Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!  (Isa 5:20  NKJV)

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.  (Matt 7:15-20  NKJV)

I am a Christian who believes that God blesses His people, that He is the faithful Deliverer, Provider and Protector, but also the Righteous and Just Judge. As much as He is faithful to judge the unrighteous, He is consistent in punishing rebellion in His people. However, He gives them space to repent during which He will send prophets with warnings and denouncement of their sins. He may also allow various calamities to chastise them, to bring them to humbleness and repentance. When all has failed to turn their rebellious heart back to Him, then disaster will arrive on the wings of destruction and bondage. All one must do to clearly see this pattern is to research the history of Israel as recorded in the Old Testament.

If God ever once hated sin and rebellion, He still hates it today. He is the same God and does not change.

"For I am the LORD, I do not change;  Mal 3:6 (NKJV)

We almost one and a half years into the twenty-first century at the time of this writing and American Christianity is plunged into deep apostasy. This did not occur suddenly in one great, fatal leap, but by small increments. While on the surface American Christianity was showing signs of great progress, underneath her marbled skin and chiseled structure the worms of apostasy were at work. During the twentieth century of growth, church buildings sprung up all over the landscape. Once, a man remarked to me that he knew that everything was going to be okay because everywhere he looked there was a steeple. What he did not recognize is that underneath many of those steeples lurks apostasy in varying degrees of formation.

America takes great comfort in her church buildings. During certain quiet times of the year, you know, when it seems the world stands still, the Sunday morning silence will be broken by church bells followed by fragments of hymn-singing that are captured and spread by the Fall or Spring breezes. However, millions never leave their houses, but lounge in their recliners with a cup of coffee watching their favorite telechurch service or something secular.

But America's vast religious population is used to "attending church" and professing Christians feel insecure if they do not "go to church" at least occasionally. Thus they attend just enough church services  to avoid the uneasiness that ritual Christian's are prone to incur after missing "church" several times in succession. "Church" consists of an assemblage of professing Christians that may follow a routine that ranges from the extremely liturgical to the highly emotional. Choirs sing, special music or a dance is performed, the offering is taken, announcements are made, a minister renders the sermon, an appeal is given, then everyone goes away and forgets the whole event. Seldom does more than one person remember what the message was about from one Sunday to the next. Even more rare is finding a person who has actually assimilated and applied the message in his or her life during that week. Billions are spent each year to insure that this ritual of "church" is performed weekly, or monthly in some denominations, with pitiful results.

I saw a billboard in a large Texas city that advertised that a certain church would be closed for the summer. At first I thought, "Why not?" I mean, if few or none were attending during the summer, then why go through the pretense of spirituality each week? Then I thought, "Why spend the money on a billboard to inform those people who were not going to attend anyway?" The obvious answer was that the church wanted to notify the city that they were now liberated enough that they could take a vacation from God. If that congregation were really smart, they would fire the pastor at the beginning of each summer and save themselves three months salary. If they were really honest, they would disband, sell the building to a group of true Christians, and then join the Moose, Elk or some other animal-named lodge. Thus they could satisfy their subtle craving for membership and ritual without defiling the good name of God.

The American church is in trouble with a capital "T". Yes, she has steeples, and immaculate buildings to plant them on. There are plenty of religious organizations to fit the taste of everyone from the most irreligious person to the most religious one. Some churches even ordain homosexual pastors and are guilty of having reprobates on their church Boards. However, the major problems with most churches are that they are obsessed with ritual and pseudo-rightness and are convinced that somehow this pleases God and insures their safety from His wrath on the day of judgment. They are also, for the most part unproductive and inefficient for the cause of Christ. Add to this the lack of prayer and knowledge of the Scriptures and we see a composite of the church as an institution that consists of individuals that either have no relationship with Jesus Christ or never had one to begin with. As such, can they be considered true Christians?

I probably will not forget the revival services I conducted in a church where a Sunday school teacher was saved. Before I began preaching the first message on Sunday morning I made the remark that I would be preaching to those who seldom attend revival services during the week. One lady in the congregation decided to attend each service just to prove that she was not one of the part-time Christians that I spoke about that Sunday morning. On Wednesday night, she came to the altar and committed her life to Christ for the first time. The following night she asked if she could speak a few words. Since she was a Sunday school teacher, it was a shock to the congregation to hear that she had been saved the previous night for the first time. When she started attending the church some years ago, they all assumed that she was a Christian because she was so nice. Because they assumed that she was, she made the same assumption. During one of the messages, her heart was convicted and she realized that she had never committed her life to Christ.

Another example was that of a woman who asked to teach Sunday school in a church where I was senior pastor. When I questioned her I discovered that not only was she most probably an alcoholic, but she was also hooked on various mood-altering prescription drugs. When I told her that she was not qualified to teach, she promptly left the church to become the choir director in a large church down the street.

Today, most churches are equipped with leaders who do not know how to pray and many do not live righteously. Some deacons are adulterous men who are also cheats and liars, but their large tithe paying qualifies them for an office in leadership. Other ones are simply carnal and without a scintilla of intimacy with God. Then there is the plague of hirelings who line up to fill pulpits and become managers of a decrepit status quo. They are over-paid, under-worked, producers of banal religious porridge that they plagiarized from books, sermon starters, and television ministers.  The are masters of unoriginality and congenial public relations gurus, but they do nothing to warn the church of encroaching apostasy. They are too busy slapping backs, rubbing egos and telling everyone how safe and blessed that they are. In fact, many of these leaders are in a constant state of carnality and operate the church like a secular business or an exclusive social club.

This leads to the problem of the church as an institution competing for a share of professing Christians in the community. It doesn't matter that people are attending another church, everyone who declare themselves to be a Christian is fair game. Therefore, these churches put up huge billboards, advertise in newspapers and send out people to knock on doors and leave flyers promoting the church and its services.  Their efforts do not attract the lost, but are attempts to proselytize from other churches.  They all claim in some form or another to be "the end of one's search for an exciting church." Not only do all of them claim to be exciting, but many of them promise, in fact give downright guarantees, that if you visit their church, you will never be the same. The promise that your visit will be a life changing experience that you will never forget. Some of them include specific miracles in the package deal.

Charismatic and Pentecostal churches are the worst offenders when it comes to peddling sensationalism and hyper-emotionalism. One might see traces of the New Age in some of these places, and in other venues there may be full-blown occult practices. This includes hypnotism, fortune telling, witchcraft, channeling, mind-control, and a whole range of false doctrine disguised with religious rhetoric and exercises. Some Charismatic ministers advertise gold dust and diamonds are falling in their services. Other ones promise that Jesus Christ Himself will appear in person. They may crow like roosters, bark like dogs, grunt like pigs, moo like cattle, growl like a lion, or stagger about as if they are drunk or drugged. Other times they laugh for great periods of time as a comedian tells one joke after another. They fall down, get stuck on each other, roll in the floor and otherwise make a complete mockery of the gospel and Christ Jesus.  

Some Christians do not become involved in the laughter movement, but instead choose to enter politics in a vain attempt to legislate Christianity into power over the world system. Other professing Christians bomb abortion clinics, assassinate abortion doctors, or spend endless hours picketing and otherwise demonstrating in front of abortion clinics. I'm totally against abortion and we need godly people in our nation's leadership, but these Christians must realize that we cannot obtain by secular means what we will not fight for on our knees in prayer. And if there is genuine, sincere prayer, we will repent and live under submission to the will of God. Until there is mass repentance and turning to God with full surrender throughout all of Christendom, the Church will not be established as a viable and respected institution in the world.

The non-Charismatic/Pentecostal denominations also have their problems.  The 1993 Presbyterian woman's conference is a prime example of the New Age Movement's influence on the church.  These women engaged in various new age practices, channeling, worshipping the goddess Sophia, and made an organized effort to remove all references to God in the male neuter from their hymnals.  For several years the Presbyterians were considering ordaining homosexuals for ministry.  In their last conference they voted to commit this tragic blasphemy.  This is certainly the death of a denomination being played out before our eyes.

What is the cause of all of this error and falseness? The clear fact is, the overwhelming majority of Christians do not pray. They do not see the necessity of prayer and few have the relationship with God that can produce the intimacy that is a prerequisite to prayer. Intimacy also produces the prelude of worship that is vital to prayer. The plethora of problems that plague the modern church in America is a direct result of the lack of intimacy, prayer, and true worship. Trying to correct all the falseness and error is like cutting weeds. We may expend a lot of effort and report great progress in cutting weeds, but next week the weeds will be back and in need of being cut again. One has to kill the roots before the problems can be solved. Nothing is going to be solved without prayer and that is a fact. The roots of our problems run deep. Praying will eventually reveal the deep flaws in our nature that God can then deal with and help us overcome.  

However, one of the most tedious and grinding battles that a Christian can fight is the struggle to pray. We wrestle with the clock, ponder our list of activities, and juggle our priorities, to simply liberate a bit of time for prayer. When we finally collapse into a prayer posture, an armada of nomadic thoughts swarm our gray matter. These are not thoughts that will aid us in prayer, but thoughts that produce an infinite number of distractions and reasons why it is not a good time to pray. Without a strong determination and a mind that is equipped with knowledge, the invading thoughts will win most of the time.

Most professing Christians believe in prayer, but more as an emergency measure than a daily habit. Of the one's who pray daily, most of them only mumble a few words on the run and seldom pray at length. Thus the great majority of professing Christians does not understand or accept the importance of prayer.

Pray is conversation with God. Praying invites God to intervene in the affairs of humanity. It is a faith-building, trouble-snuffing, problem-solving, mainline infusion of raw spiritual energy. Two great activities build faith and spiritual power and one of them is prayer. The other one is studying the word of God.

We may not have many of the material things or physical energy to invest into God's kingdom work, but we can invest quality and quantity praying. Older people may slow down physically and be on fixed income. But they are as strong or stronger than a much younger person when they pray. The value of these prayer warriors and intercessors  to the church is incalculable.

Prayer is the great equalizer. We can't all be internationally famous as preachers, teachers or missionaries, but we can all be famous in heaven. In fact, some popular ministers may be practically unknown in heaven. Heaven collects prayers, but there is not one scripture that depicts heaven collecting sermons. Prayers are heaven's incense, but I have personally endured many sermons that stunk. I suspect there are many more sermons that heaven refuses to accept because of the odor, and also some prayers, I might add.

There are several important reasons why we should pray. If we really desire to be a victorious Christian, we will consider these points and let them inspire us to pray.

First, when we pray, we increase our potential for success in doing God's will and minimize the possibilities of failure. The reasons for this principle are many. Prayer helps us to refocus our minds and spirits on eternal perspectives. This keeps us on course to perform God's will. It is easier to discover what God is blessing and do it rather than try to secure His blessings on what we want to do. Jesus prayed, "Not My will, but Thine be done."  Some people pray in a roundabout manner, "Bless my will and Thine be done."  Prayer surrenders our will to God's sovereign will and wisdom. When we put matters into God's hands we end the risk of failure.

Secondly, we refresh and increase our faith with prayer. The act of praying is a work of faith. All the elements of faith have to be set in motion for us to pray effectively.  We should remember that all work comes at the expense of energy.  We will definitely pay some price to pray.  

Prayer clears our spiritual channel so that we can hear God. Our spiritual channel can become clogged with doubts, fears because of the lack of prayer traffic. As a result, our mind can become a cauldron of carnal ideas and philosophy. The longer that we refrain from praying, the worse the situation becomes. God cannot speak to us when our channel is blocked and our minds are filled with all sorts of rubbish. If we want to hear Him, then we must speak to Him. Hearing God is vital to ones faith and knowledge of His will.

However, all that I have said thus far may not convince some people that prayer is necessary. Other people may be convinced, but they do not know how to pray. Therefore, we need to teach the HOW of praying as much as the WHY.

How to Pray

Jesus taught His disciples how to pray by giving them a pattern. This pattern, called the Lord's Prayer, is not to be taken as the only prayer that one can pray, but an example of how to pray. I seldom pray the Lord's Prayer, but often use it as a pattern to pray. But If one of my daughters were sick, I would pray specifically for her to be healed rather than quote the Lord's Prayer.

Since it is a pattern to teach us how to pray, let's take it as such and learn the lessons that it presents. First, it begins by the phrase, "Our Father". If you are a Christian, then you are a child of God. Think about that for a moment, a "child of God". When do you ever call God, Father? The only times that I call Him Father is when I address Him in prayer. What I mean is that every time I say "Father", I am speaking to God, i.e., beginning a conversation. That means that I am praying at that point.

I may address the Father frequently throughout the day with a steady conversation. Sometimes I comment on His beautiful sunshine or rain. Other times I ask Him for help in various matters. When I want to get alone for an extended time of prayer, I begin by says, "My Father". That is the proper way to begin a prayer because it denotes whom you are praying to. The title FATHER will open up the channel of prayer. It gets the Father's attention. When you say, "my Father", God is listening.

A mild example would be like walking into a room packed with people. It is a reception for the president of the United States and you are a stranger to them all except the president. You cry out, "Mr. President", and the room becomes deathly silent and all eyes are focused on you. Then as he replies, "Yes," you breath a sigh of relief that he remembered you and thus spared you from total embarrassment.

The piercing attention of the Father is focused on each of His children that speak His name or the title "Father". He remembers each one of them by name. If you want to get the attention of God, and you are a child of God, then just say, "my Father". At that point, you have begun praying and you have His full attention.

Next, Jesus said, " in heaven". Why is it important to speak the location of the Father? Because there are a lot of gods that people address as father, but the true Father is in heaven. There are some fallible men on earth that desire that people should pray to them and call them father. Great portions of these men never had children and certainly have no spiritual mandate to step into the role of God. We should identify that we are praying to the One true God, our Father, who sits on the throne in heaven. He alone is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient and all other gods are false.

Then we should begin praying as the rest of the pattern teaches.

Hallowed be Your name. We should always exalt God in the beginning of our prayer. Praise His name and praise Him for what He means to you. Don't just thank Him for what He gives you, but for what He means to you. He is more than a provider. He is also a comforter, a friend, and a lover of your soul, a protector, a sustainer, an uplifter, an enabler and more.

Pray for His kingdom to be established on earth. This means praying for His work to continue, for people to enter His service, for ministers, pastors, teachers, prophets, evangelists and missionaries. Pray for your church and fellow believers. Pray for a mighty revival to shake our land and our world.

Pray for His will to be done. Pray for His will for your life as well as His will in everything that you can think of.

Pray for your needs and the needs of others. Pray for sick people, lost people poor people and everyone else that you know who needs prayer.

Repent for your sins and errors.

Forgive people who have wronged you.

Pray for guidance in all things. Pray that other people will submit to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Pray for deliverance and protection for yourself and others.

Exalt Him in praise at the end as you have in the beginning.

I always end my prayers in Jesus' name.

Such a prayer can easily take 30 minutes to an hour. One ought to also write down the things that they need to pray about so that their minds will not lock up and frustrate their praying. It is also helpful to keep a prayer manual listing the answers to prayer and the things that God spoke to you during prayer.

The more one prays, the more that they can hear God speaking as I wrote before. Here in America, Christians desperately need to hear the voice of God. We need the direction that God gives through the voice of His Holy Spirit. If a mighty revival is going to occur in America, it will be the result of some dedicated people praying until they hear God. Then they will speak like the prophets before them with the fire of heaven in their souls. Maybe this will turn things around, and maybe people have already grown so cold and hard that they cannot be touched. In any case, we should not allow the great apostasy, currently in effect, to discourage us from praying. If for no other reason, then pray that you will not be numbered among the apostate professing Christians in our backslidden America.