Over the past week or so, I've been rereading the letter I'd written just about a year ago to a few members of our congregation to invite them to pray for revival. In it I'd written:

 ~ Please see my post: update: tent of meeting 3+ years later ~ "praying for a revival of religion"

As I was rereading and reflecting on that Scripture from Luke 11, first, that phrase because of his impudence struck me... and second, the phrase whatever he needs... And then, the conclusion came:

Will we ever be impudent in praying for the Holy Spirit if we don't see our need of the Holy Spirit?

Can we presume upon God and expect His Holy Spirit to be poured down upon us in reformation and revival if we are not praying as we ought? (Yes, I know God is sovereign, but, as I mentioned above, we are responsible to use the means He provides.)

From Strong's Concordance, the Greek word for "need" is chreizo, meaning "to make (i.e. have) necessity, i.e. be in want of:--(have) need."

Revelation 3:15  “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! 16  So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 17  For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18  I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. 19  Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. 20  Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. 21  The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

May our gracious and merciful God open our eyes to see our spiritual pride. May He humble us and show us how wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked we really are, so we might see our desperate need of His Holy Spirit and cry out to Him in repentance. May God pour out upon us a spirit of holy impudence in prayer for His Holy Spirit. My brothers and sisters, through the body and blood of Jesus, we are not merely going to a friend's house to ask for bread – but through the precious blood of the spotless Lamb, we now have the privilege to go with holy boldness into the Most Holy Place, to the throne of God and plead there with The Friend who sticks closer than a brother and pray to our Heavenly Father with impudence and importunity for what we need. Has He ever been a wilderness or a land of darkness to us? Is He not the Father of lights, from whom every good and perfect give comes?

Jeremiah Lanphier: "as often as I see my need of help"

As I was considering how vital it is for us to know our need, so we might pray as we ought - so we might pray impudently, I was reminded of the account of Jeremiah Lanphier, a man who saw his own need and the Church's need of the Holy Spirit. In New York City, God used this man to spark the Laymen's Prayer Revival (1857-58), which impacted countless souls in the United States and across the world.

On 1st July, 1857, a quiet and zealous business man named Jeremiah Lanphier took up an appointment as a City Missionary in down-town New York. Lanphier was appointed by the North Church of the Dutch Reformed denomination. This church was suffering from depletion of membership due to the removal of the population from the down-town to the better residential quarters, and the new City Missionary was engaged to make diligent visitation in the immediate neighbourhood with a view to enlisting church attendance among the floating population of the lower city. The Dutch Consistory felt that it had appointed an ideal layman for the task in hand, and so it was.

Burdened so by the need, Jeremiah Lanphier decided to invite others to join him in a noonday prayer-meeting, to be held on Wednesdays once a week. He therefore distributed a handbill:

HOW OFTEN SHALL I PRAY?

As often as the language of prayer is in my heart;
as often as I see my need of help;
as often as I feel the power of temptation;
as often as I am made sensible of any spiritual declension
or feel the aggression of a worldly spirit.
In prayer we leave the business of time for that of eternity,
and intercourse with men for intercourse with God. . .

... Accordingly at twelve noon, 23rd September, 1857 the door was opened and the faithful Lanphier took his seat to await the response to his invitation …. Five minutes went by. No one appeared. The missionary paced the room in a conflict of fear and faith. Ten minutes elapsed. Still no one came. Fifteen minutes passed. Lanphier was yet alone. Twenty minutes; twenty-five; thirty; and then at 12.30 p.m., a step was heard on the stairs, and the first person appeared, then another, and another, and another, until six people were present and the prayer meeting began. On the following Wednesday, October 7th, there were forty intercessors.

Thus in the first week of October 1857, it was decided to hold a meeting daily instead of weekly ….

Within six months, ten thousand business men were gathering daily for prayer in New York, and within two years, a million converts were added to the American churches ….

Undoubtedly the greatest revival in New York's colourful history was sweeping the city, and it was of such an order to make the whole nation curious. There was no fanaticism, no hysteria, simply an incredible movement of the people to pray...

~ Source: J. Edwin Orr, "The Light of the Nations," pp. 103-105, cited in http://www.intheworkplace.com/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=51927&columnid=1935 - retrieved July 25, 2013 (boldface mine). I would encourage you to read more about the Laymen's Prayer Revival at that site and elsewhere.

~ A personal note:  I'd previously read about Lanphier and the Laymen's Prayer Revival, but as I was recently rereading some of the accounts, it thrilled me to notice Lanphier was 47 or 48 years old when all of this was taking place (he was born in 1809) ... since I'll be turning 55 next month, and God only began to burden me with the need to pray in the past few years! As many of the saints have been known to say, we're immortal till our work is done!

Psalm 138:8
The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.

Amen.

~ Psalm 115:2 ~

May God be pleased to use these words to show more and more of His people their need of help, that the language of prayer might be in our hearts, so we might speedily go into our closets and seek the Lord (both as individuals & as well as in concert with others), leaving the business of time for eternity, and intercourse with men for intercourse with God. May God guard and strengthen us, that we might not be followers of the Laodiceans, but see our need of Him and pray with impudence like Jeremiah Lanphier.

* Please add your PRAYERS below as God's Holy Spirit leads you. *

Quick update - August 3, 2013:  Xanga has met its fundraising goal. For more information, please see my post, important announcement re: tent of meeting & possible Xanga shutdown - updated 8/3/13. There will likely be some downtime as Xanga transitions over to the WordPress platform, so please make note of my WordPress addresses: 

http://naphtalideer.wordpress.com

http://zechariah821.wordpress.com (this blog imported to WordPress, as a back-up)

http://deerlifetrumpet.wordpress.com (my deerlife Xanga blog now on WordPress)

Thank you! ~ Karen

Today is the 200th anniversary of Ann and Adoniram Judson arriving in Burma.

In his book "Life of Adoniram Judson" (New York: Edward O. Jenkins), 1883, Judson's son Edward shares this testimony of his father (p. 311):

He was a man of prayer. His habit was to walk while engaged in private prayer. One who knew him most intimately says that "His best and freest time for meditation and prayer was while walking rapidly in the open air. He, however, attended to the duty in his room, and so well was this peculiarity understood that when the children heard a somewhat heavy, quick, but well-measured tread, up and down the room, they would say, 'Papa is praying.' "

 

* * *

 

O, LORD our God,
send forth your Holy Spirit to humble us and show us our insufficiency,
that we might not rely on ourselves, but on Christ,
that we might become men and women and boys and girls of prayer like Adoniram Judson,
and have this testimony:

"Who is that coming up from the wilderness,
leaning on her beloved?"
(Song of Solomon 8:5a)

* * *

* Please add your PRAYERS below as God's Holy Spirit leads you. *

Photo credits: Works found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adoniram_judson.jpg and  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AnnHJudson.jpg / both {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}.

HT: for the book text: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=vUsoAAAAYAAJ)

Today being July 4, here in the United States, there's a lot of talk about freedom and liberty. My dear Christian brothers and sisters, we certainly should be thankful to God for the civil and political liberties we do have at the present time. –– But what about the spiritual freedoms we have been granted through Christ Jesus for us whose citizenship is in heaven? Are we not largely ignorant of many of those freedoms, and therefore unable to take full advantage of and savor and enjoy those freedoms our Lord purchased for us through His blood at Calvary?

One precious and paramount freedom we have been granted is access to the throne of God through the blood of Jesus, by His flesh. The Lord Jesus Christ –– our Great High Priest, Mediator, and Advocate –– has atoned for all our sins and washed away all our guilt through one sacrifice once forever, so we might be reconciled to God and draw near to God through Him. We were once sons of disobedience, but we are all now sons of God through faith in Christ! (Gal. 3:26)! "Beloved, we are God's children now...!" (I John 3:2a).

Ephesians 2:18  For through him [Christ Jesus] we [Jew and Gentile] both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Ephesians 3:12  in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

Hebrews 4:14  Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 10:19  Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20  by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21  and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22  let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

In addition, do we understand that the Spirit of God is made available to us so we might enjoy "childlike freedom and confidence in prayer" (in the words of Susanna Anthony)? Or, are we still mostly ignorant of the workings of God's Holy Spirit? Do we continue to rely on the arm of the flesh as we pray, rather than pleading for the Spirit's supernatural endowment to help us to pray? Are we in danger of squandering God's grace, and quenching and grieving His Holy Spirit?

Romans 8:26  Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27  And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

On my naphtali_deer website, I've included a few excerpts from the writings of Susanna Anthony (1726-1791) (see here). The Rev. Edward Dorr Griffin was rebuked, convicted and challenged as he read Miss Anthony's prayers. He wrote:

Reference: "Memoir of the Rev. Edward D. Griffin, D.D., Compiled Chiefly from His Own Writings" by Edward D. Griffin & William Buell Sprague (New York: Taylor & Dodd, 1839), reprinted in 1987 by Banner of Truth Trust, 30. HT for the text: http://books.google.com/books?id=JbAEAAAAYAAJ)

Here's an experience of Miss Anthony's that should rebuke, convict and challenge each one of us as well:

Sept. 8 [1762]. Blessed be God for that gracious access he allows me; though, for the most part, when I begin prayer, I know not what to say, or ask, as though I had no words or desires. But, glory to the blessed Spirit, who ordinarily helps my infirmity, and engages my heart. This night it came to my turn to pray with his dear handmaids. But O I knew not what to say; and a pain in my head seemed to unfit me. But I dared not refuse; though I expected great straitness. I begged assistance; yet I feared the desire might rise from pride: and, therefore, I hope, submitted to God. But O how gracious was God to me: what kind access! What desires did he put in my heart, and arguments in my mouth! I seemed to find a childlike freedom and confidence. My requests were chiefly for Zion; the glory of God; the interest of Christ; the salvation of souls; and the strength and refreshment of saints. Surely the blessed God put strength in me, that I might plead with him. O methinks God was in this place; and I trust others could say so too. Glory to God.*

* Some account of this society of women: and of her praying with them, is given, page 7.
(147)

Here's the account of that society of women:

Before she was sixteen years old, she [Miss Anthony] joined a society of women, who met once every week, for prayer, reading, and religious conversation; and who devoted the afternoon, once in a month to this exercise [of secret fasting and prayer]; and spent at least four whole days a year, in fasting and prayer together. Of this society she was a distinguished member, as long as she lived; by whom she was greatly beloved and esteemed; and they received much comfort and edification from her conversation and prayers. In the latter, especially, she was distinguishedly eminent; and, at particular times, had such enlargement and access to the throne of grace, that she would pray an hour and a half, or more, with such engagedness and fervency, without any repetition, with a flow of words expressing the most pertinent and affecting ideas, and with such a natural connexion, and progression from one to another, that none who joined with her would appear to be tired, but all pleased, affected and edified: and felt a consciousness that none could have an adequate idea of what passed at such times, who were not present, as a full description of the holy fervor, the clear view of invisible things, and that nearness to God, while she poured out her heart before him, which she discovered, cannot be made by any narration of them.

(7)

Reference:  "The Life and Character of Miss Susanna Anthony. Who Died, in Newport, (R I.) June 23, 1791, in the 65th year of her age. Consisting Chiefly in Extracts from Her Writings, with Some Brief Observations on Them." Complied by Samuel Hopkins, Second Edition. (Portland, Maine: Lyman, Hall & Co. 1810), 147, 7. (HT for the text: http://books.google.com/books?id=YO0QAAAAYAAJ). Emphasis mine.

Holy Father, our Father, Abba! Father! Open the eyes of our understanding to experientially know the boldness and access that is ours as children of God by grace through faith in Your Son Jesus Christ. May we not receive Your grace in vain, and may our prayers not be in vain. Blessed God, strengthen us by Your Holy Spirit, that we might be humbled and become as little children and importunately beg Your Spirit's assistance to pray. We confess that we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. Holy Spirit, help us in our weakness and infirmity, and engage our hearts. Almighty God, put strength in us, that we might plead with You to Your glory. Lord, teach us to pray. May our wills be conformed to Yours, and our desires melted into Yours. Impart to our hearts holy desires, and put into our mouths holy arguments. As citizens of heaven, may we earnestly seek to experience and enjoy the liberty that is ours in Christ Jesus, that we might get into the temple and enjoy "childlike freedom and confidence in prayer" there –– such as Miss Anthony had. As we pray, may we pray by the strength You supply, that in all our prayers, You may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to Whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.