The Infinite Weight of Prayer
What is prayer? Exactly? When we try to answer the question, we often run into conflicting notions.
- Of course, prayer consists of petitions for the saints, but is it only a recitation of our daily laundry list.?
- Prayer involves adoration of God, but what happens when grief eclipses everything else?
- Prayer is a powerful tool to help accomplish God’s will in the world, but after all, I am only one man.
- I understand that prayer is more than name-it-claim-it, but when I pray “according to your will,” the words sound like a copout for, “I knew this wasn’t going to work.”
From a practical standpoint, we often treat prayer as a dreaded duty. We know that this is wrong, so in response, we try to divide prayer into bite-size segments—confession, adoration, worship, petition, praise. These are all good practices, but I wonder if our efforts to subdivide them so cleanly amounts to a bottom-up effort to make our prayers more effective.
Prayer calls for discipline, but it is more than a recitation of our list of requests. It involves intimate communication with the God of the cosmos.
In this essay, I want to look at the way that God views our calls for help in our most desperate hours. We will focus on the book of Revelation.
Prayer in the Book of Revelation
Regardless of how we interpret the finer points of Revelation, we can agree that the book is God’s final word on his ownership of the affairs of mankind. One way that we can map the book is through the grid of the saints’ prayers.
The book contains four key markers. These are 1) the prayers of the saints before the throne, 2) prayer during crisis, 3) prayer as God begins to answer, and 4) prayer as praise.
One: Prayers before the Throne
The first three chapters of Revelation seek to encourage seven churches in Asia Minor during difficult times. While John is silent about prayer in their immediate context, it surfaces when John takes us before the throne in chapters 4-5. There, he reveals the cosmic drama.
God holds up a seven-sealed scroll, which contains the terms necessary to bring human history to a close and fulfill God’s final redemptive purposes.
No worthy contender can be found to open the scroll, and John weeps. Then the Lion of the tribe of Judah steps forward as a slain Lamb. John writes, “And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Rev. 5:8, emphasis added).
The prayers of the saints have occupied the innermost circle of God’s presence from the beginning. They are precious to him.
Two: Prayer During Crisis
As the Lamb begins to break the seals on the scroll in Revelation 6, the judgments on the earth commence. The first four mark the appearance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Then we come the peculiar fifth seal.
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
-- Revelation 6:9-10
Why has John jumped back to heaven, and why are the saints there in such dire straits? I believe that the book shows us that until justice reigns on earth, heaven cannot rest.
The words “O Sovereign Lord…how long…?” signify the language of lament from the Psalms, the saints’ cry to the Lord to intervene and bring justice. In Revelation, this cry calls for the Lamb to rise and bring justice into a world that is bent on corruption. The saints’ laments are the incense that fuels the Lamb’s passion. This particular lament, then, becomes the pivot point for the entire book of Revelation.
The cry in heaven is a cry for justice, but justice cannot be complete until all of God’s judgments come to pass. Because of this, the saints are given white robes—a sign of great honor—and “told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (Revelation 6:11).
Three: Prayer as God begins to Answer
Revelation 8 marks another turning point in the book. When the Lamb opens the seventh seal, he reveals the seven trumpet judgments that are to come. John states that heaven goes silent for about half an hour. The silence appears to be shock over what is to come. John describes the scene this way:
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.
-- Revelation 8:3-5 emphasis added
When the angel casts the fire from the altar to the earth, the message is unmistakable. The saints’ prayers become the instrument that God uses to bring judgment on the evil powers in the world.
From this point, the prayers no longer involve pleading. They take the form of worship as God judges world affairs.
Four: Prayer Changing to Victorious Praise
The final act of Revelation involves the elimination of evil from the world. From chapters 17-20, the evil powers topple one after another.
In Revelation 18, Babylon the great, the vital force behind everything that stands against God’s people, falls. When this is complete, the saints’ prayers turn to praise.
After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.”
-- Revelation 19:1-2, emphasis added
This passage stands as the answer to the martyrs’ plea, “O Sovereign Lord…how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10).
With Babylon’s judgment complete, prayer turns to praise:
Revelation 19:1-3 (ESV)
1 After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out,
“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
2 for his judgments are true and just;
for he has judged the great prostitute
who corrupted the earth with her immorality,
and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.”
3 Once more they cried out,
“Hallelujah!
The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.”
Prayer is far more than a discipline or a routine. It is the means that God has chosen to complete the cycle of history.
Doug Knox