are things that will happen if we pray and things that won't happen if we don't pray.

That's what I know. And again, this is a ploy from the old deceiver to get you to argue about theology and miss the importance of prayer. An old Princeton theologian, A .A. Hodge, said it this way, and I'll summarize it like this.

Does God know the day you will die? Yes. Has He appointed that day? Yes. Can you do anything to change that day? No. Then why do you eat? He says to live. What happens if you don't eat? You die. Then what happens if you don't eat and you die?

Was that the day God appointed for you to die? And then he says it, I'm paraphrasing, and then he says it kind of this way, is just quit asking stupid questions and just eat. Because eating is the way that God has pre-appointed for living.

And prayer is the pre-ordained way that God has appointed for getting His will done on earth. And it is pride and unbelief and rebellion that sits around and speculates about questions about the sovereignty of God and prayer when simple obedience is commanded.

And I want you to understand that prayer is a means of grace. It is a gift from God. I hate the devil and I hate the way that he's killing some of you by persuading you that it is either legalistic to be in regular prayer or that it is like eating or sleeping or using the internet that we just don't really need at all.

You don't need to be that way. And he's laughing at how easy it is to deceive Christians about the importance of prayer. God has given us a means of grace. If we do not use them to their fullest advantage, our complaints against Him will not stick.

If we don't eat, we starve. If we don't drink, we get dehydrated. If we don't exercise a muscle, it atrophies. If we don't breathe, we suffocate. And just as there are physical means of life, there are spiritual means of grace.

Resist the lie of the devil and get a bigger breakthrough in prayer than you've ever had before and just do it. I don't believe that these truths ultimately will be enough to awaken prayer in us. I believe that over the next year, the ones and the ones to come, that God is going to awaken prayer and earnest prayer in His people.

Now what about Zechariah 13 verses 8 and 9? He said, you didn't bring up that passage earlier. Well, I am now. It tells us one of the main ways that God awakens earnest prayer in His children, namely in the refining fires of suffering.

And don't worry about when this passage is talking about. Just see for now how God works and use this word to prepare yourself for God's awakening. He says in verse 8, the whole land declares the Lord two-thirds shall be cut off and perish and one-third shall be left alive.

So the one-third represents God's remnant is faithful, imperfect, weak people who do not pray in the kind of discipline and desperation and joy and hunger for God that they should. So what is God's remedy?

In verse 9, and I will put this third into the fire and refine them as one refines silver and test them as gold is tested. And notice carefully what happens. In His great love, God saved the one-third from being cut off with the two-thirds who perish in verse 8.

And then as part of His love for them, He puts them in the fire to be tested and refined. And this is normal Christianity. Beloved, do not be surprised. This is Peter now. Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes to you to test you as though something strange happened to you.

But what is it that God wants to see change in His people? Verse 9, I will test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name and I will answer them. That's all He mentions. Nothing about their sin, nothing about their money, nothing about their power struggles, none of that.

He just says when they come through the fire, they will pray to me and I will answer them. God puts His people through the fire to awaken earnest prayer. And this was the unexpected jolt from Zechariah at the end of that year.

And please don't be among the number. I'm pleading with you. Don't be among them who take suffering designed to teach us to pray and make it the reason that you give up on prayer. You see what I'm saying?

Some enter the fiery testing and instead of learning to call on God, learn the opposite. In Zechariah chapter 13 verse 9 is in the Bible as God's sweet promise to help you profit from this training. And He lures us with a promise.

I will say they are my people. And they will say, they will say the Lord is my God. Almost 500 years ago, John Calvin commented on Zechariah 13 9 and he said that these words I think are more true today than ever.

He said, it is therefore necessary that we should subject, that we should be subject, subject sorry, from first to last to the scourges of God in order that we may from the heart call on Him. For our hearts are enfeebled by prosperity so that we cannot make the effort to pray.

And I ask you, would you resolve even with me that this simply will not be true of us? That our hearts would be so enfeebled by prosperity that we cannot make the efforts to pray. One of the things I want to end with is to take you back to the scene in Revelation chapter 5.

The scene in Revelation chapter 5 is something that just hit me hard at the end of last year and into this year. In Revelation, he talks about bulls. And it's not, he's not grabbing some random household object off the shelf, you know, saying, sure, this will work.

No, these bulls have a long, meaningful history in the Old Testament. And if we were to take the time to look at it, we would see that in the Old Testament, they were used in the tabernacle and in the temple, and they were sacred.

They were golden. They were set apart. They were for the offerings of blood and incense. They were for worship. In other words, the bulls were never about destruction first. They were about worship. Priests would carry them into the presence of God carefully, reverently, nothing casual about it.

They weren't weapons. They were containers that mattered deeply to God. And then you get to Revelation chapter 5, and we see this scene where John sees a scroll. And there's a question, is anyone able to open the scroll?

And he looks around and nobody can do it. And he begins to weep. And an angel standing beside him says, stop weeping for there is one that can open the scroll. And he says, I looked and there it was. It was a lamb that had been slain, as though it was a lamb who had been slain.

He sees under the throne and he comes out and he grabs a hold of that scroll. And when he takes a hold of that scroll, it says that there was the elders and the beasts and those, they bow down and they start to worship, but they bring this bowl of incense.

And then it says in Revelation 5 that what's in the bowl is the prayers of the saints. And I thought to myself, what does this even mean? What does the prayer of the saints have to do with any of this?

But it shows us that it's being poured out here. And I believe that these bowls are finally poured out in Revelation, that it's not God losing his temper, it's God answering prayers. And I believe that that reframes for me everything.

In the Old Testament, right, blood in the bowls were part of the atonement. It acknowledged that there was an injustice, a sin, costly, serious. In Revelation, the bowls acknowledge the same. Evil has weight.

It spills, it stains, it can't be ignored. And there's something that is deeply uncomfortable and yet deeply hopeful here at the same time. Bowls are poured deliberately. Now at home, if you have small children, most bowls that are poured aren't deliberate, right?

They're dumped in chaos, but not here. They're flung in rage, but not here. It's not that God was just kind of pushing everything across his desk in anger. No, this is intentional. It's measured. It's sacred even in judgment.

And Revelation is saying that God's justice flows from the same holiness as his mercy, and so, which means that judgment is not God abandoning his character. And we find this in this bowl that has the prayers.

Keeping in mind that this is what Revelation is telling us, is quietly telling us something very powerful. First of all, nothing, including your prayers, that is offered to God, is forgotten. Do you understand that?

Revelation 5 is saying that the prayers that we're saying that we all want to be part of and we all want to be praying for, for the glory of God and for bearing fruit and for our joy, that he's like, he collects them as though they're incense in a bowl.

Nothing offered to God is forgotten. No prayer disappears. You ever hear somebody say, my prayers just hit the ceiling and come back down? Because that's what it feels like. I can tell you by this word that that's not true.

God hears every one of his children's prayers and he keeps them. No injustice gets shrugged off forever. The same bowls that once carried prayers will carry justice. And that's what it means that the God of Revelation is the same God of the Old Testament.

He's still holy, still patient, still attentive, still committing to make all things right, still listening to our prayers. And so I just want to encourage you. I know it's the end of January, but never a wrong time to start doing right.

Commit to prayer. I heard somebody pray about a prayer time. Commit to come to it. Commit to pray for your church. Commit to pray for each other. If you have to start writing names in a book, just do it.