One of our guiding values of our church is that prayer should be first, second, and third. We take that from a statement that the great missionary to China, J.O. Fraser, said in response to a question about what his most important priorities were in ministry. The interlocutor said, “Obviously, Mr. Fraser, prayer is our first priority. But what is second and third?” He was fishing for some real strategy—preaching or good discipleship or something tangible.
J.O. Fraser’s response? “I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel that it would be truer to give prayer the first, second, and third place, and teaching the fourth.”
That’s completely consistent with what both Jesus and the apostles taught about prayer in the church. Jesus said in Mark 11:17, quoting Isaiah 56:7, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations” (ESV). That’s really important phrasing: “My house shall be called.” That’s passive voice. This is not about what the church calls itself; it’s about how others describe the church. It’s not so much about our aspirations but our reputation. When people think about our church, what should characterize it is that it’s a place of prayer, where people connect with God.
Is that what people would say about your church? When they talk about it, what do they bring up? Is it the preaching, the worship, or the ministries? Hopefully, people have glowing things to say about all of those. But do they ever say, “Man, those people over there, they talk to God. That’s the main thing that happens over there”? The apostles took this cue from Jesus and lived it out. All the major turning points in the book of Acts happen around prayer meetings.
That’s true right from the beginning. In Acts 1, on a hillside outside of Bethany, Jesus gives the Great Commission—to carry the gospel to every nation on earth—to a bunch of blue-collar workers.
Never in the history of the world had a more important assignment been given to a less qualified group of people.
And what did they do?
Instinctively, according to Acts 1, they ran to the upper room to pray. And they prayed there for 10 days. Only then did the power of God fall on them. I sometimes ask myself, “What would I have done if I’d been in that situation?” Jesus has just given us our assignment. You know what most of us would have done? We would’ve gotten out a whiteboard and started to plan. Organize. Raise money. But they got on their faces and started to pray—for 10 days … and it worked. After praying for 10 days, the Holy Spirit’s power came. Then Peter stood up and preached for about 10 minutes and 3,000 people, from all over the world, got saved. From this point forward, for the rest of Acts, we’ll see the church praying at every key moment of transition.
In Acts 13:2, it’s while the church is in a prayer meeting that God calls the first two foreign missionaries, Paul and Barnabas, to his service. Think about that. The greatest missions movement in the history of the world came not out of a missions conference but a prayer meeting.
One more example: In Acts 6, there were some needs in the church that needed addressing—there were widows who were going hungry. The apostles said, in essence, “This is important and we care about it, but we don’t have time to do it ourselves; we have to focus on prayer and the ministry of the Word, so you need to raise up other leaders to take care of this part of the ministry of the church. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.”
Now, what’s interesting about their response is that they put “prayer” and “the ministry of the Word” on equal footing. Those are the only two things they mention. Prayer and preaching. Apparently, both are ministries of the church.
For most of us, we see “prayer” as the preparation for the ministry and the preaching of the Word as the real ministry. But in the early church, prayer was not just preparation for the ministry; prayer was the ministry.
Prayer is, I would posit, the most important thing we can do as the people of God. Our church should be known as a house of prayer for all nations, or else, what are we even doing?
What makes the people of God special is not our strength or size or skill, but that we have a God who answers prayer. I want it to be that when people talk about the church, they don’t just talk about the worship or the preaching, but they say, “Over there, at that church, you can connect with God!”
Books by J.D. Greear
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