Review  |   Author Bio  |  Read an Excerpt  |  Interview

Interview With Bryan Chapell and Christian Book Previews’ managing editor, Stacy Oliver:

CBP:  I’d like you to tell our readers something about you, your background, how you became a Christian...

BRYAN:  I have the wonderful privilege of being raised in a Christian home, and I cannot remember a time that I didn’t know I was a sinner in need of a Savior and Jesus died for me.  Those are my earliest thoughts.  

My time of really discerning how I would live with that was late in college.  I was career picking, mainly on the basis of how much money and how much fame, and I knew that was wrong.  So I actually took a Thanksgiving break and went to St. Louis to Covenant Seminary, and the man who was president at the time – I had run track with his son – so I just stopped in at Thanksgiving and said – his name was Dr. Rayburn – I said, “Dr. Rayburn, I’m not sure what I should be doing here.  I know I shouldn’t be chasing a buck and chasing fame, and yet, here I am at the end of college that’s all I’m really thinking about.”  So he said, “Why don’t you come to seminary and think about your priorities.”  So I did.  And at the end of my first year I was pastoring a little country church.  And it was just everything I was.  It involved public speaking, it involved writing, it involved working with people, it involved working with the Lord – just everything I loved was wrapped up in it.  And I couldn’t imagine better.

So I became a pastor for about ten years, and then went back to teach at the seminary.  And after teaching for a couple of years and in administration, been president for quite a while now.  But it was just a great leading of the Lord along with things that I loved doing.  And it took me off the path of self service, but in a way that really satisfied my desires at the same time.

So I’ve been with the seminary for 25 years now.  But coming to know the Lord was just a great privilege of being in a Christian home.  And I thank my parents for living and talking before me what they believed.  

CBP:  Well, why a book on prayer?  I mean here you are, you’re the president of Covenant Seminary and you could write on any topic and probably a very high theological academic book, and instead you write something really accessible on prayer.  Why would you want to do that?

BRYAN:  I have a guiding passion in life, and that passion is to have all believers become very Christ focused in everything they do.  That they would be thinking and living out of the goodness of God; that they wouldn’t be living under a sense of, “If I don’t do this God’s going to hurt me.” , or, “I’ve just got to do this because I’ve got to make it up to God because he sent Jesus.”  If they really had the sense that God loved me enough to send his Son, and I can respond out of equal – I can respond out of love rather than fear or guilt or intimidation.  But the thing I most want to do in life is please God because I love Him.  So I wrote a book some years ago called Christ Centered Preaching which was on making Christ the heart of every message, and having people motivated by love for Christ rather than in fear, intimidation, guilt, those things.  But if they could really respond in obedience to God out of love, then the Christian life would be joy and strength rather than oppression and guilt and depression and all of that.  

And that book is used in a lot of seminaries.  But sometimes it has trouble translating down to a lay-person level.  So lots of seminaries use Christ Centered Preaching to train preachers, but I want to say how can those same principles of being motivated by the love of God and recognizing the power of Christ in daily life, how could that touch everybody?

So I first called this book Christ Centered Prayer and the publisher kind of thought well, maybe.  Then I said, here’s the premise; here’s what I really want to do.  Everybody ends their prayer saying in Jesus’ name, amen.  Why do they do that?  Is it just like Roger Wilco, Over and Out, I’m done Lord.  What they’re really saying is, I’m praying to honor Jesus.  That’s what they should be saying, and they often forget that because they just tack on those words at the end since they were children they were just taught to end their prayer that way.  So I said, if you just reversed it and said, “In Jesus’ name, this is what I’m asking.”  Not only would it change your prayer, it would change your priorities.  And ultimately you would find the goodness of God motivating what you’re doing.  That’s really why I wrote it is I wanted to take to a very layperson, common, everybody in the church love in.  What would it be to live out the blessing of your love for Christ daily?

CBP:  I think you’ve written in such a way that anyone can read it and understand it, identify with it.  

BRYAN:  Yeah, people are looking for a little book.  But at the same time, I think people catch it real fast – when you say, “In Jesus’ name” in the Bible it means you’re doing something for God’s glory.  In the Old Testament the armies of God went against the enemies in the name of the Lord, prophets came in the name of the Lord, even David went up against Goliath in the name of the Lord.  If you do something in the name of the Lord, it means you’re doing it for His glory.  So when we pray in Jesus’ name, we’re really saying, “Lord, I’m offering this prayer for Christ’s sake.”  

Now, there’s another reason we do it too, and that’s because we recognize – I don’t want to say, “Lord, forgive me” in my name.  We really recognize the power of Christ interceding for us.  So we also pray in Jesus’ name because we want His intercession.  

Now, if you pray in Jesus’ name – and I’m not really concerned that we say those words at the beginning, but with those priorities at the beginning – that I would say, I want Jesus to take my prayer to the Father, and I want Him to do it for His own name’s sake; that would really change what you were asking for.  Almost all of us pray like kids, “Lord, I want a new pony, a new red bicycle, new job, lower taxes.”  But most of those are prayers in my name.  So if we said “In Jesus’ name, lower my taxes,” that doesn’t follow.  “In Jesus’ name, make me a better steward.”  That would follow.  

Children pray, “Give me.”  Mature believers say make me Lord; make me what You want me to be.  And that’s where you begin to feel the power of praying in Jesus’ name.  It’s changing your priorities, it’s going to change you, and ultimately it’s going to change the world in which you live.  Partially because it’s changing you so your filter becomes different.  But in ways which are, to me, in writing this book, I think I’m just beginning to fathom prayer in Jesus’ name is actually intended to change our world.  I’m not just saying that in a hokey, praying to get what you want sort of way.  If the Bible is what it says true about the nature of prayer, then that Romans 8:28 verse that we quote so readily, “All things work together for good”, means more than I ever thought.  It actually concludes a portion of scripture on prayer, Romans 8:26.  “We don’t know how to pray.”  So the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with - King James says, “Groanings too deep to utter.”  It’s actually the language of childbirth.

CBP:  I found it really fascinating how you show the aspects of how all three of the figures of God working together in prayer.  I’ve never seen much expanded on the Holy Spirit’s assistance in prayer.

BRYAN:  That is a fascinating and powerful portion of scripture, because what I think of is at times when I’m praying, even though they’re very serious things, I can pray for the salvation of my brother, and I pray that at nights, and sometimes I fall asleep in my own prayer.  And to think the Holy Spirit is before God as in the pains of childbirth saying Lord, hear his prayer, Lord, hear this petition” but not only is the spirit praying with greater fervency than I can utter, but the Spirit is also, that verse continues, that God, who knows the mind of the Spirit, answers in accordance to His will.  So not only is the Spirit praying with greater fervency than I can offer, the Spirit is praying with greater design than I can offer.  So here’s what’s happening, the Spirit is taking my prayer and is offering greater fervency and design than I could offer, then Christ is at the right hand of God interceding for me saying, “Lord, listen.  With the blood that I have shed, I now petition You to answer.”  And then the Father listens and responds as He knows is best.

So the whole Trinity is involved with my little, bitty prayer.  And the way I explained it in the book, just because my needs are an illustration at times, is this:  I remember watching my mom decorate cakes with an icing syringe.  You know how you just kind of take the icing and you glop it in one end, and then with your left thumb over you kind of press down on it and the design comes out with the decorator tip at the other end.  And I think my prayers - because I’m like the apostle, I don’t know how to pray - I know what I think, I know what I wish, but I’m not God, I don’t know always what’s right.  So my prayers are kind of like the icing that gets glopped into the icing funnel, and then the Spirit with fervency, puts pressure on it, and then the Spirit, with infinite wisdom, is like the decorator tip which begins to design my prayer for God’s purposes.  And then God says, “As a result all things work together for the whole.”  It’s incredible.  All things.  The whole universe is being conformed to God’s purpose for my life as a consequence of my prayer.  

CBP:  It’s a mystery, isn’t it?  Even though you put an image to it, it really is amazing and something I can’t quite grasp completely.  How God is sovereign and his plans will not be thwarted and yet He is affected by prayer somehow.  

BRYAN:  And you think why did God want my prayers to be the fuel of His purpose?  I don’t know.  He certainly doesn’t need it, but He chose.  Somehow, I think He knows what’s best for our own heart.  When we are humbled before Him, and coming to Him like a Father, the relationship He desires with us is cemented and increased and bonded even more.  So He doesn’t need our prayers, but He chooses to work through our prayers to do what He wants.

CBP:  One big thing that I wonder about – you talked about how we typically pray as children – and I call it a wish list.  We just give our wish list to God, and especially intercessory prayer.   I’m in Bible study groups where we give each other our prayer requests, and so it’s always help and take care of this person, and travel mercies, and so and so is looking for a job.  And, of course, my heart goes out to these people, but I feel like all I do in prayer is say, “Okay, please heal so and so.”  But I’m, in a sense, reading my list.  So how do you advise people to pray intercessory for other people, especially when they’ve said, “Pray that John will find a job,” or whatever, those things that you would consider childlike prayers?

BRYAN:  I think God intends for us to take matters large and small to Him so I do encourage – because I think the Bible commands intercessory prayer.  In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make your requests known to God.  What does everything mean?  Well, it means everything; matters big and matters small.

I mentioned to you I was saved early in life by the Lord’s great mercy, and I can remember in high school one time working on a church renovation project and a man that I was working with dropped a nail, and he stopped work and began to look for it, and I got a little frustrated and I said, “Why don’t you just get another nail?”  And he said, “Oh, no Bryan.  I prayed that God would help me find the nail so I need to look for it.”  And I said, “Well, I think God has other purposes for our prayers; that’s a little bit small.”  He said, “Oh, no Bryan.  God says in everything we’re to pray to Him.”  And that really hung with me.  That was right.  God even wants us to pray about a nail; about things big, yes, but little things too.  

It’s that notion of what did Paul mean when he said to pray without ceasing?  I don’t think he means fold your hands and close your eyes every moment, but I do think he means there’s this constant interceding, this constant – what I call arrow prayers to God that say, “Lord take care of that”, “Lord help me remember that”, Lord thank you for letting me have this”, “Thank you for letting me see that”; this constant conversation with God.  So when we are interceding, I don’t think we are sidling up to God and saying, “God, I’m this finite human creature, but I know how you ought to run the universe.  So you do all these things because I said.”   I think we are praying like the apostle, I don’t know how to pray, but I’m asking this because you tell me to.  But I’m also praying as Jesus did, “Lord this is my will, yet not my will be done but your will be done.”  

Now, people get concerned about that because you’re making all these escape hatches.  You’re asking God to do this but you kind of fudge a little bit by saying yet not my will but your will.  And I do know that there can be kind of this escape hatch kind of prayer; not really mean it, not really have faith.  But Jesus prayed that way.  It’s not wrong for me to pray that way.  

So when I intercede for other people, help Aunt Julie’s leg get well, that’s not wrong.  What I think I’m to be doing is always humbling before God saying how the Lord – this is my humanity talking, this is the way I understand the world – so I ask for it, but still by your Spirit you make my prayer what it ought to be.  I think 95, 98, 99% of the time, God does exactly what we ask – that may sound strange – but if you were talking to God all the time every day, and you were saying, “Lord, help me get to the meeting on time.  Lord, help my daughter do well on this test.”  Now, sometimes it doesn’t go right, but most of the time it does.  We remember the times that there’s a struggle.  Sometimes that’s because we’re only praying about the hardest things.  

Most of the time my corpuscles overcome the infections, my colds don’t become pneumonia, most of the time I do get well, and if I were to pray and actually see how often God does answer, then I think I’d be more ready to offer those intercessory prayers.  I simply am not directing God by them, I am petitioning God in them.  I’m asking, “Lord, hear this prayer, these are the desires of my heart; yet, not my will, but your will be done.”  

CBP:  When Paul talks about how he prayed that God remove the thorn for him and we don’t know what it was, probably something else.  So he did take his health to God, but then it says he prayed three times and then it seems almost like he let it go.  Right?

BRYAN:  And there because God says he answered him.  Paul says  -- That’s II Corinthians 12, my grace is sufficient, my strength made perfect in weakness.  I don’t in any way want to say that God might not talk to us that way; but I don’t think it’s the way he normally does business at this time.  I think that the way God normally does business is He says watch what happens.  I recognize that we may wonder, do I keep praying, do I keep praying?  Christ tells us to.

CBP:  Right.  There is that parable that has just confounded me...

BRYAN:  The parable you’re talking about is the widow and the unjust judge.  She keeps going and pleading with him –

CBP:  She harps on him until he says, “Fine, have whatever you want.”  And that’s how you should talk to God in prayer!  What?  I’m paraphrasing but –

BRYAN:  That’s a good paraphrase.  I mean it’s really a “greater than” argument that Jesus is making, so even if the unjust judge would hear somebody who keeps persisting in prayer, would not God who loves you listen to you if you persist in prayer?  And the answer is well, yes He would.  But remember where that parable ends – it’s remarkable – because it ends saying, “will not God also provide the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”  And you say, “That’s great, Lord, but that’s not exactly what I wanted.  I really wanted a new bicycle or the renewed health or something.”  Why does he say the Holy Spirit there?  Well, we’re back to where we were before, because the Holy Spirit is going to bring what’s best.  He doesn’t say, “If you keep petitioning your Father that He’ll give you exactly what you want.  He’ll say He will provide the Holy Spirit” which for the heart in which the Spirit dwells what we want is what most glorifies the Savior through the Spirit.  

CBP:  Well, like you say, you keep praying for your brother every day, and I do for mine.  And I believe that His will is that none should perish.  So I understand that I’m praying in His will, and I’m persistent and yet there isn’t a change.  So then you say, well, He’s going to do what He’s going to do and it doesn’t really matter what I pray in that respect.

BRYAN:  If you look at a biblical notion of prayer, you could easily become very fatalistic and just say, “God’s going to do what God’s going do.”  As you just did.  

What I think God is pushing us to is not fatalism, but the faith that our prayers really are that fuel of His own divine purposes.  So that He’s saying, “Will you believe me that your prayers are actually a means by which I am changing the world for good for you.”  God is not going to impose your will on somebody else, or me on my brother.  So when I am praying, “Lord, bring his heart to you.”  I’m to recognize that all time and space is like a map spread out before God and He knows what is best, necessary, and when it should occur, and I don’t.  I don’t know the events that have to coordinate in my brother’s life so that his will is broken, changed, brought about by God’s purposes to be what God intends.  I don’t know how God will do that, when God will do that.  I don’t know those answers, but God says, “Pray to me, trusting that I am a good shepherd.  I am the good shepherd.”  It’s an amazing, wonderful thought.  

Why would I put my diseased body into God’s hands?  Because He’s the good shepherd; because He’ll carry His lamb where he needs to go.  And on those issues of health, to say, so often as Christians we’re only putting God in the box of this world saying, “Lord, heal him right now in this world.”  And we forget that the next world is as real to God as this world.  And He’s got alternatives, He can heal someone in this world in which they’re still going to get sick and die prior to His coming.  Or He can say, “I’ll just take them to Myself and I’ll perfectly heal them forever.”  Now, in our humanity we say one is not as good as the other, or one is not as miraculous as the other.  You see, we’re not looking on God’s level.  In God’s economy, in God’s space and God’s time, both worlds are equally real, and to pray for someone to be healed here is not more miraculous than God’s healing them perfectly forever with Himself.

CBP:  You do a really good job of illustrating that in the book, when you bring up a family who had prayed over a sick loved one and that person died. They essentially turned away from their faith because God didn’t hear their prayer or answer it the way they expected.  I think that’s very powerful, and it’s a big problem for a lot of people.

BRYAN:  If they would not put God in the box of this world.  Just with a childlike faith if they would say, “I’m simply going to believe what God says.  He says there’s this world and He says there’s that world, and He says they’re both equally real, and that one is better.”

CBP:  It’s hard to comfort someone who’s lost an unsaved relative or someone they care for.  

BRYAN:  And there we have to say we don’t ultimately know the heart of any other person.  But, Stacy, I don’t want to dodge your hard question, I mean, why doesn’t God respond to our prayer to save everyone that we think He should?  Somewhere we have to say salvation is in God’s hands, and He – this is more theological than you may intend -- there is a sense in which, I think, God ultimately gives everyone the desires of their heart.  Though it may be very strange, but even those who are in hell have the desires of their heart.  They do not want God.  And hell is not only just the notion of things apart, ultimately hell is alienation from God, separation from Him.  And the Scriptures tell us there are those who love darkness rather than life.  It’s amazing if you think of the infinite love of God that He actually lets people have what they want even eternally.  It is not right to think that those in hell actually long to be with God.  They actually don’t.  They love darkness rather than light, and God in a certain dimension of intimate love lets people have what they want.  And his heart toward us has given us a heart that longs for Him.  And you say, “Why doesn’t He give that to everyone?”  Well, now you’re beyond the council that I know.

CBP:  Nobody can really say for certain.

BRYAN:  I don’t think so.  Paul in Romans 9 does not answer that question.  He says, here’s the situation – but he doesn’t attempt to answer the question.  So I pray that the Lord will save my brother, and I pray regularly for my brother, and yet at the same time I have to say, “God is not going to impose my will on my brother.  Ultimately the Lord and my brother will have to deal with each other.”  But I will keep praying believing that it is God’s intention to save my brother and to break his will, but He will use my prayers as part of that process.

CBP:  You talked about how prayer is also worship.  How do those work together?  

BRYAN:  It’s one of my favorite things to talk about because I hadn’t really thought about it much until this book.  And the more I wrote about the more I thought that’s rather amazing.  It’s almost cliché in church circles to talk about the notion that when we worship, we’re not just singing and praising to one another, but God is really the audience.  Biblically, God’s not just the audience, He’s actually the speaker.  Isn’t that an amazing thought?  When we preach – when the preacher speaks the word of God, he is actually still proclaiming that word that is from God.  So the preacher is proclaiming the word of God and God is not just then the listener, He’s actually the speaker working through the preacher to do His work through His word in the hearts of His people.  

So God is the speaker as well as the listener.  

What happens when we sing songs?  Well, we are told, remember in Ephesians, that we are to sing and make melody in our heart that we’re to be filled with the Spirit.  How are we to be filled with the Spirit?  We sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another; not just to God, to one another.  But that’s being filled with the Spirit.  So the Spirit is in my praise, the Spirit is singing out, as it were, to other people.  So it’s my voice, I know it as my song, but it’s still the Spirit ministering through me in praise to other people.  So just as preaching is not only God listening as well as people listening, it’s also God speaking, so in our hymns is God listening but He’s also speaking.  

Now, what about in prayer?  Well, we’ve already said the Holy Spirit is groaning; it’s the Son who’s interceding, so I’m speaking but I’m really a vessel of that work of the Spirit.  So if God who is actually – now this is where it get weird – but it is God who is praying through me as an instrument so that He will actually hear what I am praying that He has initiated in my heart.  So He is still doing that work of creation; He is still speaking His work into the creatures – that is me – to bring about a new creation which is the world being worked for good to them that love Him are being called according to His purpose.  So even now through our prayers, we are co-creators of the new universe.  That’s an amazing thought.

Did your brain just explode?

CBP:  Yes!

BRYAN:  What’s happening is, God is using my prayer by His – not because of my humanity, my finiteness, and my righteousness – but because He has chosen by His Spirit to work through me and my prayers to bring about the changes in the world that He impacts.  So that I, for no reason that is my own goodness, for no reason that is my own righteousness, I become that instrument of His changing the world for the glory that He intends for His own Son.  So that He is moving the world forward by His power yes, but His power poured through me for His divine glory and ultimate purpose.  So that prayer becomes the worship of God that is ultimately the expression of His glory for all good things.

There are times from the Apostle Paul when he could raise somebody from the dead.  Cloven claws that touched his body would heal other people.  And yet, there were other times when he would say, “I left Trophemus sick at my …”  Or, you already said, “I prayed three times that the thorn in my flesh would be removed and God said, “No.””  What made one time different than another?  God knew what was appropriate for God’s purposes and God’s glory, and even the apostle didn’t know all the time.  So God could do amazing things through him; humanly speaking, on this earth at times.  And other times God said, “No.  My eternal purposes require that that not be done at this point.”  And still it was God working an eternal purpose.

CBP:  Well, it seems when I look at the prayers of Paul – it’s not recorded prayers as much as it is him reporting on his prayers – it seems like he’s prayed praise for the character of people, of the churches that he writes to rather than a specific need.

BRYAN:  I think that’s right.  There would be times that he prayed for specific needs, but more often he is praying that people’s hearts would be reconciled to God in the way that they should, and that God would bring about whatever was necessary for that.  

You only remind me, it’s not directly your question, but it’s kind of something I want to say through this book and it’s this:  People sometimes evaluate the goodness of God or the effectiveness of their prayer by their circumstances.  So they’ll say, “How could God be good if this is happening in my life or to a loved one?”  And they’re evaluating who God is by their circumstances.  What I see Paul doing and the scriptures doing is they’re always saying, “Don’t evaluate God by your circumstances.”  Paul says, “I’ve been shipwrecked, I’ve been flogged, I’ve been starving.”  And you don’t say, “Well, Paul, if you just had a little more faith …”  

Paul says in all those things that he has faith.  That his faith is in God, and what he keeps doing to people is he is saying, “Don’t look at your circumstances; look at God’s character.”  If you’re wanting to trust God, take your eyes off your circumstances and put your eyes on the cross, because if you look at your circumstances you can’t make sense of God.  The world is too complex, it’s too fallen, it’s too messed up until Christ returns.  But he’ll say this, “I will trust God because He sent His Son.  And I don’t have to doubt that He is going to work out as good because I know His character.  So if I look at my circumstances they’re pretty rough at times, but I’ll look at God’s character and I’ll always trust Him, because I know that a God who would send His Son to die for me will work out as good.  

CBP:  Thank you for that.  I was going to ask you are you working on a new thing or is it going to be another ten years for the next installment?

BRYAN:  After Christ Centered Preaching, Christ Centered Prayer?

CBP:  Yes.

BRYAN:  It’s not the next thing I’m doing.  The next thing I’m doing which fed into this is I’m doing a commentary on Ephesians.   A lot of what Ephesians talks about is this notion of God is using the church to fill up the whole world with His glory.  That’s an amazing thought that the church is the fullness of Him who fills up everything in every way.  So that the church is the instrument of God’s changing the world; it’s not politics, it’s not economics, it’s not military, it’s ultimately the church and the people in it in prayer and with one another corporately is the way that God is changing the world eternally.  So I’m doing a lot more exploring of how is God transforming creation through His people individually and corporately?  And in Ephesians I’ll do a whole lot more looking at the corporate aspect of that.  So that’s to come.

CBP:  We'll be looking for it. Thank you, Bryan!