There is a story about a man from Ohio who inherited his grandfather’s peanut farm in South Georgia. As a boy he had spent every summer there, up at four in the morning, coffee and biscuits, out in the fields. So the first summer after his grandfather died, he took his family down and did exactly what he remembered: pulled weeds and ran the irrigation, all summer long. At the end of the season he hired a local farmer to bring in the harvest. A few weeks later the farmer called. “Sir, you have no peanuts in this field.”
He had watched the summer work for years. He had never seen the peanuts go into the ground.
Many Christians live the same way. We see God’s power at work in worship services, revival meetings and special moments, and we assume that is where power comes from. But there is a behind-the-scenes mechanism most believers never see and often skip. It is prayer. Prayer is the conduit for the power of God.
Prayer Came Before Pentecost
The church’s first experience of the Holy Spirit’s power did not come out of nowhere. Before the day of Pentecost, the disciples “with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14). Then “divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:3-4). It would be fair to say that without prayer there is no Pentecost.
The Vision of the Golden Pipe
Zechariah 4 gives one of the clearest pictures of how God’s power reaches His people. The prophet sees a golden lampstand with two olive trees beside it, and golden oil flowing to the lamps through golden pipes. The word that comes with the vision is addressed to Zerubbabel, the governor who had been given the job of rebuilding the temple after the exile: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).
The vision holds four images:
1. The olive tree is the source. The “two anointed ones” (Zechariah 4:14) were the king and the high priest of that day, Zerubbabel and Joshua. In Scripture those offices were never to be combined; when King Saul offered a sacrifice himself, he lost his kingdom (1 Samuel 13:8-14). Only Melchizedek, who blessed Abraham (Genesis 14:18-20), and the One he pointed to, Jesus Christ, are both king and priest. Jesus is the Anointed One, the source of the oil. 2. The lampstand is the church. A lamp needs oil to burn. Without it there is no fire, no light, no heat. The church needs what Jesus has. 3. The golden oil is the anointing. It is the power and strength of the Holy Spirit flowing from Christ into the life of the believer. 4. The golden pipe is prayer. It is not the source and it is not the oil. It is the mechanism through which the oil travels. Without the pipe, the oil never makes the trip. The lamp burns dry and the oil hits the floor.
You Cannot Do It in Your Own Strength
Zerubbabel had the know-how to rebuild the temple, but not the resources. He depended on the Persian king for permission and funding (Ezra 6:7-8), and opposition came through officials who wanted the work stopped. He needed approvals, money and people outside his control.
Most of us know that position. We know how to do something, if only we had what it takes. There are things no amount of human strength can force: a house that will not sell, a job offer that will not come, a door no one will open. But there is a power from on high that can do what we cannot. Not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of God.
The More You Pray, the Greater the Flow
Some spiritual disciplines have a point of diminishing return. Read the Bible for too long in one sitting and the words start to blur. Prayer works differently. The more time you invest in prayer, the more the golden pipe opens up and the more power it can carry into your life.
That can sound intimidating, especially when people talk about praying for hours every day. But the way to pray more is to start by praying some. Daniel is the model. When he learned that praying could cost him his life, “he got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously” (Daniel 6:10). Daniel had a baseline.
A workable baseline is seven minutes a day:
- Thank God for one thing you are truly grateful for. Start honest.
- Name three to five specific things you want to see God do in your immediate world. Pray for your own family before you pray for the whole globe. You care about these things, and you will be able to see whether they change.
The first time, it may take two and a half minutes. Give it three weeks. Seven minutes may not sound like much, but it is a great deal better than zero.
Two Ways to Grow Your Prayer Life
Pray in the Spirit. Paul admits, “we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us” (Romans 8:26). Praying in the Spirit partners you with the One who knows exactly how to pray.
Pray the Scriptures. Open the Psalms, or any part of the Bible, and pray what resonates. Isaiah 12 begins, “You will say in that day: ‘I will give thanks to you’” (Isaiah 12:1). That line becomes a prayer: Lord, a day is coming when I will thank You for this breakthrough, so I will praise You for it now. When you pray God’s Word back to Him, you are agreeing with what He has already said.
Is Prayer a Work?
If the power of God cannot be earned, does time in prayer turn it into a transaction? No. The same grace that saves us is the grace through which every spiritual gift comes. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Yet salvation still calls for a response: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Confessing Christ is not a wage. It is barely anything, and yet it is how salvation comes. Prayer is the same kind of response. You do not earn power by praying. You receive it by connecting to the source.
Encouragement or Power?
Worship, good preaching, serving, Christian music and sermon podcasts are all good, and every believer needs them. But on their own they usually give encouragement. Encouragement gets you through the week, and then you need to plug back in. Church can be like charging your phone and leaving. Prayer is like having a continual power source.
And everyone needs power, not only for evangelism, but for ordinary life: the coworker who gets under your skin, the driver who cuts you off, the hospital visit, the financial crisis, the car that dies. “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). Prayer is how we stay connected to the One who builds.
At Citylight, we believe God is going to build His church through prayer. Whatever you are facing, the oil is available. The question is whether the pipe is open. When you sow the seed of prayer, you reap a harvest of power.