God-centered prayer is lacking.

Most of today's prayer meetings, if they can be called that, sounds more like a organ donor convention. Little is said about God except when we ask Him to heal. John Bunyan defined prayer as "the pouring out of our hearts to God through Christ assisted by the Spirit for what God has promised for the good of His people.” When was the last time that you heard someone pour out their heart to God in prayer? When was the last time you poured out your heart? In the Bible even when God's people were being threatened and persecuted, they still sought God and acknowledged Him as Lord of all. I believe a major reason many of our churches are lacking and not experiencing God's power is because we are not pouring out our hearts to God. If the heart isn't in the prayer then neither is God.

As a pastor one of my primary responsibilities is preach God's word and lead His people to pray. I am thankful to John Franklin for His book, "And the Place was Shaken" for pointing this out. His exposition of Acts 6 is well worth the price of the book. While I won't go into detail here, he points out that the apostles taught the people to pray and prayed with them. In fact it was the only thing that the disciples asked the Lord Jesus to teach them. The church repeatedly prayed together and God demonstrated his power. Could it be that we have neglected one of the very essentials that we must have if we expect to be the church that the Bible says we are?

Spurgeon said "I pray the Lord to send you a horse-whip in the shape of trouble in your conscience till you do come, for it very much weakens us all in our prayers when our numbers decline; and whenever people come to despise week-night services, be sure of it,farewell to the vital power of godliness, for week-night services are very, very much the stamp of the man. Any hypocrite will come on a Sunday, but a man does need to take some interest in religious services to be found mingling with the people of God in prayer. Believe me, if a church does not pray, it is dead."