Pivotal Praying: Connecting with God in Times of Great Need

Copyright © 2002 by John Hull and Tim Elmore

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,©. Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission (www.lockman.org).

Scripture quotations marked The Message are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Use by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hull, John D., 1958–

    Pivotal praying : connecting with god in times of great need / John Hull & Tim Elmore.

      p. cm.

  ISBN: 0-7852-6483-3

  1. Prayer—Christianity. I. Elmore, Tim. II. Title.

  BV210.3 .H85 2002

  248.3'2—dc21

2002007201

Printed in the United States of America

02 03 04 05 06 PHX 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to pastors and their prayer partners who daily

experience the pivotal power of prayer.

CONTENTS

Foreword

CHAPTER 1

What Is Pivotal Praying?

CHAPTER 2

Pivotal Praying When You’re Facing a Crisis

CHAPTER 3

Pivotal Praying When Your Dreams Don’t Come True

CHAPTER 4

Pivotal Praying When You Want to Make a Difference

CHAPTER 5

Pivotal Praying When You Have Failed

CHAPTER 6

Pivotal Praying When You Need Direction

CHAPTER 7

Pivotal Praying When You Don’t See Results

CHAPTER 8

Pivotal Praying When You Need a Miracle

CHAPTER 9

Pivotal Praying When You Face Opposition

CHAPTER 10

Pivotal Praying When You Need to Let Go

CHAPTER 11

Pivotal Praying When You’re in over Your Head

CHAPTER 12

Pivotal Praying When You Want to Quit

CHAPTER 13

Pivotal Praying When You Confront a New Challenge

CHAPTER 14

Pivotal Praying When You Need to Wait

CHAPTER 15

Pivotal Praying When You Are Under Pressure

CHAPTER 16

Pivotal Praying When You Need to Take a Stand

CHAPTER 17

911 Prayers

CHAPTER 18

The Most Important Pivotal Prayer You’ll Ever Pray

Notes

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

FOREWORD

BY JOHN C. MAXWELL

I believe you are going to enjoy this book.

In it are the stories of men and women who’ve learned to connect with the heart of God. Dozens of them. You’ll feel as if you’re sitting down over coffee and conversing with biblical personalities such as Solomon, Esther, and Job’s friends. Each of them will shed some light on what he or she learned about pivotal praying. Some of them will share lessons they learned from their failure. Along with biblical characters, you’ll also hear from contemporary people like you and me, and hear how they experienced God’s supernatural invasion in their life—in response to their prayer. From President Bush dealing with the aftermath of September 11, 2001 to a set of parents who lost their daughter at the hands of a brutal murderer, you will experience the power of pivotal prayer and how it can change the course of our lives.

Along with each story, you will gain a principle you can use today. These chapters are loaded with handles on how to pray, not just 911 panic prayers, but handles on how to pray strategically and wisely in the midst of your worst days. You will learn how to pray when you face a new challenge, when you have failed, when you confront opposition, when your dreams don’t come true, when you are in over your head, and when you just want to quit. I believe reading and practicing what you’ll find in this book will make you a better parent, a better employee, a better daughter or son, a better supervisor, a better friend . . . a better person. Why? Because you will pray better.

Let’s face it. While prayer is simply talking to God—and anyone can do that—some prayers connect with God’s heart and others don’t. Witness the story Jesus told of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9–14. Both went out to pray one afternoon, but only one connected with God. The Pharisee prayed a far more eloquent prayer, and demonstrated an accurate handle on Scripture. Unfortunately, that’s not what God was looking for. The tax collector—full of humility and reckless trust in God—got the ear of his Father in heaven that day. The Pharisee went home empty.

As you set out to make a difference in your church and in your world, I can’t think of a better place to start than by learning the power of pivotal praying. I recommend this book as a companion to Partners in Prayer. It contains what you need to experience God’s power no matter what situation you find yourself in. This book will provide for you not only a great study on prayer, but a track to run on as you seek God in your life. The case studies are blueprints for your prayer life, and the principles are tools you can use to build it into something great.

The two men who wrote Pivotal Praying are my friends and colleagues. John Hull and Tim Elmore provide leadership to my EQUIP team in Atlanta. They play key roles as we attempt to equip one million Christian leaders around the world over the next six years. With a huge goal like that, they have to be men of prayer! Both have been on a journey over the years to learn to pray wisely and connect with God’s heart each time they pray. I have seen the results of their prayers. I commend them to you as teachers. You’ll find their style warm, easy to read, full of insight, and straight to the heart.

Take this journey with them. Decide now you are going to pray your way through this book, as they provide examples to follow from Scripture. I can only imagine what might happen if everyone who picks up this book would commit to pivotal praying from that day forward. I pray you take the challenge.

JOHN C. MAXWELL

Founder and Chairman of EQUIP

Author of the bestsellers Partners in Prayer

and The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

1

WHAT IS

PIVOTAL PRAYING?

(TIM ELMORE)

His life’s dream was to be a missionary, and it looked as though it was finally coming true. As the nervous young man sat in the mission agency’s office, he assured the interviewer that he and his new bride were committed to working hard, managing their resources as good stewards, and sharing Christ with as many people as possible. His future looked bright.

Then it all seemed to come crashing down. His dream began to fall apart. During their cross-cultural preparation, he and his wife realized she could never endure the rigors of life overseas. Her body was fragile and frail. If they went to Africa as planned, she would certainly die.

Confused and emotionally crushed, the young man returned home. His tragic tale continued as he failed to find a ministerial position. The first blow had left him devastated. This one left him depressed.

One night he awoke from sleep feeling the weight of his failed dream. His hands were clammy and his temperature ran high. He was angry. He was baffled. He began to wrestle with God over his calling. How could God call him to change the world, then close all doors to ministry? It was during this time in prayer that God reminded him of his original commitment—to work hard, to manage his resources, and to share Christ with as many people as possible.

Bingo! His entire attitude changed. It suddenly struck him that he could still remain true to his commitment, wherever he worked. So he prayed exactly for this.

He decided to work for his dad, a dentist who had a small business on the side that produced juice for church Communion services. As his father grew older, the young man took over the business and determined to use it to touch the world for Christ. He would keep his promise by financially supporting others who could go overseas as missionaries.

He built the company into a huge enterprise. In fact, you probably have purchased some of his juice. His name was Welch, and his grape juice is sold in supermarkets everywhere. Mr. Welch has not only given huge sums of money to world missions, he has impacted the world for Christ in a far greater way than if he had gone overseas himself.

It all began with a pivotal prayer. Just as with James.

James was a grocery clerk who started, with capital of $65, to peddle cheese from a one-horse wagon. To say he was a dismal failure would be kind. James continued to push himself but grew deeper in debt. He was young and inexperienced, so he sought the advice of a wise Christian friend.

You haven’t included God in your business, his friend observed. You haven’t let Him take over the work—you’ve only asked Him to be a part of it. That’s not how God works.

This sent the young clerk into a tailspin. James was gripped with mixed emotions. He was offended that such a judgment be laid on him. At the same time he was struck by his friend’s blunt honesty. It was a pivotal moment for him.

Days passed as the young clerk prayed and pondered. Finally he crossed a line in the sand. He wrote his friend, saying, If God wants to run this cheese business, He can do it. I’ll work for Him. And this is what he prayed.

From that moment on, God became the senior partner in his business, the chief Person consulted in every decision. A chair was left open in meetings, reminding key staff of His presence. Over the months the business grew and prospered. It eventually became the largest cheese company in the world. James L. Kraft’s pivotal prayer made all the difference in the Kraft Cheese Company.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to miss the opportunity to pray a pivotal prayer. You may remember hearing the name James Huberty back in the mid-1980s. He made the cover of magazines nationwide for one tragic reason: He was the mastermind behind the McDonald’s massacre. He walked into a McDonald’s restaurant with an automatic weapon and gunned down more than twenty people in San Ysidro, California. A SWAT team showed up moments later and killed him, which was his goal—he didn’t have the guts to commit suicide. When it was all over, bloodstains splattered the red-and-white tile of the restaurant. More than two dozen people had been murdered.

The store no longer serves hamburgers to local residents. It now stands as a memorial to the lives lost that day.

What makes this especially heartbreaking is that James Huberty mishandled a pivotal moment. After being released from his job, he became angry with his supervisor, his family, and himself. A colleague tried to encourage him. Sensing Huberty’s anger, the friend pleaded with him to let his anger go. He urged him to surrender the issue to the Lord and trust Him to begin a whole new chapter in his life.

Sadly, Proverbs 18:19 proved true: A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city (NASB). James Huberty never prayed the pivotal prayer that would have dissolved his bitterness. He suppressed his anger until he could hold it in no longer. The only way James Huberty knew to deal with his losses was to take the lives of several persons, and hope that someone would end his own.

STOP, DROP, AND PRAY

Americans are probably more aware now of the need for prayer than we have been at any other time in our lives. For the first time I can remember, my kids’ teachers actually told their classes to pray in class following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. People seemed to want to touch God as a nation. Yet that was only one of the many junctions we face.

Each of us encounters critical forks in the road on a regular basis: marriage, a new job opportunity, children, perhaps cancer or some other kind of sickness, or even a serendipitous meeting with someone who could change our lives. It is at these times that almost everyone prays.

But how do we pray at such junctions? Do we simply pray 911 prayers, or do we pray intelligently—strategically—and see results that take our lives to a whole new level? Do we pray about symptoms or root issues? Do we play offense or defense in our prayers? Are we able to look back at our prayers and say, God did something then that I could never have done?

This book is about how we pray and what we pray—especially at crucial times in our lives. It is about touching God when we most need to. It is about connecting with His heart and accepting what He wants to give us. It is about positioning ourselves to receive from Him, about praying well when we are tempted to panic or throw in the towel. It is about prayer that moves the heart of God.

Pivotal prayers come at pivotal moments. They produce pivotal decisions and result in pivotal consequences. Pivotal prayers embrace God and touch His heart, as David did after his sexual sin with Bathsheba (Ps. 51). Or as Jehoshaphat did before his nation faced an invading army much larger than his (2 Chron. 20). Or as Solomon did just before he took a job promotion and became king of Israel (1 Kings 2). Or even as Job did when he lost almost everything dear to him—his children, his livestock, his home, and his land (Job 1:20).

Job understood something many of us don’t. The passage says that when all these things happened to Job, he fell on his face and he worshiped. Let me ask you a question: How could Job worship after all that tragedy? How would you respond after losing all your children and possessions? Somehow Job recognized that this was a junction. It was time for a pivotal prayer. He didn’t want to merely react to the calamity. He knew that worship was the only response that would enable him to maintain proper perspective. God was God, and if there was ever a time he needed God’s divine mastery and viewpoint, it was then.

Pivotal prayers increase as we mature spiritually. We learn to pray this way over time. This was vividly illustrated in November 2001, when World Pulse magazine reported the story of the three missionaries who had been kidnapped in 1993. All three worked with New Tribes Mission (NTM) and had turned up missing near the Colombian border. It wasn’t until eight years later that New Tribes was willing to declare them dead.

Editor Deann Alford asked Dan Germann, NTM’s vice chairman, how their prayers changed for the three men as the years went by. Dan responded, "When the guys were first captured, every one of us was praying, ‘Lord, just bring them out safely. We know that You are able.’ As time went on we started to pray, ‘Lord, if they’re alive, bring them home; but if they’re dead, help us to know that as well.’ Maybe six or eight months ago I heard us praying things like, ‘God, if we never know, You’ll still be God.’ This was quite a difference from trusting Him to bring them out safely.

In the end, God answered our prayers. We found a man in prison who had cared for them. We received assurance from him that they were dead. This was a gift in the sense that we had come to the place where it was all right if God chose for us to never really know. Somebody looking on might think, ‘How can you really accept that news?’ All I can say is that God moved us down the road to where we could say, ‘Lord, we want You to be glorified, even if we never know.’¹

Learning to pray this way isn’t a cop-out. It doesn’t mean we eventually stop trusting God to do miracles, and leave it to fate. It means we trust Him and His purposes regardless of our understanding. Do you remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Daniel 3 tells the story of when these three Jewish men were about to be thrown into the fire by King Nebuchadnezzar. When he threatened to harm them unless they bowed down to worship his image, they responded with a pivotal decision: O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up (3:16–18).

What those men said was no cop-out. They made a statement of faith: God can and will deliver us. Then they made a statement of commitment: But even if He doesn’t, we will never bow down to any other god. That is a mature, pivotal decision. In their case, God was glorified by delivering them, causing the king and many others to repent.

Pivotal praying means we pray consistently from our hearts, not just from our heads. It is birthed out of relationship, not routine. Pivotal prayers move past clichés and perfunctory phrases to meaningful exchanges with God. This is the kind of prayer we all prefer but seldom practice.

Kevin was only five years old when his father carried him up the stairs to bed. As he crawled under the covers, the two of them folded their hands to say their prayers before falling asleep. Little Kevin was so tired, he shifted into automatic pilot and prayed these words: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . If he hollers let him go—eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

We chuckle when we witness these kinds of episodes with kids, but are they not also a reflection of us as adults? How often do our prayer lives submit to the tyranny of meaningless, routine monologues? or to time constraints? or even to image-seeking as we pray in front of others?

If many Christians were to get honest, they’d admit their prayer lives border on superstition. We go through the motions, speaking a few worn-out phrases to make sure God is on our side before we head into our day.

The good news, though, is that pivotal praying isn’t complex. In fact, it’s often the simplest kind of prayer because it simply connects with the heart of God.

Jesus had something to say about pivotal praying. He told a story one day about two men who prayed—one of them connected with God, the other did not. The first was a tax collector and the other a Pharisee. The Pharisee was religious. He took pride in his sacrificial lifestyle, and his prayer was technically correct: Lord, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. The other man was a tax collector and could not even look to heaven, but instead beat his chest and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner (Luke 18:10–14).

Interestingly, Jesus concluded that the tax collector’s prayer—not the Pharisee’s—was the pivotal one. It connected with God because of the posture of his heart. From