Over the weekend of November 25-26,2006, Rev. Dr. Phil Pringle spoke to the congregation of City Harvest Church, calling for a deeper desire to pray in order to be constantly
connected with God.

Luke 11:1-2 says, "Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.' So He said to them, 'When you pray, say...'"

In this passage, Jesus begins to teach His disciples how to pray. We should understand that the disciples never asked Him to teach them how to preach. They saw Jesus preaching, but they never said, "Teach us how to do that." They saw Jesus worshiping but they never said, "Teach us how to worship." They saw Him heal the sick, but they did not say, "Teach us how to heal, Jesus." Occasionally when they could not do something, they might ask, "Why couldn't we do it?" They requested answers to their questions. But they never asked, "Teach us!"

The one thing that they asked to be taught about was prayer, and similarly, there is a greater dimension for each believer to grasp hold of in the Word about prayer. Jesus wants to teach His church how to pray. We have learned how to worship.-We can stand and sing with enthusiasm and fire in our hearts. But the disciples never asked to be taught how to sing and clap and worship and dance. They said, "Teach us how to pray." They saw that the key to the salvation of the entire world was in learning" how to pray.

The body of Christ all around the world has learned how to worship. But sometimes, "good" is the worst enemy of "best." It is good to worship the Lord but let me tell you what the best thing is. If we worship at the expense of prayer, we are going to miss the point. We will worship ourselves to sleep. We will rock ourselves to the lullaby land because worship has certain kind of power but it is not nearly as powerful as prayer is.

Prayer is a universal language. You may not know how to sing but you can pray. Everybody on earth can pray. We come together and pray in heavenly languages. Every single believer in the world can come together in a spirit of unity, in the power of praying in the Holy Spirit. The church has to pray. The church is a house of prayer. A church prayer meeting is not an add-on to the church.

Jesus does not call the church a "house of worship." He does not call it a house of teaching. He does not call it a house of healing. He does not call it a house of miracles. He calls it a house of prayer. And He says, "I will turn over every table and everything that is in the church that is preventing the house from being a house of prayer."

At His time, it was turning over the tables of the money-changers and of those who were selling doves. There was also the merchandizing of religious things. All of that was valid but it prevented the place from being a "house of prayer." He said, "It shall not be this. It is meant to be a house of prayer." Yet many churches today are everything else but a house of prayer!

The devil opposes prayer with all his might because he knows when the church starts praying, earthquakes in the spiritual world start ripping open the heavens, pouring out the Holy Spirit over all the earth.

A prayerless church is an impotent church. Nothing is achieved without prayer. You can last six weeks without food, you can last three days without water, but you are going to last only five minutes without air. Prayer is the church's lungs. Prayer is the breathing of heaven's air. When you pray, you breathe the air of heaven. And if we are to bring the presence of heaven into this world, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven," (Matt. 6:10, KJV) if we are to bring the feeling of heaven into this world, we need to breathe it in our lives.

The only way we breathe it, is by sucking the air of heaven into our spirit. Everyday of our lives, individually and corporately, we need to do that—to breathe the air of another world. Your spirit only lives because of prayer. When we are dying and starving our spirit of air, we start to walk in the flesh. And if we try to do the things of the kingdom by the arm of the flesh, it may kill us!

The five foolish virgins did not have oil in their lamps. On the other hand, the five wise virgins had oil in their lamps. How do you get oil in your lamp? You pray. There are no shortcuts. There is no easy way to get the anointing. You cannot get someone to lay hands on you, and expect the anointing to be upon you for the rest of your life simply because of that touch. It does not happen like that.

The anointing lives in you because everyday you pick up oil from heaven and put it into your spirit. The oil, not the wick, is meant to burn in us. People burn out when they lose their oil, and their wicks are burning. On the other hand, everyday you can choose to pay the price of anointing, which is time and prayer. There is no other price. You cannot buy wine and milk without money. Similarly, you have to buy anointing with time. There is no special deal going on this week for the anointing. There is no closing down sale. There is only one way to get it. That is to get up in the morning and seek the LORD.

Give yourself five minutes with God. Shut the door. This could be difficult because some of you are very gregarious people. You have sanguine personalities. You love being around people, so shutting the door and being alone is horrible. You shut the door and try to pray, "God, God, God ..." and the moment you hear some noises out there, you think, "What's going on? What's happening out there? Listen, I hear something. I want to party!" You need to discipline that personality inside you and say, "God, you are more important than anything else."

Some of you are addicted to details. You go, "Oh God, oh God, oh God ... What's that? I will pick that up." You go, "Oh God, oh God, oh God ... I have to paint that ceiling." "Oh God, oh God, oh God, I have to wipe that out ... Oh God, oh God ... Just straighten this out ... God, God, God ..." You must get over that! Stop being a perfectionist.

And then there is another group of people who come to God and say, "God, I want You to do this, I want You to do that. I have a list here and a list there too. I need this, this and this. Thank you very much. See you later." And He goes, "But, but, but ... oh, here he goes again." He would talk to you if you were not so intent on getting your agenda worked on.

DRAW NEAR TO GOD IN PRAYER

The Bible says, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. You say you love Him but you cannot even stop to spend a little time with Him. Many times, we want God to do things for us so badly that we forget who we are talking to. We place higher value on the things He can do more than who He is.

If you seek Him with all your heart, and not what He can do for you, you will find Him. And sometimes, we don't get the things that we want because there are little idols in our lives that are more important than God Himself. And we become angry with God for not giving us what we want.

Just look at John. John did not want anything but to be just there with the Lord. Yet sometimes, our visions, ministries, goals and dreams which we all preach about, and our destiny, future and prophecies have all become way more important than the God who gave them. "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13).

Over the years, my foolish assumption has been that Christians pray. My even more foolish assumption has been that preachers pray. Yet I have discovered that many do not. The fact is you and I have been called to a life of prayer, our whole life is meant to be calling on God.

When you start praying without ceasing, you have a continual flow of life coming into your soul. Your spirit breathes all day long. However, many believers have not even started to allow that fountain to spring up on the inside.

It may be easier to pray as a congregation, but it can become challenging when you get alone. It is difficult for you to actually give yourself to prayer. John Wesley said, "Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth." God does nothing but in answering the prayer, and you and I can get the spirit of prayer upon us that Zechariah speaks of in Chapter 12:10, "Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem" (NLT).