Saturday members from the Sovereign Grace Churches of Canada gathered for prayer for 4-5 hours. We spent time praying for churches, our country, seminary education, missions, church planting, fellowship and the lost. One of the prayer requests was from a missionary from Mozambique, Roland Seiler. He asked for prayer that we might see lostness for what lostness really is.
That is a profound and much-needed prayer request for our day and age. Sadly we can be so consumed with self and not see all around us who are "dying" and not hearing the gospel of Jesus. Have we lost the heart to pray for the lost because we are so filled with self?
Prayer times are heart searching times. God searched my heart as I prayed alongside my brothers and sisters - do I look at the world and all its fleeting treasures with passion, neglecting to weep and pray for the lost and dying?
In a biography on Abraham Lincoln, the author writes of him during the time of the Civil War: On the night of Bull Run, noted his secretaries, Lincoln did not go to bed, stayed on the lounge in the Cabinet room all night. The next night, having heard more accounts of the lost battle, he lay on the sofa in his office and penciled an outline of what must be done, a program for immediate action.
As I read that quote, I thought - when do I stay up and pray for the perishing? When am I consumed with a sense of the sinfulness of this life and the fleeting nature of my existence - and all around me? If Lincoln was so concerned about the dying in the battle of Bull Run, what about souls around me - dying - eternal death?
And so I pray - Lord, grant that I may see lostness for what lostness really is - break my heart to weep and pray once again -and then to faithfully share God's amazing and powerful grace.
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