by Brett Jacobsen

The four legged plow horse

The life and ways of Jesus Christ are, and will always be, the primary illustration for Christians to model their lives from. If we are to learn from anyone else’s example, it is imperative that they themselves are, or were, mimicking Christ in their endeavors. Although it is not for us to simply copy the methods of the early church, we should definitely imbibe the principles emulated from the life of Christ.

There were four key principles that the early church at Jerusalem “continued steadfastly” in. These were: “the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.” (Acts 2:42) This four-fold focus for Kingdom of God living provides a thorough expression of Christ in both our personal lives and our Kingdom communities. In fact, the Christian disciple and the Christian-community that operates consistently in these four values, not only has no need for “going to church”, they are better off if they don’t.

These four principles are equally important, even though prayer and the Word seem like they should be superior. Just as a three legged plow horse would struggle to walk, let alone plow large fields, the community of believers that neglects any one of these four principles will hobble along in a degree of ineffective feebleness. Over the last two thousand years or so there have been many styles of church that have inevitably produced imbalanced forms of Christian life and community. There may be a measure of victory in a person or community that is strong in prayer and the Word. However, if you aren’t giving attention to participative, covenant relationships and New Testament style breaking bread you will be found wanting. This is likewise for the other elements also.

As the main focus of this article is continuing steadfastly in prayer, we will only give a brief explanation of the other three legs in the productive plow horse of New Testament Christianity. The first, in chronology but not importance, is “the apostle’s doctrine” which is speaking of two things. These are the Bible itself, as the apostles taught from the Old Testament and taught the New Testament, as well as Biblical teaching from apostolically graced people. The second leg, or value, is “fellowship [koinonia]” which speaks of the believer’s role in having strong, participatory covenant based relationships with other saints that provide accountability, growth and encouragement. The third is “breaking of bread” which many rightly understand as covenant symbolism, but few realize to be every day spiritual community, based around a real meal which includes covenant emblems and spiritual elements.

Because the Jerusalem church prioritized these principles “the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” (47) If we will do likewise and take it upon ourselves to outwork New Testament Christianity, we too will see seasons of great fruitfulness.

The prayer leg

As important as its three partners, prayer, in all its many forms, is a necessity in both the personal lives of Christians and the covenant community’s existence. Prayer could be generally summed up as “communication with God” or can be expounded in all its fullness and complexity. Prayer in its vastness includes: worship, praise, waiting on and lingering with God, petition, intercession, offloading burdens, receiving revelation, and much more. Prayer is the heartbeat of Christian life, as it focuses all other spiritual activities on God Himself, causing the other principles and operations of the Kingdom to be anchored in Him. It is essential for the maturation and continuity of our personal Kingdom walk, as it is for our ministry endeavors for Kingdom advancement.

Prayer is an invitation for God to do what He has purposed to do in, through and around our lives. It is coming into agreement and aligning ourselves with divine destiny. Without continued prayer, we perform Christianity with no breath and therefore no life source. We can know the Bible, have true friendships and even have bread breaking ceremonies, but lack the most precious commodity: “the manifestation of the Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:7) Without divine communion, communion with each other, as well as commission to the world, becomes counterfeit Christianity: dead religion. We can continue to go through the motions, but without the very life of God we just strive in our own best efforts.

Despite the fact that numerous Christians know this to be true, many of us find ourselves steadfastly excluding prayer. We may have good intentions, but we will produce very little eternal fruit in and around our lives without this pertinent practice of prayer. In fact, you could probably say that according to the measure of divine communion in our life, would be the measure of divine capability. When in a prayerful place, God’s ability is at work in and through us. When we are not in this place, we’re confined to our own ability. This not only applies to ministry work and the like, but is also true concerning our general Christian walk. Too many people that attempt to be a disciple of Christ do so in their own inability, due to a lifestyle that includes minimal proportions of prayer.

Steadfast endurance in prayer

Our main text from Acts 2 gives us part of the answer to our bareness in prayer. It says of the four principles, prayer included, that they “continued steadfastly [proskartereo]” in them. The word proskartereo in the text means to persevere, to be constantly diligent with. If we are going to live in the life of God rather than existing in our fallen self we must “persevere” in prayer by being “constantly diligent with” it. Paul the apostle gave insight into how we can begin to persevere diligently in constant prayer, when he wrote to the Colossians. He said:

If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col 3:1-3)

Prayer is ‘existing in a risen state with Christ’, as it is not our own merit that brings us “boldly to the throne of grace” but His. (Heb 4:16) In order to partake and live in the heavenly reality of communion with God (prayer), we are told we must “set [our] affection on things above” rather than earthly things. Perhaps it is our worldly world view that causes us to contract Spiritual A.D.D. (attention deficit disorder) as our mind lingers in the realm of the cursed cosmos rather than the celestial Kingdom of Christ. Notice that he says to “set” your affection or mind, rather than saying let your affection. If our mind is left to itself it will lean towards the carnal realm of humanism which is contrary to God’s Kingdom. The word used for ‘set’ in Colossians 3 is phroneo. This means to exercise the mind, i.e. entertain or have a sentiment or opinion; to be (mentally) disposed; to interest oneself in (with concern or obedience) care. Quite simply, we need to make the effort to set/focus our self toward heaven rather than letting our mind wander wherever it ends up. There are so many demonic tactics of distraction in our modern society that we may have to work even harder to keep our mind from faltering.

Another manner in which the word “set” is used is to set like concrete, to be hard fixed or set on something. As we learn to set our attention toward heavenly things, our greatest opposition will probably come from our own self. Our fallen state has caused us to have a propensity to give up on things we know we ought to keep doing. Paul encouraged the Galatians to have endurance when he said:

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Gal 6:9)

His emphasis was on not becoming weary in the things of God, which we must all stand guard against. Prayer in the Christian’s life is always at risk of falling prey to this growing weary and fainting adversary, unless we ‘set’ things in our life that cause us to “set” our mind towards heaven continually.

Prayer is for where?

When the Bible says “Pray without ceasing” it means exactly that: live life in a continual state of prayer. (1 Thess 5:17) Prayer is not some spiritual toy that is set aside from everyday life, reserved for holy hour in holy venues. It is imperative that we come alive to the fullness of prayer, allowing it to become our daily life source. We must set ourselves toward having a perpetual Christ consciousness: an ever abiding, ever increasing awareness of His majestic reality consuming our person. The conversational aspect of prayer, which is the part that most people think of as prayer, is only a small fragment of the picture.

Obviously people can cop out on God with statements like: “I don’t go to prayer meetings, I just pray all the time”, when in actual fact they go daily about their own business with no real focus on, or communion with God. Remember that you must “set your affections on things above” as they won’t just gravitate there. Evidently the more we set our self toward heaven, the more our mind is transformed into one that has a heavenly bias. However, we need to continue till the end to “set” ourselves in prayer or we will grow weary and faint.

Although prayer is more about perpetual communion with Father than a holy hour commotion with the pastor, we ought to have a Biblical prayer strategy that we can set ourselves to do, both personally and as a community. Another way of using the word “set” is to ‘set out a format’ as in a set task or set schedule.

Many who have left behind the hindrance of institutional Christianity, although finding themselves performing the other three principles mentioned in Acts 2:42, still struggle to prioritize prayer. Some find it even more difficult as they no longer have the organizational structures, official prayer rooms and intercessory prayer popes to motivate them towards God (not that those things are doing a very good job of it). We must find the balance between prayer events and life in prayer in order to set out a Spirit inspired prayer schedule.

Strange as it may sound, prayer meetings can be a hindrance to a prayer lifestyle, as they have often placed a meeting focused paradigm upon the believers. This obstructs their every day prayer walk. In the case of institutional evacuatees though, having some set prayer gatherings can be a pulse in their prayer walk. Even on our own, having set time that is set apart to pray and nothing else is constructive in our spiritual walk as long as it doesn’t cause us to think that God stayed back in the prayer room, or that we now have God over and done with for the day, or the week for many.

An opportunity to grow

The type of prayer life that I propose here presents every believer with the opportunity to either grow up and take responsibility for their spiritual walk, or become more of a spiritual baby. Much of the reason for the lack of prayer in the church, more so in the west, is due to the fact that we the leaders have tried to keep the spiritually adolescent and maturing saints at home under our spiritual curriculum, rather than prompting those that have known the Lord for some time to take their spiritual life and run with it. If we keep treating Christians as nepios/babies when they are growing up, they will indeed never grow up.

Structure with our prayer life is good as long as it is Spirit inspired. It is up to us to be motivated by the Spirit with when to set prayer times, both alone with God and with other believers. It is also our responsibility to become more perpetually focused on Him, of course with the encouragement of other saints and mature examples (elders).

We are moving into a season where every day believers have the greatest opportunity to move forward into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, possibly more than any time in history. (Eph 4:13) If the true leaders amongst the church will believe God and release the sheep into the care of the Good Shepard, obviously with ongoing supervision, there will be seasons of unprecedented maturity and subsequent growth. If the saints will pick up the ball and relish in this prospect of extensive spiritual enhancement, they will “go […] into all the world”, overflowing with the presence of God. (Mark 16:15) 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Biblical Leadership, Brett Jacobsen's teachings, Church Structure, Living Christianity, Prayer / Worship, Reformation/ Revival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.