Pilgrimage

Eugene Peterson in Working the Angles rightly claims that “for the majority of the Christian centuries most pastors have been convinced that prayer is the central and essential act for maintaining the essential shape of the ministry to which they were ordained.” This statement encapsulates the prominence of prayer in the everyday lives of God’s chosen servants throughout the ages. It is not difficult to reflect through the scriptures and see reference after reference to the discipline of prayer. In fact, prayer is seen in the earliest portions of scripture. Job, a man pleasing to the Lord prayed that the Lord would spare his foolish friends. God answered his prayer and relented from His wrath upon them and blessed Job immensely for his faithfulness. In the last chapters written in the canon, we again see the call the prayer. John the Revelator gives us a glimpse of the beautiful prayers of the saints…ever before the Lord as sweet bowls of incense. Prayer indeed is a sweet aroma to God.

The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, knew of the importance of leadership covered with prayer. By the time of his death in 1912, the Salvation Army had spread its work of sharing the gospel and providing for the needs of the poor to some 58 countries. It is Booth who said “work as if everything depended upon your work, and pray as if everything depended upon your prayer.” It was clear that Booth understood the necessity of prayer for the task that God had called him to. Working in the slums of England, he would sometimes return home bruised and beaten for preaching the gospel, yet he maintained fervency about the work of the Lord that was almost matchless in his day. The watch words of the Salvation Army in his day were “Blood and Fire” signifying the importance of the need to recognize the blood of Christ and what it stood for as well as the fire of the Holy Spirit that comes through prayer.

Petersons work surely echoes these very thoughts. He describes the stale prayer life as cut flowers that look nice for a while but are in fact already dead. It is here that a true leader must consistently recognize the importance of maintaining a time and place of prayer that is restricted to the Lord. The scriptures tell us that the enemy goes about like a lion seeking whom he many devour. The first piece of us that he seeks to devour is our prayer life. The pastor or church leader must realize the importance and prominence of prayer in everyday life. A life that is steeped in prayer becomes the cornerstone of integrity in the pastoral walk.

Peterson’s reflection on the fact that the prophetic voice has been elevated above that of the psalmist is important to note. In much of modern society the Psalms have been relegated to the periphery of Christendom. The have become a fanciful menagerie that is pulled from the shelf to provide filler in services or a quick devotional that relieves guilt just before laying our head to the pillow. However, it is the Psalms that teach us to pray. The lack of emphasis in the contemporary church on the discipline of prayer as worked out through the Psalms is striking. It seems that now a whole generation has cut their teeth on the pew rarely hearing the Psalms prayed in worship of the Omnipotent. Prayer has degenerated into a litany of wants and desires that give very little back to the Kingdom of out Lord. It is here that one must look critically at ones self taking as a measure the very rule of scripture.