by Tim Cameron | Jul 19, 2015 | prayer
He Prayed All Night
“One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor (Luke 6:12-16, NIV).
Are you too busy to pray?
We know now that the crowds were pressing in on Him. Hundreds, if not thousands, showed up at His doorstep where He spent the night. He needed a place to pray with no interruptions. He had business to transact and needed to hear from His Father about one of the most important decisions He would make during His earthly time, the choosing of the twelve disciples. So, He heads to the mountains to spend a night in prayer. A whole night!
It is incredible what we sometimes have to go through to just carve out thirty minutes of prayer, well, make that fifteen. In our way of thinking an hour spent in prayer would be a huge deal. We would qualify as spiritual giants! Then there is our Lord, He spent whole nights in prayer, yet while He was human, just like us in every way. How amazing and yet perplexing.
We have all these other pressures, commitments, requirements every day, and then there is the infamous “to do list.” They seem never ending. Managing our time is a momentous task. Today whole industries are built around assisting people in planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time that is spent on activities during the day.
Productivity and outcomes, that’s what we are after, that’s what we are all about. Right?
There are two great differences in the way we see life and the way the Lord sees life.
1. Time
Time means everything to us. We squeeze it. We maximize it. We cherish it. We try to figure how not to waste it, how to capitalize on it, and how to multiply it. But, time means nothing to the Lord. He has all the time in the world. He is in no hurry. What he wants to accomplish in our lives can take four days for forty years. He isn’t concerned with the length of time it takes to accomplish His purposes. Here these words with your spiritual ears, “You can’t hurry the Spirit.” If your goal is unbroken fellowship with the Lord in every minute of the day and if you want to secure Christ’s presence to overcome every temptation that comes your way, then you must determine that spending time in the secret place every day is one of the great resolves of your life.
Put on you spiritual eyes and read this carefully, there is something of much greater importance than all of our requests to the Lord for our personal needs and the needs of others for whom we intercede. There is a prerequisite to all of this; it is to have a deep, living relationship with the Father. He created us for this. He created us to commune with Him, delight in Him, and fulfill His will for our lives.
The great encumbrance to our relationship with the Lord is that we are preoccupied with other things. Instead of making everything secondary to the decision to spend time with the Lord every day, we hurriedly shove in a few minutes here and there with Him. We try to focus on the Lord for a few minutes while we scurry from one project to the other, from one appointment to the other, from one person to the next.
2. Results
The short of it is, we want results. Productivity. We are getting paid to produce something. We have to see something tangible for our efforts. We transfer this fleshly propensity for the need to see results, to our spiritual life in the Lord. We often don’t see measurable results from our prayers with the Lord so we get discouraged and prayer wanes. The Lord simply does not measure our lives by our productivity. The Lord looks at all of our accomplishments, our degrees, our vitae, our “projects completed list” and He is not impressed. He doesn’t manage by outcomes or goals achieved. The Lord is out for depth in our relationship with Him. Intimacy. He doesn’t measure our lives by what is seen. He does His most significant work in the unseen. Our Lord wants His life deeply imbedded into the fabric of our soul. He wants our spirit exchanged for His, our character for His. “But the LORD said to Samuel, ’Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart’” (I Sam. 16:7, NIV).
Time and results, we need spiritual ears and spiritual eyes to hear and see what the Spirit is up to in our lives.
I called up a long time mentor recently to visit with him. When I asked him about a date the following week for us to get together for lunch. He responded that he wouldn’t know for sure about his availability until the day before. That’s all he said. It was a while later until I remembered he rarely sets appointments in advance. His reason, he always wants to be available to people, to those he shepherds and those with immediate needs. One thing about this man that is so unique is his ability to focus on one person at a time. He is never hurried. He is available.
When I was a new Christian I had the blessing to be discipled by a series of men, most of who had a Navigators background. The Navigators is a ministry that advances the gospel throughout the world by discipleship—a call to discover life to the fullest in Christ. In its call to discipleship, the Navigators place great importance on being faithful, available, and teachable. Availability is a huge issue in today’s hectic, fast-paced culture. Just try to get a few Christians together to pray on a regular basis and you will experience what great difficulty we have in “putting first things first.” Our busyness crowds out the most important things in life.
Are you available to others? Are you available to your fellowship or church? Are you available to the Lord?
We are in such a hurry. We have so many places to go and things to do. Can you make time to stop for the next person who comes across your path?
Hidden from men, in full view of God
He needed to avoid public display. He had no one to impress; there were no illusions of grandeur on His part.
I have spent a great deal of time in my life with young people. In the most recent years I always take occasion to query teens and others about their prayer life. One of the questions I repeatedly ask people is, “What keeps you from praying?” Oddly enough, one of the many responses people give is that they are not good about praying aloud so they are embarrassed to pray. That response raises an interesting question, “Should we be good or proficient about praying in the presence of others?” Jesus warns us to be very careful about the reason we pray. He warns us not be like the hypocrites who love to pray, but do so in order to be seen praying by others. “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get” (Matt. 6:5, NLT).
We know that our Lord was accustomed to strong crying and tears. His prayers were meant for only the Father to hear. He needed to pour out His entire soul–groanings and rejoicing. He held nothing back. He needed to have a place where he could have complete communion with His Father to make the decision at hand. He needed a place where there would be no bystanders looking on. To avoid being seen by men while He prayed, he sought the mountain. Even in this time of great travail before the Father, He was modeling what He would teach the disciples later, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matt. 6:6, NIV).
Our decision making model
How do we approach the Lord when we have a great decision to make? Do we pray for many hours? Do we fast? Do we seek counsel? With the challenge of this particular decision, choosing the twelve, the particular time selected by Christ to pray is meant to be a lesson to all of us. He had a decision to make that would resound throughout history of mankind. The decision that lurked the next day required perfect communication and unity with His Father. Can you see the great oneness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in this decision? Can we grasp the depth of unity the Lord is asking us to enter with our fellow believers? So He prayed the whole night. He has set us an example that we should follow. In great emergencies in our life, when we have duties with boundless consequence, or we are about to meet severe encounters, we should seek the divine blessing and direction by setting apart an unusual portion of time for prayer. If we are praying or fasting unto the Lord, others won’t see it as zeal or fanaticism. Our Savior did it. We should follow in His steps.
Men of the world, in business, will sometimes spend hours upon hours in strategic planning, goal setting, developing marketing plans, even if it takes all night sessions. Why should it seem strange that Christians spend an equal portion of time in the far more important business with eternal significance? We need our minds renewed. We need to see the great necessity for prayer.
Jesus the man
There is a fathomless mystery here. Jesus was a man, but He was completely God. We can ask, “Why Jesus should pray?” As a man, He was subject to the same needs as us; He needed divine support, strength, and blessing. It is difficult for us to get our arms around the fact Jesus had physical and human needs. The mystery here is that there was no more contradiction in His praying than there was in His drinking or eating. Both are consistent with who He was while here on earth.
What do we really need? What should we be praying about? We pray for a lot of things. Mostly we pray for things we need (or think we need). We pray for the forgiveness of our sins; Jesus had no sin. He was tempted, but He did not fall into temptation. There was no backsliding on His part. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:12, NIV) is an appropriate prayer for us, but He didn’t need it for Himself. Paul describes this inner struggle that each of us face: “O wretched man that I am!” (Rom. 7:24, NIV). But Jesus didn’t experience this. He had guarded His heart from sin and the enemy, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30, NIV). The enemy had no way to find entrance into Christ’s heart.
The mystery: He was divine, yet was tempted just like us. He was perfect, yet he was a man. He needed to pray all night on occasions, particularly on this occasion; His humanity compelled Him to pray.
His wisdom
Luke frequently shows Jesus praying before some significant event. But can you imagine Jesus fully human, mentally and emotionally. See Jesus as a young boy; He had to grow in wisdom (Luke 2:52). What must it have been like for Joseph and Mary to raise Jesus the Messiah? Did He make bad decisions? Did He have to learn new things just like any other young boy? In the Infancy of Thomas, a pseudepigraphical gospel about the childhood of Jesus that is believed to date to the 2nd century, the child Jesus does numerous whimsical and malicious miracles. A pseudepigrapha writing usually refers to a collection of Jewish religious works written circa 300 BC to 300 AD. Though not accurate, this gospel account was written because there are so many unanswered questions about His childhood and people wanted to know what His childhood was like.
The Bible is silent about Jesus’s early years, except for the encounter in Luke of Jesus in the synagogue at age twelve (Luke 2:39-52). We are given a snapshot of Jesus’s development before this synagogue experience. “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him” (Luke 2:40, NIV). In this account, the boy Jesus asks astute questions that indicate He has a profound understanding at this tender age. And at the end of the passage we get a glimpse of the years of Jesus between twelve and thirty. “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (2:52, NIV).
See the three areas of His development:
• Wisdom, godly understanding
• Stature, maturing as a young man
• Favor, from man and God
He called upon God the Father to be in complete communion with Him in choosing the twelve. He used the spiritual understanding He acquired and He called on the Father and the Holy Spirit for more understanding. He wanted to be in total unity with Father and Holy Spirit in the choosing of the disciples. The example is clear for us, if we have spiritual eyes to see: Christ wants us to grow in spiritual understanding, in the knowledge and application of His word, but we must submit all that we are to His spirit. We must commune with Him every day to know His will for our lives in all situations. It is in the secret place with God where we learn from Him. By the Lord’s matchless grace that is given to us, we can live every day and make every decision in concert with His will for our lives. We can fellowship with Christ so intimately in the secret place that we can understand His will for lives and be empowered by His spirit to walk it out.
There are practices of prayer mentioned over and over in the Psalms:
• “But whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night” (Psalm 1:2, NIV).
• “I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me” (Psalm 16:7, NIV).
• “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night” (Psalm 63:6.).
Jesus knew firsthand of the counsel and wisdom of the Father to be gained in the night hours. He sought the Father and found the wisdom He needed.
Jesus followed all of these practices of the Jewish culture on prayer and more. This is what He grew up on. He grew in His communication with the Father through prayer. He received the Father’s words through prayer. He knew when to heal through prayer. He chose the twelve through a night of prayer. Think of the scene: After praying all night, Jesus calls His disciples together and then invites the twelve, one by one into a deeper place of intimacy with Him. Like the good shepherd who knows each of his sheep individually, Jesus now knows each and every one of his disciples intimately. And He desires to be known and loved by each of us in this same way.
Your invitation to be known is found in prayer; answer the invitation.
by Tim Cameron | Jul 19, 2015 | prayer
Don’t Lose Heart in Prayer
Then He spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).
We don’t need to construe or conjecture what Jesus meant in giving us this parable because Luke states Jesus’ meaning from the outset. Christ strategically designed the parable, Luke explains, to empower the prayer lives of His people. Jesus wants us to pray always and believe for fulfillment of Promise. Prayer is to be incessant and unrelenting until answer comes.
The greatest temptation when waiting for God’s answer to your prayer is to lose heart. To become faint-hearted. To be discouraged to the point of despair. To give up hope. To conclude you don’t have what it takes, in this instance, to move heaven on your behalf. To decide that nothing is going to change.
Make no mistake about it; there is a mocking spirit that has been launched from the enemy that is part of Satan’s strategy to pummel God’s people into faint-heartedness.
That is why this parable is more relevant and crucial today than ever. Because of the warfare we face, we desperately need the faith this parable imparts.
Bob Sorge
by Tim Cameron | Jul 15, 2015 | Cost of Prayer, prayer
The Tyranny of the Urgent
“Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:15-16, NIV).
“The enemy of the best is always the good.” That’s what one of my mentors, Dr. Charles Farah would say. People who are popular will have many others pulling at them. Anyone with multiple responsibilities will daily face the decision to leave something undone.
What comes first?
What is the most important decision you will make every day? Is it what suit or outfit to put on? What engagement to say no to? Which calls to return? How to prioritize the many tasks pulling at your limited time? Or, is it the decision to spend time with the Lord and pray the first thing in the day?
In my training as a school superintendent one of the last exercises every new applicant faced was the “in-box” test. The challenge was to take an in-box of ten items and prioritize them in importance as to which you would tackle first for the day and what others could wait to be addressed later. I learned that invariably, disguised in the ten items, there would always be a safety item that was difficult to identify. A safety item is something that related to school safety. Safety items always take priority above every other administrative task and are always first priority for school administrators. And so it is in our spiritual lives. The safety item for our relationship with Christ is investing time alone with Him every day, preferably time at the start of the day, time in prayer and the Word.
Lord of my habits
The key word in this text of Luke 5:15-16 is “often,” or “frequent.” The ISV says, “However, he continued his habit of retiring to deserted places and praying” (Luke 5:16, ISV). He made it a habit to go away and pray. No matter how busy it seemed, no matter how many people were clamoring for His attention, He often withdrew; it was His practice. If it was His practice, how much more should it be ours?
His habit begs the issue, what are your habits to start the day? A habit is defined as something that is your custom or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. The most widely accepted studies on habit conclude that it takes on an average sixty-six days to form a new habit. One of the difficulties with forming a new habit is that we may be attempting to break habits that have been formed over years and years. And all of us know that one of the raging conflicts we face in life is breaking bad habits and forming positive habits.
One morning in my quiet time before the Lord I heard Him as clearly as if words had been spoken, “It’s time to put the newspaper down.” I laughed out loud as I contemplated that thought. For fifteen years I had worked a second job to supplement my income as a school administrator. It was a purposeful decision I made to facilitate my wife staying home to care for our children and home school them. My second job was delivering newspapers every morning from 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Every morning for fifteen years, seven days a week (one day off each year when the paper was not printed), I delivered 500-plus newspapers, then sat down at a coffee shop and read the paper for a few minutes. Now I had finally come to a place in my career where I didn’t need to work a second job, but I still started the day the same way, newspaper in hand, sitting at the coffee shop. Now I could relax, enjoy the newspaper and not be in a hurry. The newspaper was the first thing I meditated on every day. It took more than the average of sixty-six days for me to break the newspaper habit, but I did break it. I replaced the newspaper habit with another compulsive-like habit, meditating on God’s Word. For more than fifteen plus years I have devoured the Word of God habitually. Most of us have a character trait, skill, or gifting for which we are recognized or identified by others. For some of us it is being an artist, being well read, having a degree from a prestigious school, or perhaps being mercy motivated. For me, most people who know me would quickly characterize me as a man of God’s Word. It is what many know me for. This is one compulsive habit that has served me well.
Lord of my time
One of the great lessons of life and relationships is that there is no substitute for time. Here is an even greater truth: there is no substitute for time alone with the Lord. In any relationship, time is the vital element. From friendships to marriage, you cannot cheat time. It takes time to develop intimacy. Dennis Jernigan, the great gospel songwriter, says, “Intimacy is… into me see.” No matter what excuses a person gives, no matter what a person says, show me where time is spent and I will show you what is important to the person. Where a person spends his or her time is a view into the soul. Consider these thoughts:
A daily quiet time with God is a dramatic necessity for relationship with the Lord. It is in our daily quiet time that we study the Bible, pray, and listen to the Lord. These practices bring life and vitality to our soul. But, the morning watch is not the goal; it is not the end. The goal is not to be so disciplined that we habitually have a quiet time with the Lord every morning for an hour. No, the whole purpose of time with the Lord in the morning is know Christ, have His presence in our life, to be connected with Him throughout the entire day.
The goal of spending time with Christ is to have His character become our character. For our life to be hidden in His life, His nature to become our nature, and His habits our habits. It is possible to become so intimately acquainted with a practice, a way of doing something that you can do it without thinking. It becomes second nature, natural. When we find the secret place of abiding in Christ, our ordinary, daily interactions with people will become oh such more than mundane. They will be majestic opportunities to fulfill God’s purposes. We will become fruitful Christians. All fruitfulness of this kind flows out of intimacy with Him.
There are two great hindrances to prayer. Listen carefully with your spirit as I write. Revelations 3:6 states, “Let him that has an ear to hear listen to what the Spirit is saying.” The two great hindrances to prayer are busyness and worldliness. Busyness steals our time to pray, and worldliness diverts our will from prayer. If a person is too busy to pray, they are too busy to live a life that is wholly given to Jesus.
You cannot give to others what you do not possess yourself. It is truly in our private times of prayer and devotion that His presence increases within us. If your heart’s desire is to influence others for Christ, give hope to the hopeless, and speak words of encouragement to the weary, then you must have the presence of the Lord in your life. A presence that is attained by spending quiet time with Him is the one constant that must be present in your life.
Jesus withdrew to a lonely, deserted place. He knew where he had to go to be alone. Do you have a place to pray? If you don’t, that may indicate that you probably don’t pray often.
Crowds of people came to hear him
The news was spreading and spreading farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear him and be healed. Can you imagine what that must have been like? As a young man, I witnessed the phenomenon of Kathryn Khulman in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California and in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The impact was the same in both places: thousands came to hear her, lining up for blocks, waiting 10-12 hours before the doors opened. Why? The news spread that you could come and be healed. Where the power of God is rumored, people will come. And, oh yes, I do remember hearing Kathryn say that she prayed for as many five hours or more before she would minister and pray for people.
In our culture today, there is a great danger that the masses will celebrate those who move with authority, charisma, or anointing. The craving of people to exalt a minister of the gospel is difficult for any normal human to resist. Every successful minister faces this test.
I recently had lunch with a young man who has dedicated himself to the Lord since an early age. He carries an anointing from the Holy Spirit. He is committed to purity and transparency. And he is a man of prayer. As we spoke, I could sense that he did not want to give in to the enticements to have a ministry that would be of celebrity status. For this young man, there will be many who will encourage him to pursue those things that will exalt him personally. I believe he will stand strong and lift up the Lord Jesus. However, couple the influence of others with our natural propensity for pride and you have the most dangerous of elixirs for those who minister. Almost any minister is vulnerable. I’ve heard it said from many different stalwarts of the faith in various ways, but the message is the same, a person doesn’t need to be spiritual or holy to teach or preach today. In our media driven culture, a person with personality, self-confidence, and charisma, can gain a following and move the masses. This kind of message impacts men, prayer impacts souls.
The conjunction “but” is used to suggest a contrast in Luke 5:15-16. “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” In spite of the crowds growing larger and larger and the news spreading about him, Christ made it a habit to withdraw far away to the desert to pray. Crowds or their clamor did not sway him from being with the Father. He knew that the needs of the people were so great that He must spend time in prayer with the Father.
Do you see your desperate need to spend time in prayer? Neither success nor failure precludes our need for continual prayer. We must watch that we do not fall prey to the pride that lurks around the corner with every success in life. The Lord is giving an invitation. The invitation is to join Him every morning and every day, continually in a spirit of prayer.
by Tim Cameron | Jul 13, 2015 | prayer
God and Time
Lord of my time
One of the great lessons of life and relationships is that there is no substitute for time. Here is an even greater truth: there is no substitute for time alone with the Lord. In any relationship, time is the vital element. From friendships to marriage, you cannot cheat time. It takes time to develop intimacy. Dennis Jernigan, the great gospel songwriter, says, “Intimacy is… into me see.” No matter what excuses a person gives, no matter what a person says, show me where time is spent and I will show you what is important to the person. Where a person spends his or her time is a view into the soul. Consider these thoughts:
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” William Penn
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” Theophrastus
“Lost time is never found again.” Benjamin Franklin
A daily quiet time with God is a dramatic necessity for relationship with the Lord. It is in our daily quiet time that we study the Bible, pray, and listen to the Lord. These practices bring life and vitality to our soul. But, the morning watch is not the goal; it is not the end. The goal is not to be so disciplined that we habitually have a quiet time with the Lord every morning for an hour. No, the whole purpose of time with the Lord in the morning is know Christ, have His presence in our life, to be connected with Him throughout the entire day.
The goal of spending time with Christ is to have His character become our character. For our life to be hidden in His life, His nature to become our nature, and His habits our habits. It is possible to become so intimately acquainted with a practice, a way of doing something that you can do it without thinking. It becomes second nature, natural. When we find the secret place of abiding in Christ, our ordinary, daily interactions with people will become oh such more than mundane. They will be majestic opportunities to fulfill God’s purposes. We will become fruitful Christians. All fruitfulness of this kind flows out of intimacy with Him.
There are two great hindrances to prayer. Listen carefully with your spirit as I write. Revelations 3:6 states, “Let him that has an ear to hear listen to what the Spirit is saying.” The two great hindrances to prayer are busyness and worldliness. Busyness steals our time to pray, and worldliness diverts our will from prayer. If a person is too busy to pray, they are too busy to live a life that is wholly given to Jesus.
You cannot give to others what you do not possess yourself. It is truly in our private times of prayer and devotion that His presence increases within us. If your heart’s desire is to influence others for Christ, give hope to the hopeless, and speak words of encouragement to the weary, then you must have the presence of the Lord in your life. A presence that is attained by spending quiet time with Him is the one constant that must be present in your life.
Jesus withdrew to a lonely, deserted place. He knew where he had to go to be alone. Do you have a place to pray? If you don’t, that may indicate that you probably don’t pray often.
He has all the time in the world. And He does not see time as we see time. He can accomplish His purposes in four days, forty days, or forty years. He is in no hurry. You cannot hurry the spirit.
I am perfectly confident that the man who does not spend hours along with God will never know the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The world must be left outside until God alone fills the vision…God has promised to answer prayer. It is not that He is unwilling, for the fact is, He is more willing to give than we are to receive. But the trouble is, we are not ready. Oswald J. Smith
There must be closet praying! It is in the closet that we establish the beautiful habit of spontaneous praying on every occasion. When we are fresh out of the closet we are quick to pray about every turn of events. Unceasing prayer is God’s avenue for His children to react to all happenings. Clyde Martin
Oh how few find time for prayer! There is time for everything else, time to sleep and time to eat, time to red the newspaper and the novel, time to visit friends, time for everything else under the sun, but no time for prayer, the most important of all things, the one great essential. Oswald Smith
Tim Cameron
by Tim Cameron | Jul 11, 2015 | prayer
Provoking Thoughts on Prayer
“For this sin hungry age we need a prayer-hungry church. We need to explore again the “exceeding great and precious promises of God.” In “that day”, the fire of judgment is going to test the sort, not the size, of the work we have done. That which is born in prayer will survive the test. Prayer does business with God. Prayer creates hunger for souls; hunger for souls creates prayer. The understanding soul prays, the praying soul gets understanding. To the soul who prays in self-owned weakness, the Lord gives His strength…Lord, let us pray.
Leonard Ravenhilll. (1907–1994) was an English Christian evangelist and author who focused on the subjects of prayer and revival. He is best known for challenging western evangelicalism (through his books and sermons) to compare itself to the early Christian Church as chronicled in the Book of Acts. His most notable book is Why Revival Tarries which has sold over a million copies worldwide. He was a close friend of A.W. Tozer and Keith Green’s mentor.
