Why Night and Day?

Today we finished our class with Allen Hood on night and day prayer. My heart was so stirred by the revelation of the necessity of night and day prayer! It's so important, and yet we don't even have a partial understanding of why!

Many of the things i share here are notes i took in class. I have a whole 30 page packet about all the reasons why we need night and day prayer, but i'm trying to condense it to the main one-this is going to be hard! Alright so here we go;

Person: "So Steph...What do you do at IHOPU?"
Steph: "Well, we pray...A LOT."
Person: "Wow, you pay money to sit in a room with music playing and pray? What a waste."
Steph: "Oh if only you knew how important my job is before God!"
Person: "...What?"

I feel like i have a battle going on in my head. The above conversation is not real (unless inside my head counts) but sometimes i feel so burdened by the lack of understanding that surrounds night and day prayer and how important it is. If you've ever felt nagging doubts about why you spend your time praying, you know what i'm talking about. I hope to shed some light on the subject.

Many have asked, "Why night and day prayer?" Even before we got down here, we faced some opposition and questions about why we would give up security and comfort to sit in a room and pray to someone we couldn't see? And, i really didn't have an answer for them. Besides feeling a pull in my heart that there was more to life than the comforts of this world, i really couldn't give a sound reason why we are doing what we're doing.

Now i can.

Why you ask should we be contending before the throne for Christ to come back and establish His millennial kingdom here on earth? Why you ask should we spend countless hours praying about the ending of abortion and human trafficking? Why you ask should we devote our lives to night and day worship and prayer? Why you ask should our very being revolve around offering God praise and humbling ourselves before Him?

Because unceasing worship is the only worthy response to the greatness and majesty of God and the worthiness of Jesus Christ.

It's that simple.

God is worthy of so much more than the 30 minutes of worship we grudgingly give Him on a Sunday morning.

Just by asking that question proves how little we know of the God we serve. How little we understand of His majesty.

Just look at the four living creatures! Do you know that they stand before the throne night and day and worship Him? (Is. 6:1-3, Rev. 4:7-8)

Why?

Because they can see the holiness of God and understand that He alone is worthy to be praised. They are just responding to the glory of God, no one makes them worship. The unfallen creatures of the heavens never stop worshiping Him. Only fallen creatures stop worshiping or would ever dare to ask if night and day prayer is worth it.

If the seraphim can worship Him night and day without ceasing, why don't we-we who are His image bearers, bought with noble blood?

Worship, is ascribing value to an object. And yet we go our whole day without once even thinking about the God who laid the very foundations of the earth! (Job 38:4) If we could only catch a glimpse of God in all His awesome splendor, His robes filling the temple (Is. 6:10), we might cry out like Isaiah did; "Woe to me! I am ruined! For i am a man of unclean lips, and i live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have sen the King, the Lord Almighty." (Is. 6:5) Isaiah wasn't saying he had a cursing problem, he was crying 'Woe!' because we as a people don't know how to speak about God!

The unspeakable horror throughout history is that we do not understand the glory of God and do not worship Him the way He deserves! There is nothing any of us can give Him that is worthy of His glory except our unceasing prayer and worship of His awesome splendor.

We've gotten so side tracked by everything else. Missions, preaching, exhorting, evangelism, etc! We have put everything that is of lesser importance above that which is most important! Just worshiping and communing with Him! Our churches have it backwards in America today. Worship does not exist so we can preach, preaching exists so we can understand Him better and more worship can go forth!

We spend more time talking about or prayer requests than actually praying about them! We save prayer to the end of our meetings and services like it's some routine thing that we should do because we've always done it that way! No! Prayer should be a lifestyle! It should be central in everything we do! Our very lives should be a sacrifice of praise! (Rom. 12:1+2)

Our question of 'is night and day prayer worth it' is a testimony that we do not know Him and have been stuck in religion too long.

God's nature both elicits and demands worship, but not just any worship, wholehearted adoration of His being. A burning passion so that the flame on the altar would never go out! (Rev. 8:3+4)

When Jesus comes back to earth to prepare the way for the coming of the Father, this will be the way He runs His government-through prayer and worship. All other church callings will at some point fade away. There will be no need for missions, evangelism or feeding the hungry in God's kingdom. But worship is an eternal reality. It's coming to earth to stay.

So if you're bored with it now, you'd better get your heart right! Cause you're going to be doing it for all of eternity!

We need fresh revelation of the glory of God! Because it is out of that revelation that the fire in our souls is set ablaze with zeal for the Lord, and it is out of THAT place that we should go forth and teach, preach, serve, evangelize and save in the name of Jesus.

Prayer and worship need to be forefront in our churches and daily lives again!

Oh Lord, that You would reveal Your glory to us and fascinate our hearts!

You alone are worthy to be praised!