Here again are a few notes I took while on a recent planning retreat
from John Piper’s Brothers We Are Not Professionals. This time on how ministry itself can quickly become an enemy to our primary priorities, namely, prayer:
Chapter 9 – Brothers, Beware of Sacred Substitutes
59 – Ministry is its own worst enemy. It is not destroyed by the big, bad wolf of the world. It destroys itself.
60 – Charles Spurgeon put it like this: “Those incessant knocks at our door, and perpetual visits from idle persons, are so many buckets of cold water thrown upon our devout zeal. We must by
some means secure uninterrupted meditation, or we shall lose power.”
Without extended and consecrated prayer, the ministry of the Word withers up and bears no fruit.
Without extended, concentrated prayer, the ministry of the Word withers. And when the ministry of the Word declines, faith (Rom. 10:17; Gal 3:2, 5) and holiness (John 17:7) decline. Activity may continue, but life and power and fruitfulness fade away. Therefore, whatever opposes prayer opposes the whole work of ministry.
61 – But the apostles would not yield to the temptation. This must
mean that prayer demanded a large part of their uninterrupted time. If they had thought of prayer as something you do while washing dishes or cooking (or driving a car between hospitals), they would not have seen table-serving as a threat to prayer. Prayer was a time-consuming labor during which other duties had to be set aside.
62 – So the apostles were saying: No Matter how urgent the pressures upon us to spend our time doing good deeds, we will not forsake our chief work. We will persist in it. We will not waver or turn aside from the work of prayer.
The importance of prayer rises in proportion to the importance of the t
hings we should give up in order to pray.
It is not just the daily, routine demands of the pastorate that threaten our life of prayer. Prayer is also menaced by opportunities for ministry which demand fullness of the Spirit and wisdom. Even this
we must forsake in order to devote ourselves to prayer.
63 – Luther to his barber, Peter Beskendorf: he who thinks of many things thinks of nothing and accomplishes no good.
It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business in the morning and the last in the evening.
63 – A. A. Bonar: O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper – and sleep too – than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber.
