He told us to pray for workers in the harvest (Matthew 9:38). The problem always lies not with the shortage of people willing to come to Christ, but the shortage of workers to bring them to Him. We must address this shortage through prayer.
He told us to pray in unity with others (Matthew 18:19,20). He told us to pray in His name (John 14:13,14; 15:7; 16:23–26). Praying in His name conditions our prayer.
"Praying in His name" is not some magical formula we tack onto a prayer to get what we want. Those who pray in His name know the character of the One in whose name they pray; and, therefore, we make our requests known and leave the response to Him for either divine intervention or divine strength.
He told us to pray with faith (Mark 11:22–26), and that some things cannot be done except through prayer (Mark 9:29). God has chosen to do His work through our prayer, not without it.
Since the Lord is Sovereign, He may do anything He wants consistent with His nature. However, some things He will not do unless we pray. Remember how Jesus privately instructed the disciples: "'This kind comes out only by prayer'" (Mark 9:29)? If only prayer could deliver a demoniac, how much more is prayer required when we pray for the world, the nation, the Church, and the tremendous needs faced within our communities and congregations?
Harold Lindsell expressed it well: "God cannot do some things unless we work. He stores the hills with marble, but He has never built a cathedral. He fills the mountains with iron ore, but He never makes a needle or a jet airplane. He leaves that to us. If then, God has left many things dependent on man's thinking and working, why should He not leave some things dependent upon man's praying? He has done so. 'Ask and you shall receive.' And there are some things God will not give us unless we ask. We cannot suppose that God will do for us without prayer what He has promised to do for us only through prayer."
Thus, prayer is essential for spreading the gospel.
Jesus taught, " 'Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field' " (Matthew 9:38). Jesus modeled what He asked of others. He himself spent the entire night in prayer before He called the 12 and named them apostles (Luke 6:12–16). And, would we ever have had the opening to the Gentiles had Peter not gone up on the roof to pray — a prayer that resulted in Peter's willingness to go the house of Cornelius (Acts 10:9)? Would the first missionary journey have ever been launched had the Antioch leadership not been fasting and praying (Acts 13:1–3)? The apostle Paul urged the Colossians, "Pray for us that God may open a door for our message. … Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should" (Colossians 4:3,4).
Clearly the Early Church understood that a prayerless church is a powerless church. They learned well from Jesus: "Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, emphasis mine).
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