When ministers whisper behind closed doors that the marketplace is a dangerous place to send Christians, it’s easy to get defensive. But the truth is they are mostly right. Too often, Marketplace Christians let their spirituality fall by the wayside. We have not tended well the gardens of our hearts. We have let our passion for God wane. By pursuing money and success, we have become mammon’s servants. Our spiritual pursuit often dwindles to minimal, perfunctory acts - just enough to keep our heads above water. Our only spiritual intensity comes when we need to be rescued from some desperate life situation. In many cases we have disengaged from church, become cynical and developed an independent spirit. Fresh faith has been replaced with cold, hardened pragmatism. Most tragically, many of us have become prayerless. Prayerlessness is the final fruit of our unspirituality.

Many Marketplace Christians have created a new identity for themselves: the de-spiritualized Christian who is a successful leader and professional and has stature in the community, but who only dabbles around the edges in spiritual matters, leaving passionate, life-changing spirituality to others. Some claim a “proximity spirituality,” meaning they consider themselves spiritual because they are involved in spiritual enterprises. They may be in authority over some spiritual work, but spiritual leadership without spirituality is illegitimate and not from God. True spiritual authority is established in prayer. Consider Solomon, the greatest king in Israel’s history. He had a private passageway built between his bedroom and the temple where he regularly sought God. The Queen of Sheba saw this and was thunderstruck (I Kings 10; 2 Kings 16:18).

Historically and biblically, the majority of great spiritual leaders came from the marketplace. They were ranchers, soldiers, shepherds and workers – normal people, yet deeply spiritual. Yet few marketplace Christians today even try to walk in the steps of Nehemiah, David, Joseph or Abraham. In spiritual matters, Christian leaders in the marketplace have mostly taken a back seat. They may have a God-granted leadership gift, but they have abdicated spiritual leadership and authority to others. Biblical heroes refused to settle for spiritual mediocrity. Why have we abdicated spiritual greatness? Why have we said in our hearts, “I can never be a Nehemiah, a Joseph or an Abraham?” How has the enemy convinced us to set our aim so low? Every believer is one step away from spiritual greatness. Most of the heroes of the Bible were Marketplace Christians just like you and me. They had nothing more or less from God. They could have settled for spiritual mediocrity, but they chose to take that step toward greatness.

God has no secular, unspiritual roles in His Kingdom:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Pet. 2:9 (NIV)

Every believer is to be first a priest, even a king-priest, meaning one with a kingly flavor. It is not enough to build careers or businesses and give money to the kingdom. It is not even enough to build anointed businesses. We have reduced spirituality to integrity at work, church attendance and giving in church offerings. While these are good, they fall far short of true spirituality. We must become priests of our own lives and our marketplace flock if Marketplace Christianity will have the transforming power God intends it to have.

Nehemiah is a scriptural type of king-priest. He was respected in the marketplace, a gifted “governor.” He was anointed to lead and build. But he did not abdicate his calling as king-priest. He was a civic leader and a man of prayer. On one hand he initiated the reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem, organized the exiles and supervised the construction of the city. But he also called the nation to repentance, restored temple worship and became a spiritual patriarch to the exiles.

That’s a good model for Marketplace Christians. Let’s see how to reclaim our priesthood in the marketplace.

Prayerlessness
Spiritual greatness comes to those who simply pursue God earnestly; and pursuit of God begins and ends in prayer. Prayer is the single key to reclaiming our marketplace priesthood. But Marketplace Christians are not usually praying people. We give money, go to fellowship groups and prayer breakfasts - but we won’t pray. Why? Some of us are discouraged by our weakness. Our past efforts at prayer have only left us disappointed. After years of neglect, we find ourselves spiritually atrophied. As spiritual second-class citizens, it has become easier to just not try. Like Leah, we feel unlovely (Gen. 29:31). But weakness is not to be despised but embraced. God is not impressed by the strength of man, nor depressed by the weakness of man. He loves our earnest pursuit. He does not look at the gift but the heart with which it is given. In our hearts we must only earnestly desire Him to please Him. We must simply be consistent in our weak pursuit in order to become spiritual men and women.

Many Marketplace Christians quit praying because they feel unclean and sinful. Adultery, pornography, pride, desire for glory, selfish ambition, fear and greed run rampant in the marketplace, and sometimes ensnare believers. David was a weak and inwardly torn man. He knew he was one step away from sin. He committed a grievous murder in order to commit grievous adultery. Yet David did not allow his weakness to destroy his relationship with God. He did not hide from God, but ran right to Him in repentance (Ps. 51). Astonishingly, God was pleased with him and called him a “man after God’s own heart,” because he understood the heart of God - that God was for him, even in his weakness and sin. If we find ourselves stuck in a place of sin, today is the day to turn and flee. Even in our addictions, God will forgive us seventy-seven times per day, every day. We must not give up, we must cry out to God every day asking His forgiveness and help, and we must humble ourselves and seek help from others.

I attended a Christian investors’ conference with a friend and the theme was “making money to give to missions.” During the opening presentation, the purpose of the conference was proclaimed and the participants were dubbed “men of impeccable character.” But my friend had a dream that night that everyone at the conference was “tilted” - meaning they were filled with iniquity and wrong motives. God spoke in the dream that it was okay to be tilted, so long as we didn’t lie and claim we weren’t. God could deal with the sin, but not with pretense.

Among Marketplace Christians, as in the church generally, there is far too much pretense. In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira would have been without sin or shame had they simply said, “We’re not ready to give everything, but we’ll give a portion of our money.” Instead, they lied about it.

God wants to take us out of that place of sin, spiritual sickness and pretense and into our full marketplace calling, which includes vibrant, passionate spirituality and an active, on-going prayer dialogue with God. We must recognize God as the Healer and Redeemer. He loves to forgive us, heal us and redeem our sins and spiritual sicknesses. It is part of His glory, and there is no shame in admitting these things to Him. There is only shame if we pretend we’re without sin.

We must embrace a fresh view of prayer. Prayer is not a perfunctory “rescue me,” or “make me more money.” True prayer is never drudgery or fruitless exertion - what Mike Bickle calls “rock-pile” prayer. It’s a loving interaction with our Father in heaven, whose love for us knows no bounds (John 3:16), who sings over us (Zeph. 3:17), who delights in us (Ps. 16:3, Isa. 5:7), who thinks about us night and day (Ps. 139:17-18), who longs to draw near to us (Matt. 23:37).

Self-reliance
Another block to prayer is the sickness of self-reliance. Marketplace Christians generally think of themselves as problem-solvers. They hate excuses, hate being needy. As such, prayer offends them. There is an inherent weakness and absurdity to it - and that by God’s design. Prayer requires humility and recognition of weakness. It’s the only way prayer works.

I used to excuse myself from praying by saying, “I am not an intercessor.” I was happy to let the elderly ladies in the church gather in the basement to pray. Like me, most Marketplace Christians want someone else to do the praying. But prayer is every believer’s calling. Humans were created, by design, to ask and receive, which is what prayer is. When we ask of God, we are inviting Him to invade earth. Though God owns the earth, He does not take His authority to traffic here unless we invite Him to. For example, say I own a house that I have leased to another family. If I hear their plumbing is clogged, I cannot just take my key and barge in. The family must invite me in, even though I own the property and have sovereign rights over it.

When we neglect prayer, we dis-invite God out of our circumstance and workplace. You may recall the tragic episode of August 2000 when the Soviet Submarine “Kursk” sank to the ocean bottom. Several nations stood by with rescue equipment, ready to try to save the trapped sailors. They only needed Russia’s approval. They waited for over a week, until the sailors were all dead, because the Russian leaders were stuck in self-reliance.

God has answers waiting for us, like the ships waiting to help the Kursk. He wants us to ask, so that He can answer.

Lack of internal drive
Another enemy of prayer is lack of internal motivation. Our lives can get stuffed with distraction and dissipation, shouted down by a cacophony of internal and external noise, thoughts, worries and cares. Our culture screams at us through its venues of entertainment, and on every streetcorner is another person sharing his or her opinion. Modern life is nothing if not disorienting.

Seeking God, then, takes a simple commitment to prioritize. We must carve away time from career, business, and the many things that tug at us. We must apply our skills of of organization and prioritizing to our prayer life, lest we become spiritually sluggish. I remember reading in the Bible,

The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl; it wearies him to bring it back to his mouth. Prov. 26:15 (NKJV).

I thought, “That’s my prayer life!” I could start but couldn’t seem to finish. I was inspired to overcome sluggishness by meditating on the examples of several people in the Bible. I call them my heroes of importunity. Importunity is being “troublesomely urgent or persistent in requesting; pressingly entreating.” Importunity was one of Jesus’ primary teachings on prayer.

The first hero of importunity appears in Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the parable of the persistent friend. Jesus said because of the friend’s importunity, he will get an answer (Luke 11:8).

Another hero is Jacob, who wrestled with God and prevailed because he knew he could get an answer.

The Syrophoenician woman (Matt 15:21-28) is another hero of importunity. She came to Jesus to ask for healing for her daughter. Jesus refused, intending to draw out her faith. She replied, “Even the dogs get the crumbs that fall off the table.” Amazing! She was “troublesomely urgent and persistent in requesting, pressingly entreating.” Jesus responded, “So great a faith I have not seen in all of Israel.”

Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52, Luke 18:35-43) is a terrific hero of importunity. When he heard Jesus was coming by, he became the most annoying person in the area, shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The disciples came over to shush him up, but he only became more “troublesomely urgent and persistent in requesting, pressingly entreating.” He refused to let his window of opportunity pass.

The widow in Jesus’ parable in Luke 18 is a hero of importunity. Even when the unrighteous judge refused her, she continued to entreat him. She was “troublesomely urgent and persistent in requesting, pressingly entreating.”

Importunity is one of the single most important understandings of prayer as taught by Jesus. Many times in my life, I have been hit with difficulty, where I needed an answer from God. In these times, my wife and I agreed to pray together three times a day: before I left for work. At lunch when I came home, and before bed. At these times we were never very creative - we usually prayed the same prayers, but we continued to entreat our heavenly Father. Looking back, most of those times God came through for us. We prayed with persistence, because we were convinced we could get an answer.

3 Pillars of Prayer

There are three pillars of understanding that help us to build a vibrant prayer life:

1. God knows and cares - we must never think otherwise. Over and over and over, Jesus made this point when teaching on prayer (Matt 6:25-34, Matt 7:7-11, Luke 11:11-13, Luke 18:1-8). He told us to ask, and continue asking; to seek and continue seeking; to knock and continue knocking, because He cares for us, and He wants to answer us (Matt 7:7-11, Luke 11:11-13).
2. Nobody is worthy enough to ask. None of my heroes of importunity were worthy. None had a “right” to receive. None of them came on legal grounds. They simply asked as children, knowing God would smile on them.
3. Importunity and persistence work. Why did Jesus speak His parables on prayer? The scriptures tell us: “He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.” (Luke 18:1) We can get an answer if we don’t lose heart and give up.

Taking our place on the wall
Marketplace Christians are called to be priests in the workplace, to cry out to God and prevail in matters close to His heart. I often hear Marketplace Christians pray for the fire to return to their hearts. One day as I was praying this very prayer, God brought me to Proverbs 26:20: “for lack of wood the fire goes out.” How obvious! How simple! It is amazing God would put such an obvious thought in the Bible. The wood for the fire of our hearts is prayer. Most of us don’t need fire – we have plenty of embers – but we do need wood. We need to pray. We need to schedule a regular prayer meeting with God and show up for it. We need to ask with importunity, growing stronger in the knowledge that when we ask, we’ll receive. As we grow strong in prayer, we’ll become priests in our workplaces.

Excerpted from Robert Fraser, Marketplace Christianity (New Grid Publishing, 2004).    Used by permission.    All rights reserved.    Content distributed by WorkLife.org > Used for non-profit teaching purposes only.