American Reformation Church Prayer Journal 32
ARC Prayer Meeting
For today’s brief teaching on prayer, we are going to look at a prayer from redemptive history. This one hearkens back to 1659. It was addressed “To the Reader” and written as an Eliot missionary tract. It was written to raise prayerful support for New England missions. In other words, this was a prayer for God’s people coming to settle America.
“It is the ardent prayer of all that love the Lord Jesus in sincerity, that His Kingdom be enlarged, and the glorious light of the Gospel may shine forth in all nations, that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God, that the Stone cut out without hands may become so great a mountain as to fill the earth, that the idols may be utterly abolished, and the gods of the earth famished, and that all Isles of the heathen may worship the only true God.”
What a prayer. Not many Christians prayer like this today with that Gospel of the Kingdom perspective. There are many reasons for this discrepancy. Chief among them is our view of the future and the lack of a Biblical worldview that establishes a whole Christian life system.
Let’s break down the prayer. First, it calls for “ardent” prayer. Ardent is defined as enthusiastic, passionate, burning, and glowing like an ember. Immediately, the passage from James comes to mind. James 5:16 declares, “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”
The prayer calls for the expansion of God’s Kingdom that correlates with the prayer command issued by our Lord, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” or “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:10, 33). The prayer seeks to see the light of the Gospel shine forth in all nations to the point that all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God. This calls to mind the admonishment from the prophet Isaiah, “Look to Me, and be saved, All you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22).
Next, the prayer quotes a Kingdom passage from the book of Daniel, “You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image (4 worldly kingdoms) on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces…And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:34, 35).
The result of this prayer of seeing the Kingdom spread (and I love this language) as are idols are abolished and false gods become famished. What is the end result of this prayer, “that all Isles of the heathen may worship the only true God.” Amen and amen!
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