I'VE BEEN talking about the future and about how to face it. Last week, I told about raising an Ebenezer stone to show how far the Lord has helped us. Today I'll talk about believing prayer.

Years ago, soon after we started the playgroup, one of the mothers was very sad. Her sister in Canberra had been diagnosed that week with bladder cancer, which had spread widely. The only hope was to operate straight away, and they expected that the woman would be permanently catheterised, would face extensive chemotherapy, and might still not survive.
Neither Carolyn nor her sister were Christians. They were of the Baha'i faith. But, when prayer was needed, they came to us.
The woman was to have final pre-surgery scans on Thursday morning and surgery that afternoon.
On Wednesday night, we prayed. We were like the man who said, “Lord, I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief!”
Around 8:15pm, I was leading prayer for Carolyn's sister, when I suddenly felt that we should not pray any more. That was a bit scary, because the only other time I'd felt that was when I was praying for my uncle after his major heart attack; and, at the time he died, I knew I didn't have to pray any more.
But God said, “Don't pray any more!” So I told the group, and we just thanked God for whatever he had done in this case. Then we went on to praying about something else.
On Thursday afternoon, Carolyn phoned Chris. She was greatly agitated.
“My sister had her scans on Wednesday morning. They were about to prepare her for surgery when the results came in. There was no evidence of any cancer anywhere. They are not going to operate. The doctor is amazed, and can't explain how it happened!”
Sadly, ten years later, Carolyn herself died of cancer, despite our prayers. But Carolyn's sister was at her bedside when she died.

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

That doesn't mean it will work every time, but it certainly will work more often than we ever imagine.
I like young Anna in the Indonesian Fellowship. I imagine that she is a handful at times. She and her sister, Ria, have been through some hard days so she mightn't always be the perfect young lady. But, above all, she has a very real faith. It's refreshing to meet a teenager whose faith is real like that.
Recently she told me about their church camp. The suggestion was made that they should keep prayer journals, listing whom they had prayed for, and what results they had.
What struck me was Anna's delight to tell me, “And it's really working! I've never had so many prayers answered before!”

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

It's not limited to men. The Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh these days. All are equipped to pray.
During the week, I e-mailed the other members of the local Ministers' Fellowship about getting together for united action and prayer in relation to the bushfires. Sadly, it's holiday time, and I've had very few responses. Tom Sitompul said that they were praying in their Friday night meeting. Chris Clerke from St Clement's Church told me that they would include special prayers for the bushfires and the victims in this morning's services. Conrad Parsons sent an e-mail to tell me he is at Lake Conjola, on the Beach Mission there. I don't know how they are going with fires down there.
But we need to pray about these things.
We need to pray about our nation's treatment of refugees, and about the loss of hard won rights in so-called Democratic countries in the wake of September 11.
There are many things to pray about, and to act on in the light of those prayers.

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

I'm also going to repeat what I have said often in the recent past, that we need to get down to some serious prayer about our own future. There are wide open paddocks in front of us, ready to be harvested. Are we going to pray for the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers, or are we going to let bushfires sweep through and snatch up the entire crop?

I drove through Bringelly on Monday. There are places where, as far as you can see, the ground is grey and the remaining stumps of trees are black. Fire has swept through, consuming hundreds of hectares of farmland, even that close to the city.
As I drove, I saw two things.
In the midst of three or four burnt out fields, there would be one patch of entirely untouched crops, maybe only the size of a suburban building block.
Life is so irrepressible, even on the darkest of days.

But the other thing I saw was a fresh outbreak of fire. A small paddock, about the size of Jarvie Park, was ablaze from one end to the other, with great billowing clouds of thick, brown smoke.

The enemy is always on the lookout.

Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering.

We are on the brink of a momentous year. For me, I feel that we either make it this time, or pack it in. 19 years ago this February, I arrived; you all know the ups and downs of those years, the hard times and the blessings; but the issue is, can we keep on going?

I admit that I am not a great prayer warrior. They say that you can still see John Wesley's room at Oxford University, just as he left it when he died, and the rug is worn through beside his bed where he knelt in prayer several times a day.

If John Wesley was one of the McLaren F1 racing drivers of history, I am still in the Cyclops pedal car.

But I believe that the quality of our prayer life is going to make or break our church in the next few months.

Our nation has been suffering in these days just gone. Yet some of us saw that video late last year and saw that little community in South America where revival has even brought new fruitfulness to the local farming industries. Why is our land turning dry and barren, and other lands are drinking in the rains and thriving?
Didn't we just read,

Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.

Is someone praying? Is that what is wrong with our land? Rain and drought are spiritual issues, not just meteorological issues.
Of course, it's not wrong if someone prayed like Elijah. In fact, when rain fails, it's always because God has that failure in his plans.
Our God is not an aloof God. He doesn't set the universe running and then neglect it. Every tiny change is in his hands.

God is constantly at work.
The tiniest change in the DNA of any creature is within God's oversight and holy plan. He didn't kick the universe off in a flurry of activity over six days and then walk away and leave it to run itself.
When a butterfly flaps its wing in South America and a drought is triggered in Africa, God let that butterfly flap that wing at that place and at that time.

The humourist, Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, also wrote about Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
Dirk Gently is a detective who believes in the interconnectedness of everything. So he doesn't sort through the clues, accepting the most likely ones and abandoning the less likely ones. If he and a possible clue happen to be in the same place at the same time, then there is a connexion which he will explore, even if he can't see it at the time.
So, when a woman has a smash with his car while he is in a hurry to meet his client, he assumes that she was out in his way for a reason, and that has something to do with the case in hand, so he follows that and misses the appointment. And, in the end, that meeting does prove to be connected with the case.

The Bible shows us an even more profound interconnectedness of everything. The essential links are spiritual, and, at the heart of it all, is God.

What can we say when our land is ravaged by bushfires? That, somehow they are connected with the spiritual state of our nation? What can we say when our nation is in a parlous spiritual condition? That, somehow, this is connected with the spiritual condition of God's people?
I am sure this is true.
God said to Solomon,

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

There is a connexion between spirituality and the fruitfulness of the land in that, when God's people sin, then God withdraws blessing and the land needs healing.

Do you remember in Elijah's day what happened? The people had begun following Ba'alim, the fertility gods of the people who had been in the land before them. Elijah confronted the prophets of Ba'al on Mt Carmel, and challenged them to a power encounter. Did Ba'al have the power, or did Yahweh, the Lord of all creation?
The prophets of Ba'al made their altar and killed their sacrifices and laid them on the wood on top of the altar. They shouted and danced and cried out and cut themselves in an effort to force their gods to hear.
Then Elijah rebuilt the old altar to God and laid wood on it and put his sacrifice on it. He poured water over it all until everything was saturated. He had water standing in a trench around the altar. And he asked God to accept this sacrifice and show that he is God.
And it was the time of the evening sacrifice, and fire came down from heaven and consumed the entire offering, burnt up the wood, dried away the water, and even charred the stones of the altar.

But king Ahab refused to repent. So Elijah prayed for the heavens to withhold their rain. Not until Ahab was willing to repent did Elijah pray that God would restore the rains, and God did it.

Is God withholding some blessing because his people withhold themselves?
He speaks to us. Not to our nation — not in the first place — nor to some wicked country out there somewhere. If God's people will humble themselves, he will hear. If those who are called by his name will repent, he will hear.

That's what repentance is: humbling ourselves. Repentance means stopping, turning around, admitting that we have sinned, submitting to God's verdict instead of constantly justifying ourselves.

When I was at school there was one fellow there who was never wrong. Even when he could be clearly shown to be wrong, he had an argument. The teacher was wrong, not himself.
He had no humility. We all figured there was something wrong with him if he couldn't accept responsibility for his own deeds.
Yet we so often are exactly the same. It's not my fault. A witch has done it; the devil made me, I am innocent: it's God who has it all wrong! Repentance is like dying. Jesus tells us to die to self. It's all bound up together. Jesus died to all claims of the self; we are dead with him, therefore self has no legitimate claim to us.

But there is more than repentance. We must pray. We must put ourselves into our prayer. God wants those who seek his face.

What did Jesus say?

How blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

When we have singleness of heart, unmixed with other claims, then we not only seek God's face, but we find it. Not with these two eyes, but in our spirits, we know God and are truly known by him.
And we have to repent in deed as well as in thought. Is there evil among us? Lay it at the foot of the cross. When we turn from our wicked ways, then God can begin his work of restoration.

...then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.

That's God's promise. It finds its “Yes!” and “Amen!” in the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here among us, what needs to be put away? I wouldn't dare say there is no sexual sin, but I'm sure that there are petty jealousies, anger against one another, irritations, lack of prayer, forgetfulness about God's word, lovelessness, self-will and self-centredness. When Christ is not Lord of all, is he Lord at all? Who sits on the throne in your life and in mine?

It is the prayer of a righteous person which is powerful and effective.

Our prayers can't be effective if we don't meet the criteria. Our lives will lack fruit if we can't meet the criteria. We can act in the role. We can lead the children, we can preach the words, we can say the prayers, but, if we don't meet the requirements, what are we?
I hate to say the word, because, to be honest, it applies too much to me. If we do the deeds but don't meet the standards, we are hypocrites, playing the game, but not living the life.

I heard an African American woman testifying to how Christ met her. She said it was while she and her brothers and sisters were playing church in the backyard. And she asks, “How many of you used to play at church when you were small?” Then she adds, “Some of you are still playing at church, aren't you!”

Elijah wasn't playing at anything, and God used him greatly. He will use us again — greatly — if we return to him with all our heart.