A Praying Church, Part 4
March 30, 2023 | by: Dale Thiele | 0 Comments
Posted in: Pastoral Encouragement
In this series of articles, I seek to unpack the teaching of Paul Miller’s new book, A Praying Church, and apply the principles to our church. As we grow in our prayer habits, may we become people of hope in a discouraging world.
How we view the church and how it functions directly impacts the prayer life of the church. That is what Paul Miller is explaining in Part 2 of his book, The Prayer Church. Last week, we saw that when we think of the church more in its institutional nature, rather than its organic nature, we diminish the value of prayer. Miller wants us to think of the saints (i.e., the individual believers) when we think of the church. The church institutional exists to equip and feed the church organic. Miller contends, “Feeding saints church as an end in itself leaves them starving and weak, while praying Christ into saints energizes them for ministry” (p. 73).
Building on this view of the church, Miller expands the normal understanding of what ministry is. Again, he looks to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as a guide. He says, “What do saints do? They love. So love defines what they do and how they do it. We’ve not gone from theology to application, but from doing faith (Eph. 1-3) to doing love (Eph. 4-6). When doing love becomes mere application, it weakens the church, relegating love to a backwater” (p. 75). Miller does not want us to think of “love” as a tack on for Christian living. Love is a defining mark of true Christians. And all ministry is an outflow of love.
How does this impact the prayer life of a church? Miller explains, “If ministry is love, that greatly expands our definition of ministry. All of life for a Christian is ministry… The only way we can sustain superhuman love is by asking our Father to keep doing what he did at Jesus’s resurrection and now has done permanently at the core of our being. So when we pray, we are asking the Father to give us the Spirit yet once again in order to bring us Christ so that he will resurrect something broken in our lives” (p. 76). Every interaction with another person is a ministry opportunity. We are moved to pray more when we see the great ministry opportunities throughout every day of our lives.
In the midst of his discussion of the saints and ministry, Miller addresses a tension at the heart of our faith, as articulated by Martin Luther during the Reformation: we are simultaneously saints and sinners. Miller says, “These two truths go hand in hand, and yet, in time, the sin side overwhelmed the saint side. Seeing sin comes easily, but seeing saints takes work. Practically, that meant that the flesh loomed larger than the Spirit’s resurrection work at the core of our being” (p. 77). He goes on to contend, “If we miss saints, then we neuter the church’s life of prayer, and the weight of doing church falls on pastors” (p. 78).
I believe Miller expresses a legitimate concern here. We can overemphasize our sin to the point that we do not live as if victory over sin is possible. If victory is not possible, why pray? Of course, there can be excesses on the other side. We can become overconfident in our victory over sin and believe that we can achieve sinlessness in this life. This would lead us to the same place of prayerlessness. If we believe we do not have any sin, why pray? Miller’s concern, however, is legitimate. As we have seen in our recent sermons from Ephesians 2, Paul is clear to emphasize God transforms us from being dead in sin to being alive together with Christ. God raises us with Christ “that we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
I disagree with Miller on one point. I would say that seeing our own personal sin takes work, just as much as it takes work to see our status as saints. Sure, as a Reformed church, we have our time of confession of sin, but throughout the week, we are prone to forget how needy and weak we are. Knowing oneself as a sinner is humbling and drives one to his knees, dependent on the Lord, just as much as knowing oneself as God’s workmanship drives us to our knees, dependent on the Lord. We need them both: saint and sinner. Both will deepen our prayer life.
