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Don’t miss “Spurgeon is the Man Week” at the Resurgence site. Here’s a piece from the third installment in the series, which is mining Spurgeon’s remarkable life for what he can teach us:

Prayer

Spurgeon prayed both spontaneously by breaking from the affairs of his day to speak with the Lord, and also during scheduled times of prayer for himself that included walks in the woods, days away at a cottage, and months away in France for Sabbath, study, and prayer. Prayer for him was so significant that he aptly said, “Prayer has become as essential to me as the heaving of my lungs.” His commitment to prayer extended to a team of hundreds of intercessors who were appointed to pray for his preaching and people’s hearts during the church service. They prayed on their faces in the church basement that was aptly titled the “war room.” Occasionally when Spurgeon prayed over the sick they were healed and many believed he had the gift of healing. He also told his preaching students that his power, authority, and insight came from continually praying the text of his sermon before preaching it. His church prayer meetings were on Monday nights and as many as 1,200 people attended to pray as the Spirit led, which did not included printed prayers or long prayers because he hated both.

N.T. Wright makes the point that all God’s people are called to pray but apostolic leaders more so than the rest. He derives this from the passage in Acts where Peter, James, John, etc., appointed new leaders so that they, the apostles, could devote themselves to prayer and the teaching of God’s word.

This makes perfect sense. It’s an almost glaringly obvious assumption, like connecting two dots when they are the only ones on the page, they are gigantic, and they and are framed by flashing neon arrows. Blink, blink, blink: Apostles devote themselves to prayer -> That means prayer is a huge priority.

These days, church planters are often described in apostolic terms, as the dudes who will start new movements of people toward Jesus by preaching (and praying) in regions where the gospel previously made as much sense as a Burger King breakfast commercial.

This is sort of disquieting for a guy whose best prayer often seems to be, “GOD HELP US!”

Nevertheless, I am trying to work prayer into my life more, similar to the way you work chalk into your palms to get a better grip on your climbing surface, or spray Stickum Grip Spray on your hands so that you can throw down a really sick dunk. Prayer has a great deal to do with our ability to navigate reality accurately and find traction–conversing with God has this calming, gracious, strengthening effect.

Not to mention that, should he want to, God can answer our petitions with dramatic and immediate results, such as when he allowed KU to win the national championship.

So when I hit a patch of silence, I let it be for awhile and pray, rather than immediately blasting Shai Linne or Josh Ritter. Lindsay and I are taking a running start at praying together every night, and while we don’t have an unbroken record by any means, praying together has been immediately healthy and good. I also think it increases the likelihood that we’ll make out.

Ultimately, I’m trying to become a man who is open and sensitive to God’s spirit, aware of what’s going on in my heart–as opposed to an ignorant and cocky dude. For anyone called to plant a church, this seems like a biblical mandate.