Call Unto Me: Becoming a Person of Prayer

In this Wednesday evening prayer meeting service, Pastor Chris Parker opened the Word to Psalm 143:1 — “Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness” — and challenged the church to become true people of prayer. Before the message, the congregation was blessed to hear from missionary Carl Gormley, who has served in the Philippines since 1995, sharing about a church planting ministry of twenty-one churches and the Home of Hope children’s ministry that has cared for more than eighty children.

Taking Jeremiah 33:3 as his theme — “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” — Pastor Parker reminded us that prayer, in its simplest form, is conversing with God. We have made prayer mystical, he warned, when it is really communion: speaking to God, but also listening to Him. Like fishing, you can buy all the equipment and read all the books, but until you put a hook in the water you will never learn to fish — and until you start praying, you will never become a prayer warrior. Citing Luke 18:1, that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint,” he urged us not to wait for an emergency to get hold of God, but to walk with Him as Enoch did, in constant communion. God already knows our hearts and our needs; what He wants is to hear from us.

The evening included a lively Bible quiz on the great prayers of Scripture, from Joshua’s cry for the sun to stand still to Hannah’s plea for a son and Solomon’s request for wisdom. Pastor Parker closed by noting whose prayers are heard: the sincere, the persistent, the unselfish, and the prayers of faith — “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Yes, we need soul winners and students of the Word, but the most needed thing in the church today is men and women in communion with God. Be a person of prayer.