Your Prayer Can Change Lives

Colossians 4:2-6

Your prayer can change lives. Your prayer can touch situations all around the globe. Think of the situation now in our world where there is conflict–– escalating conflict everywhere you turn. Every time you turn on the news, you hear about it. Whether it’s the news on your car radio or the news on your television set. You hear about the many places where they’re fighting. Israel is one of those places where there is escalating conflict. Daily you hear of someone bombing someone else, of someone killing someone else. And we’re in the midst of this war on terror that is taking us to Afghanistan and, perhaps before it’s all over, to many other places.

When you see what is being played out all over the world, you feel kind of helpless to do anything about it, don’t you? But you’re not helpless. Does the Bible say that we can do anything about what’s happening around the world? Let me suggest to you that there is a way that you can become involved that will make a really big difference in the situation, and that will not require you to take a trip to Washington. It will not require you to buy anything or spend any money. You can pray for people around the world and impact their lives!

Do you think that’s true? Well we believe that’s true intellectually because we see that the Scriptures talk about the power of prayer. But if our prayer life is any indication of how much we believe it, we really don’t believe it a lot because we don’t pray a lot. We need to pray more, because prayer can change our lives and it can change the lives of others around the world.

The story is about Duncan Campbell, a minister of the United Free Church of Scotland. He was a personal friend of Wesley Duewel and told him many stories of God’s amazing guidance during the late 1950’s and ‘60’s in the Hebrides (the islands just west of Scotland) where Campbell was serving.

On the Monday after Easter in 1952, Duncan was seated on the platform after speaking to the Faith Mission Convention in Bangor, Northern Ireland, when he sensed the inner voice say to him, "Berneray!" (That is a small island in the Hebrides.) Duncan bowed his head and prayed silently. Again came the name "Berneray." He prayed on, and the name came a third time.

So Campbell turned to the chairman and whispered, "Brother, you will need to excuse me. The Holy Spirit has just told me that I am to go to Berneray." The chairman objected mildly, "You are the speaker tomorrow." But nothing could stop him. He knew the Spirit had spoken.

He reminded Wesley Duewel, who was telling this story, "I had never been to Berneray, had never known anyone from there, and had never received a letter from anyone there."

He went to the hotel and packed his two suitcases and contacted the airport. There were no connections with Berneray because it was too small and out of the way. So he caught the first flight to the nearest island.

When he got there he went down to the coast and asked how to get to Berneray. The answer from a fisherman was that there is no usual commercial way, but that he would take him for such and such an amount. It was almost the exact amount Campbell had in his pocket.

When they got to Berneray the fisherman returned and left Campbell alone on the shore. He climbed the bluff and found himself on the edge of a plowed field and a farmer not far away. He said, "Please go to the nearest pastor and tell him Duncan Campbell has arrived." The farmer responded, "We don’t have a minister for the church now." "Do you have elders?" Campbell asked. "Yes." "All right, go to the nearest elder and tell him, Duncan Campbell has arrived."

The farmer looked at him quizzically, then started off across the field as Campbell rested on his suitcases. After a while the farmer returned and said, "The elder was expecting you. He has a place ready for you. He has announced the meetings begin at nine o’clock tonight."

While Campbell had been ministering in the convention at Bangor three days earlier, this elder had spent the day praying in his barn for God to send revival to the island. God gave him the promise in Hosea 14:5: "I will be as the dew unto Israel." He claimed it in faith. His wife in the house heard him praying in the barn, "Lord, I don’t know where he is, but You know, and with You all things are possible. You send him to the island." He knew in his heart that God was going to send Duncan Campbell, who had been used in mighty revival in other parts of Scotland, to Berneray. He was so sure that he would be there in three days that he made all the arrangements to use the local church and had announced the services.

Wesley Duewel goes on to say that great revival came to the island of Berneray and a great door for the Word was opened that no man could shut because God opened it. He draws out this lesson: "When God has people who prevail in prayer, and people who know how to recognize the voice of the Spirit and obey without question, there is no limit to what God can do." (Story taken in part verbatim from Let God Guide You Daily by Wesley Duewel, Zondervan, 1988, pp. 117-119.) [From a sermon by John Piper on Col. 4:2-4 "O Lord, Open a door for the Word!" November 12, 1989 at http://www.soundofgrace.com/piper89/11-12-89.htm]

Prayer can change lives, even lives on the other side of the world. Your prayer makes a real difference. It is not a last hope. It is a daily necessity. Let us look very briefly today at what prayer can do–– at how it can change your life and enable you to change the lives of others as well.

Your prayer changes your perspective by bringing you closer to God. Devote yourselves to prayer. The very act of your coming to that point of devotion is in itself a spiritual discipline. In order for you to devote yourself to prayer, you have to carve out the time to pray, make it a priority in your life to pray, and begin to actually do what you are intending to do. As you begin to devote yourselves to prayer, you’re going to be drawn closer and closer to Jesus. Prayer brings you closer to God. The more you pray the more you understand the will of God. The more you pray the more you are in contact with the person of Jesus Christ. The more you pray the more you open up your heart to what the Holy Spirit wants to do in your life. So it brings you closer to God.

Prayer also changes your perspective by making you aware of danger. What danger? Remember the Devil is like a roaring lion walking around seeking whom he may devour. We are told to be watchful. Be watchful for the traps of the enemy. Be watchful for the schemes of the enemy. Be watchful for what the enemy is trying to do to trip you up and to set you back. And prayer makes you aware of the danger, the pitfalls, the potholes. Be watchful.

And prayer also changes your perspective by reminding you of your blessings in Christ. We are to be watchful and thankful. For you to be thankful in prayer, you have to think about those things for which you are thankful. There is an old hymn that exhorts us to "Count your blessings. Name them one by one." In other words, go over everything for which you are thankful, one at a time. In order to be thankful in prayer, you have to begin to remind yourself of the blessings that you have. "Lord, I’m thankful for my life. Lord, I’m thankful for my health. Lord, I’m thankful that I have two arms and two legs that work. Lord I’m thankful that I can see. I’m thankful for my wife. I’m thankful for my children. I’m thankful for my grandchildren." We’re thankful for so many things that we often take for granted.

Prayer changes your perspective also by engaging you in praise and worship. When you engage in thanksgiving and prayer, you are actually engaging in praise. You are thankful to God. You are saying, "Lord, thank you for blessing me. Thank you for pouring your provision into my life. Thank you for giving me these people in my life that I love and that love me. You’re thanking him and praising him. You’re worshiping him. Prayer is praise and worship.

Paul was in prison for preaching the Gospel of Christ. Now he asks them to pray that God would open up, not the prison doors, but other doors of opportunity for him to preach the Gospel to people, even there in prison. Prayer can change your opportunities by opening closed doors for you to share with others.

God opens closed doors for you to share the message of salvation with other people. Do you have friends whose hearts are closed? You might have relatives whose hearts are closed. You think to yourself, "How in the world can I penetrate that? How can I break through?" It’s hard to kick those doors open, even harder to kick them down. Well, you’ll never succeed in doing that. Either God will open the closed door of their heart or their heart will remain closed. You see salvation is not of human work. Salvation is of God. Only Jesus saves. We don’t. We can only share the good news of the Gospel of Christ. And so we need to pray, "Lord, would you touch that heart? Would you open that heart? Would you open that mind to receive your word?" You may have to pray for people for years. But you need to keep praying that God would open those doors.

And then when those doors open, you need to pray that God would give you the mental clarity to share the Gospel clearly. And prayer changes our opportunities by making us mentally sharp to share the message clearly. Paul told them to pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.

There is so much that passes for preaching today that’s anything but clear. I was in a meeting where one fellow was preaching and a couple of people sitting around were commenting on how deep the teaching was. I’m thinking to myself, "What are they hearing? Am I hearing the same thing they’re hearing?" I didn’t think it was deep, I just thought it was muddy. You know if you can’t see the bottom, some people think it’s deep. It may just be muddy.

Let’s not try to impress people. Let’s try to reach people. The Gospel message is simple, but the simple message of the Gospel has been saving souls for years. Look at the life and ministry of Billy Graham. I’ve listened to Billy Graham preach many times. Billy Graham’s message is so simple, yet how many thousands of people have been saved through that simple message? It’s called the Gospel. God loves you, but you are separated from God by your sin. Jesus, God’s Son, died for you on the Cross and there paid the penalty for your sins. And by receiving him by faith he can come into our lives and change our eternal destiny from Hell to Heaven.

We need to be mentally sharp in order to make sure we share the message clearly. Don’t try to impress them. Don’t get off on side issues. Just share the simple message of God’s love. Prayer can help you think clearly and stay on track.

Prayer changes your effectiveness by giving you wisdom in your dealings with unbelievers. He says be wise in the way you act toward outsiders. He’s talking about unbelievers here. We need wisdom in order to deal with each individual as an individual. That’s how God saves people, by the way. He doesn’t save them in mass. He saves them one by one. And as you deal with the individuals with whom you’re trying to share, ask for God’s wisdom in how to share with them where they are in life. "God, how do I share with this person? How do I touch them where they’re living?" We need the wisdom we can only get by prayer.

And we must be especially wise toward people who aren’t Christians. They’re watching us. We must be wise about what we say and how we live around them.

Prayer can change your effectiveness by not only giving you wisdom but also by giving you boldness to seize every opportunity. He says that we should make the most of every opportunity. Actually the word translated "make the most" is "buy up" or "redeem" every opportunity. In other words, seize it. Seize every opportunity! And you need boldness to do that. "God, give me boldness so whenever you open the door to share the Gospel with somebody this week I don’t back off; I don’t back down; I don’t wait; and I don’t procrastinate." May I seize that opportunity and speak a word for Jesus.

Prayer also makes you more effective by enabling you to graciously communicate the message of Christ in appealing ways. Look at verse 6: Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Our words have a lot of power. Our words have the power to build up or to tear down, to hurt or to heal. And our words have the power to communicate the message of Jesus Christ effectively.

The message that Jesus died so that people could come to know God and live eternally in heaven is the most powerful, exciting, message that this world has ever heard. And yet we can make it sound like the most boring thing. That ought not to be so.

He says, let your conversation be always full of grace. What does that mean? It means, full of God, really. Let it be full of God’s grace. Let it be full of God’s compassion. Let it be full of God’s enthusiasm. Let it be full of God. Seasoned with salt. What was salt used for? Well it was used as a preservative, but it was also used as a flavor enhancement. That’s what we use it for today. We take salt and put it on food in order to enhance a bland flavor.

That our speech should be seasoned with salt means that we need to share the Gospel in appealing ways. The Gospel is dynamic. It should be hard to make it boring. We can make it exciting based on the level of excitement we bring to our sharing. If you’re exciting about it, and we will be excited if we’ve been praying, then you will communicate that excitement. You will be creative in your sharing. Think about creative ways that you can share the Gospel of Christ. God is a creative God. And we need to use our creativity in communicating the message of Christ. Share it verbally. Share it through stories of others. Share it visually, through tracts and books and videos. Share it in an appealing way.

Everything we have in this life we’re going to leave, except people. We are going to leave all the material resources we have acquired. We are going to leave all the money that sits in our bank accounts and in our stocks. We’re going to leave all that here. But we’re going to take the people that have come to know Jesus Christ. They are going to live forever. I don’t know about you, but I want someone to come up to me in heaven and say, "David, thank you. Thank you for sharing with me. If you hadn’t shared the Gospel with me I wouldn’t be here." Can you imagine how you would feel if one person after another came up to you in heaven to thank you? "Thank you for taking the risk of alienating me. Thank you for taking the risk of angering me. Thank you for being so persistent that you didn’t give up. Thank you for praying and praying and praying for my salvation. Thank you, because I would be in Hell today if it weren’t for you!" Prayer can change your life and it can change the lives of others because of you. So pray and keep on praying. God will do the miraculous. 

Copyright © 2002 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above copyright notice.

Except for the use mentioned above, this data file may not be copied (except for small quotations used with citation of source), edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays or other products offered for sale, or made available on the Internet without the written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be made in writing and e-mailed to J. David Hoke, at David@JDavidHoke.com.

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