LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

PRAYER: THE TIMELESS SECRET OF HIGH-IMPACT LEADERS BY DAVE EARLEY

- A READING REFLECTION

A PAPER SUBMITTED TO DR. KENNEDY ADARKWA

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE COURSE EVAN 670

LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

BY

ELKE SPELIOPOULOS

DOWNINGTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2012

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.................................................................................................................1

SUMMARY.....................................................................................................................................2

EVALUATION AND CRITIQUE..................................................................................................4

PERSONAL APPLICATION.........................................................................................................5

CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5

BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................................7

iii

1

INTRODUCTION

For many believers, especially those that are relatively immature in their faith, prayer

happens “just in time”, which usually occurs when he or she has reached a place where it is

deemed important, such as when a family member is in critical health condition or prior to an

airplane taking off. For the more mature believer, prayer may happen on a more regular basis,

but it still is very much focused on what God can do for the believer, such as “Lord, save my

brother!” Prayer lengths may increase as the believer grows in his relationship with the Lord,

but many other spiritual disciplines are easier to integrate into daily life than prayer, e.g. daily

Bible reading or corporate worship.

As Dave Earley shows in his impactful book Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact

Leaders, prayer in the life of a spiritual leader is not just a nice-to-have, but it is instrumental to

the health and success of his or her ministry, in fact it is what propels the ministry to a level that

truly glorifies and honors God. Earley tells many stories about how prayer has shifted the course

of men, women, and the events that surround them. Through this, he derives nine important

prayer discipline principles that are practical and applicable for spiritual leaders around the

globe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Earley is the chairman of the Department of Pastoral Leadership and the Director of

the Center for Pastoral Leadership at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves

as the director of the Lovett Center for Ministry Training and the Liberty Center for Church

Planting at Liberty University. He has written a number of books on prayer and small group

leadership and successfully planted New Life Church of Columbus, Ohio, which he pastored for

2

many years and saw tremendous growth in attendance from 12 to 2,000. Earley is currently

preparing to plant a church in Las Vegas, Nevada.1

SUMMARY

Earley lays out nine prayer discipline principles for high-impact Christian leaders, which

he derives from Scripture and which he thoroughly supports with stories of well-known leaders

both within Scripture and throughout the history of Christianity. The book is divided into ten

chapters on valuing the power of prayer, making time to pray, praying for those you serve,

training others to pray for you, turning problems into prayer, fasting and praying, possessing a

bold faith, building on the basics, adopting best practices, and putting it all together.

The first chapter, Valuing the Power of Prayer, sets the proverbial stage by sharing a

sobering statistic that the average pastor in North America spends a mere seven minutes a day.

Earley points out that not only is prayer the most important task of the spiritual leader, which

shows up on every level of Christian leadership, but it also is the most influential activity for a

Christian leader, which Earley highlights through a number of men who changed the world for

God through prayer. Christian leaders may believe that prayer cannot possibly be fit into an ever-

tighter schedule, but as Earley demonstrates capably, prayer actually saves the leader time as

God answers in a very brief period of time what would have taken proportionally much larger

amounts without His intervention. Not only can the leader save time, but prayer is omnipresent,

meaning one need not be physically in the same location. It is often the determining factor,

which Earley shows through biblical examples. It provides insights as God shares with us what

will give us a fresh perspective. Finally, without prayer, God will not act, highlighted by a study

Pastor David Jeremiah did of Scripture, yet prayer serves as our greatest spiritual weapon.

1 Dave Earley, Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact Leaders (Chattanooga, TN: Living Ink Books, 2008), Back cover of book.

3

In the second chapter, Make Time to Pray, Earley focuses on the time Christ spent in

prayer to highlight to his readers that even the Lord Himself took much time to pray to God the

Father. The remaining chapter focuses on establishing a daily prayer time and determining the

time and place to pray. The third chapter, Pray for Those You Serve, takes the focus off the

praying leader praying for him- or herself and instead refocuses it on those a leader actually is

tasked with leading. Earley highlights the effects intercession has had in the past in various

settings.

The forth chapter, Train Other to Pray for You, establishes the need for prayer partners

who will cover a leader with prayer as they are preparing to execute on tasks at hand. Again

Earley uses his storytelling skills to share several stories of giants of the faith who through the

prayer cover by their prayer partners were able to fulfill the challenge at hand and achieve larger

than expected results for the Lord. Turn Your Problems into Prayer is the title of the fifth

chapter, which calls the reader to allow everything that is going on in their lives to find its way to

God through prayer. Whether in long prayers or in short intense pleas for help, the believer can

carry his concerns to his heavenly Father. Earley underlines how many times in Scripture prayers

for help are recorded, and the list is an impressive one to ponder.0

Chapter six, Fast and Pray, develops the concept of a renewed approach to fasting in the

believer’s life. Earley offers a twenty point “Why Fast?” section0, which documents well from

Scripture how fasting was the answer of a believing person or nation. Earley does not leave the

reader without a practical section on how to fast.0 Possess a Bold Faith, the title of chapter seven,

hints at the need for boldness in the reader’s prayer life. Again, Earley develops this concept well

based on Scripture and anecdotes from Christian history. He points out that boldness in prayer

0 Ibid., 78-79.

0 Ibid., 95-98.

0 Ibid., 107-8.

4

involves asking specifically and big. Chapter eight, Build on the Basics, expands on the “how” of

prayer. Earley proposes the ACTS model (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication)0,

yet modifies the model by suggesting that thanksgiving can lead the praying leader into the other

areas more rapidly. In chapter nine, Adopt Best Practices, Earley proposes the development of

prayer best practices and suggests taking prayer retreats to seek God for an extended period of

uninterrupted time.0 Earley also suggests prayer walking to discreetly impact a neighborhood or

city. Finally, chapter ten, Putting It All Together, provides prayer life inventory, assessment,

application, and goal tools to allow the reader to pull everything together.

EVALUATION AND CRITIQUE

This book fills a gap in theological education. By focusing on the importance of prayer,

Earley wants to prepare spiritual leaders to impact the world around them. Yet, in the world of

theological books, this could have been a very dry and theoretic review of applicable passages

from Scripture, from which Earley could have built a principle framework to pass along to

leaders. What Earley does instead is successfully remind his readers of the power of books such

as Schaeffer’s L’Abri. In this narrative, Schaeffer captivatingly described the work of God in his

ministry through stories, which were so riveting that they compelled the reader to turn page after

page until finally he was convicted that nothing but this type of surrender can ever promise to

yield the true Christian life and relationship to a Creator God.

Earley very capably uses story-telling to make point after point and to build principles,

which are not only Scripture-based, but which have resulted in God-ordained and blessed

ministries by Christian leaders in the centuries and decades before. He ties this in tightly with

Scripture support, making the stories all the more palpable and applicable to not just the Bible

characters, but to modern man living in the 21st century. The tools Earley provides allow the

0 Ibid., 130.

0 Ibid., 158-60.

5

reader to step back from identifying with the initial statistics and allowing him or her to design a

plan to change this most important aspect of their Christian walk. Earley drives home the point in

his book with less than 200 pages that without a prayer life that is consistent, bold and persistent,

the Christian may not have much of a true relationship with the One he or she calls Lord and

Savior.

PERSONAL APPLICATION

Rarely has a book compelled this author to action the way Earley’s book has. His stories

tell such a convincing story of the power of God in a leader’s life if the leader is yielded to Him

through prayer and fasting – an aspect that Earley highlights in one of his chapters, but which he

clearly sees as an important element of a powerful prayer life.

Understanding the elements of ACTS, while this was intellectually acknowledged before,

has taken on a new and fresh meaning that will impact this author’s prayer life moving forward.

There is a freshness to prayer that Earley has brought about that brings the desire to be in such an

intimate relationship with God, rather than thinking of prayer as a needed, but somewhat tedious

spiritual discipline, especially as answers seem to be lacking so often. Earley has raised this

author’s renewed hope in the power of prayer by showing how seriously God takes our fervent

prayer if we are also serious about building a relationship to Him, rather than just asking for

things we want.

CONCLUSION

Earley’s book on nine prayer principles for high-impact leaders will have an impact on

Christian leaders who are serious about their ministries, but who may not have seen the power of

God’s work in these ministries. His stories bring about a change of mind how God wants to work

in the lives of men and women who use this communication channel to speak with the God who

created them and who desires to bless them in their work for Him.

6

By the time the reader has finished this book, there is nothing he or she will probably

want to do than to go sit with the Lord and put into practice these marvelous tools given by Dave

Earley. Because Earley has taken the time to give the reader both Scripture backing and Christian

history support, the reality of the importance of prayer has sunk deeply into the reader’s mind,

and undoubtedly the desire to grow such an intimate relationship with the Lord has grown

exponentially.

7

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Earley, Dave. Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact Leaders. Chattanooga, TN: Living Ink Books, 2008.