Satan does not care how many people read about prayer if only he can keep them from praying.
God designed the program of prayer as an 'apprenticeship' for eternal sovereignty with Christ.
Through the plan of prayer, God actually is inviting redeemed man into full partnership with Him; not in making the divine decisions, but in implementing those decisions in the affairs of humankind. Independently and of His own will, God makes the decisions governing the affairs of earth. The responsibility and authority for the enforcement and administration of those decisions, He has place upon the shoulders of the church.
The explanation is that prayer is not primarily God's way of getting things done. It is God's way of giving the church 'on the job training' in overcoming the forces hostile to God.
From heaven's standpoint, all spiritual victories are won not primarily in the pulpit, not primarily in the klieg light of publicity, nor yet through the ostentatious blaring of trumpets, but in the secret place of prayer.
Someone has described the modern American as a person who drives a bank financed car over a bond financed highway on credit card gas to open a charge account at a department store so he can fill his savings and loan financed home with installment purchased furniture. may this also be a description of many modern professed Christians? And may this not be one reason why modern Christians have so little time to pray? Importunity combined with perfect faith in unconquerable!
The prayer closet is the arena which produces the overcomer.
Any church program, no matter how impressive, if it is not supported by an adequate prayer program, is little more than an ecclesiastical treadmill. It is doing little or no damage to Satan's kingdom.
Intercession is the most unselfish thing anyone can do.
When a church is truly convinced that prayer is where the action is, that church will so construct its corporate activities that the prayer program will have the highest priority.
Surely that which occupies the total time and energies of heaven must be a fitting pattern for earth.
