Lessons from the Potter’s Wheel – Part 7: The Power of Urgent Prayer

Although the Potter’s Wheel is about transformation, the very process involved in transformation is that of crushing and submission to the hand of the Father. We variously referred to that process of crushing as being “pressed through the little end of the funnel” or “being placed in the crucible.”

It was in such experiences that Norma and I learned the sense of desperation and the act of clinging to the Father in total dependence on Him when all else was bleak and we had no where to turn. That process provoked in us the act of real prayer; prayer that was stripped of all pretense, manipulation, and traditional verbage. It was in those times that we discovered the meaning of Romans 8:26: “And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Real prayer often occurs when we get beyond our ability to carefully express our thoughts and feelings getting no further in our expression than a groaning in our spirits.

While such desperation was often connected to times of temptation or in the struggles of every day life, one of my earliest and greatest crucibles occurred when I was asked by a young pastor to preach one night of a revival meeting that he had started and had “run out of soap.” Although I had been preaching for about a year at that time, for some reason this invitation provoked real anxiety in me. I suppose it was the fear of failure.

Regardless of why I felt the way I did, I began to earnestly pray. I’m sure my first attempts at prayer at that time was couched in traditional terms but that soon came to an end of such endeavors. I was still teaching school at the time and didn’t have much time to myself where I could adequately express myself aloud to the Lord. Consequently, I discovered what it was to “groan in the spirit.” Thus while my outer attention was necessarily focused on my students and the projects at hand, in my inner man I was reaching out to the Lord in “groanings too deep for words.”

I soon discovered that this process continued as the time drew near that I was to preach. As I indicated earlier, at that time I supposed that my intensity in prayer was due to my sense of insecurity as a preacher but looking back at it now, I think there was a greater and much more profound process going on at the time. I think the Father was overriding my somewhat self-centered approach to what was happening to bring my spirit into real contact with His Spirit thus addressing Heaven’s agendas rather than my own. This continued day after day with my intensity growing as His Spirit pressed on my spirit. Over the years, this has happened too many times to count but, to my recollection, this was the first time I had experienced it.

In this process I was learning what it was to be stripped of all self-reliance and, frankly, that in itself was quite scary. I was used to depending on my ability to meet any circumstance that came up with rational achievement or simply by bluffing my way through. In this case, however, I was being pressed beyond all human ability and pretense, realizing that I, indeed, couldn’t do the works of the Father without the Father’s making me able to do it.

I know that it might seem to us today that this was “much to do about nothing.” However, that was not the case then. I had a real sense of divine necessity as the night drew near that I was to preach.

I continued my urgent praying as I drove out to the country church where I was to preach. I was quite amazed and unnerved as I entered the building to discover that a large number of my high school students attended that church and were present in the service.

I suppose that one would think at this point, that, due to the way I had immersed myself in prayer, when I preached I did so in a profound and dynamic manner, offering great words of spiritual wisdom. Actually, I was a miserable failure. My whole sermon was an effort as I struggled to say something that made sense but with little success.

When I finally concluded my message, I felt quite miserable but went through with the process of offering an altar call. I was dumbfounded as people poured out into the aisles making their way to the front for prayer and commitment. As the invitation closed I was amazed to discover that out of the twelve people that received Christ that night, eleven of whom were my students with the twelfth one being the pastor’s little daughter!

What a time of celebration there was in that little country church that night and later as I was asked to baptize them in a cold mountain river there in the Ozarks later in the Spring. This meeting marked a number of firsts in my early ventures into urgent prayer.

Lessons learned on the Potter’s Wheel: Our Father has to strip us of all our human pretense and ability to bring us to a point of real usability. That process is an humbling one that presses us near to His heart and beyond all human coherence, helping us to find the urgency needed to shape and enable effective prayer.

Jeff

• Jefferson H. and Norma R. Floyd, CO-directors • Jubilee International • P. O. Box 572 • Noblesville, IN 46061