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The great task before the Church, and therefore before God's servants, is to reconcile people with God. Jesus, as we learn from the Second Letter to the Corinthians, has given us the ministry of reconciliation, and it is as if He Himself were exhorting through us, 'Be reconciled to God.' Reconciliation, by its very nature, is not about a momentary encounter but about a lifelong relationship. Parties that were once separated are now reunited in love, in unity, forever. Yet, in the long history of the Church, we have often seen momentary encounters and fleeting friendships with God followed by disenchantment and withdrawal.
Dwight L. Moody and Charles Grandison Finney are among the greatest evangelists in church history, with the highest number of conversions. However, it is estimated that only 50% of those converted in Moody's ministry remained in the faith, the other half having withdrawn; while more than 80% of those converted in Finney's ministry continued in their faith. Finney, it seems, had a powerful weapon in his arsenal: prayer. Conversion, as we know, is a supernatural act that occurs in the human heart, and the degree of divine power manifested in a person's life plays a large part in the revelation of God and the substance of their faith.
Finney himself was a man of prayer, but the results he achieved were not due to his prayers alone, He had his Father Nash. Father Nash was a former minister who had decided to devote his life to prayer, and particularly to praying for Charles Finney's evangelistic meetings. He would go to a town where a meeting was to be held a few weeks in advance, lock himself in a room alone or with others, and pray. He usually didn't even attend the meetings; he prayed while they were in progress. The preacher and the intercessor must work hand in hand for conversion. Too often we leave the preacher to work alone while the congregation comes to watch, enjoy themselves, and judge the quality of the 'show'. An indispensable part of the toolbox is overlooked.
Finney tells this story: “When I arrived in the city to hold a revival meeting, I was approached by a lady who runs a small hotel. She said, ‘Brother Finney, do you know a man named Father Nash? He and two other men have been in my hotel for three days and haven’t eaten a single bite. I opened the door to see what was going on, and I heard them sighing, and I saw them face down. They’ve been like that for three days, lying on the floor, sighing. I thought something terrible must have happened to them. I was afraid to go in and didn’t know what to do. Would you please come and do something?’ ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ I replied. ‘They just have a spirit of intercession in prayer.’”
It is this kind of spirit that overcomes the powers of darkness that hold men back and imprison them. Behind the fine philosophical arguments, behind the moral objections, behind the humanistic assumptions, there is a real spiritual battle to be won so that men's hearts will be pierced by the truth of the gospel; and so that they will continue in faith, living lives that honor the name of Jesus. It takes deep and powerful intercession to break down the brazen walls that encircle men's hearts and to break down the reasonings that oppose the work of God. It takes a work of the Spirit to make men see themselves as sinners who deserve judgment and toward whom a merciful God has shown love and forgiveness, to accept it with joy, and then with gratitude and humility to work to live lives worthy of the Master.
Before God, we each have our responsibility in the salvation of people whom we sometimes look down on because they have not accepted the gospel. There are people in our families, our workplace, our communities who continue to live in disobedience to God partly because we have been too preoccupied with our own lives to plow and agonize in prayer for them. From him to whom much has been given, much will be required. We cannot wait until we are entirely perfect to pray for people who, if they died today, would find themselves in an eternity separated from God; there is an urgency to claim the souls of men for the kingdom of God, an urgency to cry out for the darkness to be banished and for the light of the gospel to shine in the hearts of men.
Dear God, may the Church turn her eyes once again to those outside and stop being so preoccupied with herself, to all those who would believe if they could hear, those who would believe if someone loved them enough to pray, to make themselves available to intercede. In nations where the church is dying, it is dying because Christians have stopped working to pray Spirit-led prayers for the salvation of souls and pastors have stopped being prayer leaders. Jesus speaks of leaving the 99 sheep already in the fold to go after the one that is outside, we focus our attention on the one sheep in the fold and neglect the 99 that are outside. Prayer meetings are the least valued meetings in the Western Church. May God break our hearts, that we may groan and agonize again to claim the souls of men for the kingdom of God. Shalom!
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