Another basic requirement is to be genuine in our prayer. I am afraid that many words in the prayer meeting are spoken in vain. Many people pay attention to the nicety of the words and care little whether or not God listens to them. It seems to be of little consequence to them that God does not listen to their prayers. Such prayers in the prayer meeting are often artificial and vain.
Genuine prayer is the result of a desire that comes from the heart. It is something that flows out from our inner being. Genuine prayer is not made up of flippant and nice words. Only genuine words that flow out from the deepest part of the heart can be considered as genuine prayer. The goal of our prayer should be an answer from God rather than pleasing the brothers and sisters.
If we are not genuine in our prayer, we cannot expect the church to be strong. In order for the church to be strong, the prayer meeting must be strong. In order for the prayer meeting to be strong, all the prayers have to be genuine; no prayer should be artificial. If we are not genuine, we cannot expect to receive anything from God.
Prayer is not a sermon; it is not a speech. To pray is to ask the Lord for something. We do not need to speak many words before God in the prayer meeting, as if God knows nothing and needs to be informed of all the details. We do not need to make a report or preach a message to Him. We pray because we have a need and because we are weak. We want to receive spiritual supply and power through prayer. The amount of genuine prayer we have depends on the amount of need that we feel. If we do not feel any need, our prayers will be vain prayers.
One basic reason for vain prayers is that a person is too conscious of others in the prayer meeting. As soon as we pay attention to others, our prayer is easily filled with vain words. On the one hand, our prayer in the prayer meeting is offered on behalf of the whole meeting. On the other hand, we have to pray as if we were alone before God; we have to pray to God in a genuine way according to our needs.
The more urgent our need is, the more genuine our prayer will be. The Lord Jesus once gave an illustration. A man had a visitor to his house, but he ran out of bread. So he went to his friend for bread. The need was urgent; he had no bread. After asking persistently, the other friend gave in to his need. The Lord Jesus then said, “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened” (Luke 11:10). If the need is urgent and we ask properly, it shall be given to us.
Our prayers must be genuine, and they must be short. Almost all the prayers in the Bible are short. The prayer taught by the Lord in Matthew 6 is quite short. Although the prayer offered by the Lord in John 17 before He departed from the world is quite long, it is much shorter than the prayers of some of God’s children today. The prayer in Acts 4 was the prayer of the whole church; it also was quite short. The prayer in Ephesians 1 is very important, yet it is short. One does not need five minutes to finish that prayer.
Many prayers in the prayer meeting are vain and unreal because they are too long. Perhaps two or three sentences out of the whole prayer are genuine, but the rest are redundant. Those two or three sentences are for God, but the rest are for the brothers and sisters. These prayers drag the meeting on. New believers should forget about the long prayers of the old-timers. They should offer short prayers instead. Not all the brothers and sisters can pray long prayers. If we continue to pray long prayers, the church will suffer great loss.
D. L. Moody once reacted in a very wise way to a sister who was offering a very long prayer in the meeting. As her prayer consumed the patience of the whole congregation, Moody stood up and said, “While our sister is still praying, let us sing hymn number so-and-so.” A long prayer saps the strength of the prayer meeting. Suppose you pray five minutes longer than you should and another does the same thing. When more and more people pray long prayers, the meeting drags on and is weighted down. Charles Spurgeon once said that the most improper thing for anyone to do is to ask God for forgiveness of shortcomings in the midst of a long prayer. Mackintosh also put it well when he said, “Do not try to torture God’s children with your prayer.” There are many people who whip others, not with a whip, but with long prayers. The more they pray, the more uncomfortable others become. We should learn to offer short and genuine prayers whenever we meet together.