Equipping God’s People to Pray

Equipping God’s People to Pray

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Mark Gold

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/4/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, welcome again to Stand in the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell. Now, some of you are probably going to think to yourself after I make this opening statement, “Boy, he has an amazing way of stating the obvious.” So here it goes. Prayer is vitally important for any Christ follower. Now, I know that’s something you already knew. I’m not reminding you of anything super new, but the fact of the matter is statistics tell us prayer is important. 44% of Americans pray daily. Another 23% pray weekly or monthly. Prayer and daily prayer remains relatively stable throughout the country, even though religious affiliation and the whole idea of going to church has declined. Barna in his 2025 stay of the church research found 73% of all Americans pray at least once during the week, 86% of Christians pray weekly. So it’s clear, God’s people believe that it’s important to pray, but one of Barna’s most revealing findings were this, that 94% of people who pray usually pray alone.

82% say they pray silently. Only 2% say they often pray in their church. Only 2% most often pray with another person or group. Lifeway also, their research has some sobering statistics. Among evangelical pastors, about half, 52% report spending personal time in Bible study and prayer five or more days during a previous week. That also means nearly half did not reach that level of consistency. Prayer still ranks as the greatest area of struggle and inconsistency in the Christian life. And I can keep going on this. But here’s the fact. Churches tend to spend little time praying. And if we do have a thing called a prayer meeting, I got to be honest, we’re talking most of the time. It’s difficult to quantify nationally, but several observations are consistent. Many churches have a limited, their weekly prayer meeting. Worship services often include only a brief opening prayer or maybe a closing prayer.

And if prayer meetings do occur, we talk more the time. And most of it is segregated from old and young praying on their own. And older, mature Christians never get to be with the younger ones, teaching them and showing them the importance of prayer. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see. We need to get prayer back on the map. Today, we want to talk about igniting and inspiring prayer. Not just what prayer is and that prayer is important, but really talk about equipping you to pray. And to help me as a pastor who I haven’t seen in a long time, but years ago, our ships kind of ran together when we were doing youth ministry. Mark Gold is a pastor and we welcome you, Mark, to stand in the gap today.

Mark Gold:

Jamie, it is just an honor to be invited anywhere to talk about Jesus and to talk about what he wants to do in the lives of people, his desires. So thank you for the invitation and good to talk to you again.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yes, my friend. Listen, Mark, I didn’t do a lot of background information, but give us a little background on your ministry, what you’ve been doing for the Lord. But as you share a bit about your background, could you just delve a little bit about why do you believe leading and training people to pray has been such an important aspect of your ministry?

Mark Gold:

Yeah. Thank you, Jamie. I became a Christian in 1971. Like so many people, that was a wonderful moment. I say it was the United States last national revival, coast to coast. And I was in the university. I wasn’t raised in a serving Christian family. The Bible was not a part of our family. Church was optional. And a guy on campus walked up to me and shared Christ with me. I kicked him out of my dorm room, wasn’t interested. And the Holy Spirit pursued me in my room. And at 2:30 on January 6th in the morning, I surrendered my life to Christ. And again, the great adventure that God created me for. I am so grateful to him for doing that. And immediately went into youth ministry through biology. That’s kind of backwards, but I was a school teacher. But while I was being a school teacher, I also was part-time youth pastor, which grew into full-time.

So I spent over 35 years as a youth pastor in churches. And then about 20 years ago, I began just training youth pastors. I love the rural church. And one of the overlooked areas of youth ministry is youth ministry in rural churches. And so I love going to rural churches and helping them with their youth ministry.

And I’m back with an organization that you and I are both familiar with called Sun Life. And they still do a great, great job of relating the son’s life. And what principles did he use to make disciples? Because we’re supposed to make disciples like he did. But today’s conversation’s about prayer. And you ask me where were the intersections of my life with prayer? I am so grateful to God that one week after I became a Christian, and I became a wacko Christian, I became crazy. I just loved Jesus so much and would have done anything. I went to a lay institute for evangelism put on by campus crusade, crew now. And so this is the first thing I know about Jesus. And the first thing they taught was Christians pray. If you remember the four strips of laws back in the back under G-R-O-W-T-H, growth.

The very first principle of the new Christian, that was me, I’m learning, I’m taking notes, was a Christian goes to God in prayer daily. John 15: seven, Jesus said, “Ask what you will.” And I believe that I just believed it. And I just started asking and God just started answering. And the foundation for the last 54 years has been that Jesus has invited me to talk to him. The second thing that happened in the first month, I was introduced to a Jesus that in John 15:12 said he wanted to be my friend. And I developed a friendship with Christ. So prayer to me isn’t a chore. Prayer’s talking to my friend. And most of my prayer sounds like that. Probably the ecclesiastical people would be put off by some of my prayer because it’s not high enough. I’m just talking to my friend. But those two wonderful collisions in my life is what started me on my journey with prayer.

I’ll be real honest. Early in this podcast, when people talk about Mark Golden prayer, God rolls his eye. There are so many better people, Jamie, you could have interviewed who are just the masters of prayer. I’m a struggle

Jamie Mitchell:

With

Mark Gold:

Prayer.

Jamie Mitchell:

Hey Mark. Mark, hold on to that though. We’re going to come back. Friends, today’s program may change your life, change your church’s life. When we come back, I want Mark to talk about how to get your church praying. Well, welcome back. We’re talking with Mark Gold about engaging God’s people in prayer, not just about how important prayer is or what prayer is. Mark, you’ve shared a little bit about coming to faith in Christ and those early steps in your life of learning about prayer and engaging in prayer. And like any of us, prayer is something both we have to kind of fall into and we never feel satisfied that we’re praying enough. But now you find yourself engaged in training youth pastors and working with churches. And finish up a little bit about your own personal story, but then I want you to transition and talk a little bit about how you encourage pastors to get their churches moving towards becoming a praying church.

Mark Gold:

Jamie, we’re going to fast forward past my experiences. I’m just so glad that foundationally Jesus invited me to talk to him and hears me, answers and continues to put that finger, his finger into my life. I think if I was encouraging pastors to pray, I don’t want to reteach so many wonderful things that people have said and done. But Jesus’ last night, he’s in the upper room. And in his discourse in John 15, 14, 15 and 16, he tells his young men last words. These are the last words. This is where he’s saying, “Guys, you’ve got to have this.” He tells them to pray, pray and pray. And then in John chapter 17, he prays. The whole chapter is his prayer. And then of course, in John 18, they go into the garden and Jesus goes away to pray and ask his friends to go with him and carry with him, agonize with them in prayer.

The model we’ve got, if I could encourage pastors to pray. It’s if I say I know him, one John chapter two: six, “If I say I know him, I have to walk like Jesus walked.” Jesus is always going along to pray. He’s always spending all night in prayer. Before he makes a big decision, he’s praying. You could just do a word study, a life study, biographical study on Jesus in prayer. And then if I’m going to be like, if I say I know him, I have to do what he does. So I’ve got Jesus as my model. And then I had two. So if a pastor was asking me, how do I move my church into prayer? First, I tell him to move his church into becoming like Christ. We have to pray. There’s two great prayer teachers that encouraged me and helped me. The hardest Christian book I read was Reesell’s Intercessor.

I love Hudson Taylor’s book. I love George Mueller’s book. And all of these are just encouragers to pray. But Dick Eastman did the seminar, the all day seminar on the school of prayer. I had never heard of praying for 60 minutes. And he just shows the church how they can get together and pray for 60 minutes. And then Daniel Henderson

Is leading the prayer charge right now. But I was in an early teaching of Daniel Henderson. I was sitting there with about 30 pastors. And he just said, “Guys, you can pray an hour on any chapter of Psalms.” And so a pastor yelled out a Psalm and we just prayed it for an hour, that chapter. And Daniel Henderson’s got some great, great teaching. For those of us who are afraid of, if we held a prayer meeting, what would we do? If we prayed for an hour, what would we do? Or Jamie, like you and I were born into early on in the Sun Life Experience concerts of prayer where we melt with 120, 150 teenagers, and we prayed for three hours.

Mark Gold:

Include worship, it included scripture reading, but it was three hours of prayer. And I’ll be honest, Jamie, when it was over, my youth would come to me and they’d say, “Wow, that felt like five minutes.” And I honestly would say, “Well, no, it felt like three hours.” I wouldn’t say I ever was transported in prayer. Prayer’s hard work for me. I’m always amazed when God supernaturally visits us in prayer. And it is wonderful, but often it’s just hard work. And so I’d want pastors to know we’re going to do this thing. We have to do this thing called prayer, but it’s work. And we got to get it on the calendar. We got to make it a high priority and we have to do it. So that’s how I would encourage pastors to start.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark, you hit on something right there. First off, they have to see, don’t they, that it is important for their people to pray and not just assume that they’re praying individually. We already saw statistics that most people, or at least Christians, do pray at some level, but the intentionality, the intensity, and then what they pray for is so important, isn’t it? That God’s people need to be directed. They need to be challenged on what to pray and given ideas on prayer. And as we kind of move our churches and our groups of God’s people to pray together, it is that guiding and directing and suggesting that pastors are really crucial at that. That’s really one of their important tasks that they’ve been asked to do is to help their people learn how to pray and what to pray for. Mark, as you’ve encouraged pastor to do this, or maybe even yourself, what kind of roadblocks might there be when we attempt to help a church become a praying church?

Mark Gold:

Now, this will get messy. And so I just ask people to have a lot of grace, but as I thought about roadblocks, I have four. The first roadblock is that Americans don’t need to pray. We don’t need to. I get a chance to go to India every year. They pray all night long, every Friday night in the church there in the Philippines, in my churches in Africa, in Haiti. These people have to pray. If I get sick, I go to the doctor. I pull out my credit card. I go to the pharmacy. If I have a fight with my son or my wife, we go to a counselor. We don’t need to pray. In countries where they don’t have that access, God is all they’ve got. One of our roadblocks in America is that we don’t need to pray. We’ve got money. We can buy our way through.

It doesn’t give us the solution to the problem and doesn’t bind our heart to God. The second thing is we don’t have time to pray. I think about mealtime prayer and how irritated I am when someone has their quiet time at the mealtime prayer. I’m ready to eat.

And they want to pray for six to eight minutes and the food’s getting cold. We don’t have time to get alone with God. And I just relate that to spending time with my wife. If I told my wife I loved her and she gets 30 seconds a day, she’s going to call me on that. If I tell my kids I love them and I give them 30 seconds a week, they’re going to call me on that. If I say, Jesus, I love you. And I spend 30 seconds with them, he’s going to call me on that. Here’s a hard one. We don’t see results. One of the roadblocks to prayer is we don’t see anything happen. And there’s all kinds of reasons for that. But

One of the things, my dad kicked me out of the house when I became a Christian. My mom became a Christian three years later. My dad became a Christian 14 years later. My sister became a Christian 25 years later. God answered every one of those prayers, Jamie. But sometimes we quit praying because it took 25 years. And we’re praying for a lady here in the neighborhood we’ve been praying for over 35 years. God’s going to save her. We’re begging God to save her. It’s going to happen. But I need to do number four. The reason we don’t pray, and this is completely subjective, this is markle, this isn’t from any university. I haven’t done a quantitative study, but it seems like most of the sermons I hear now about prayer are pastors telling us why God doesn’t answer prayer. God won’t answer your prayer because.

God doesn’t answer prayer because. God does this. And I think people are discouraged about praying from the pulpits. And I’m a little irritated. I just want a pastor to stand up and tell these people to pray.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen.

Mark Gold:

God, believe God.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen.

Mark Gold:

And you don’t have to stand on your right foot with your little fingers stuck up in the air leaning left. God can hear you. You got to just talk to him.

Jamie Mitchell:

Wow.

Mark Gold:

That was

Jamie Mitchell:

Really

Mark Gold:

Personal.

Jamie Mitchell:

Excellent. Listen, friends, anything that has value or make a difference in life takes sacrifice, effort, perseverance. Prayer is worth it and it can transform your church. When we return, I want to consider some ideas to get your church praying. You may not be a pastor. You may be just a pew sitter, but I want you to be an influencer of prayer in your church. Well, today is very personal for me. Over the years, some of the most memorable times of ministry either occurred while praying and worshiping with God’s people or flowing out of extended, what we may call a concerted times of prayer. Mark Gold has been with us today and he’s encouraging us to get praying. Mark, one of the things that I hear from people and pastors who want to see prayer engagement in their church happen, they don’t know where to start.

They don’t know what it looks like. They don’t have a model. And you’ve already mentioned in our past this idea of a concert of prayer made famous by David Bryant years ago. The whole idea of taking an hour and having a guided time of prayer. Could you just take a moment and describe that for the people who are listening? Describe it for pastors who are listening, that they may be able to take their prayer meeting or even to schedule a time once a month or on a regular basis where they gather their people together and actually spend an hour praying. What does that look like?

Mark Gold:

Well, one of the things you got to say quickly, what it looks like is prayer. I remember the last prayer meeting I went to that wasn’t a prayer meeting. We had 60 minutes and truth, Jamie. The man who was leading it had a wonderful heart, took prayer requests for 54 minutes and he wrote them on a whiteboard. And we got to the end. We had six minutes left. And he said, “Well, we really only have two minutes left because we’ve got to get out of here and we got to get to the church service. So I’m just going to pray over all of these in closing prayer.” And he said, “Lord, you’ve seen all these go on the board and you know all of them. So I ask you to hear them and bless them. Amen.” So that’s not what I’m talking about when I’m talking about a concert of prayer.

When we’re talking about a concert of prayer, we’re talking about a guided, led experience walking through, engaging with each other in the presence of God. Now, Dick Eastman and his how to spend an hour of prayer, he just says, “You can do this. You divide the hour into five minute sections, 12, five minute sections, and you’ll be surprised when the hour’s over.” My only problem with that, and I’ve done it many, many, many, many times, is I become a servant of my timer.

And I pray for five minutes, the timer goes off and I move. And so I’m waiting more on the timer than I am on the Holy Spirit. And the truth is, if you get to the fifth category and God hijacks it and you spend 45 minutes on that, that’s fine. But you can take that example of different topics to pray about and go into what we call a concert of prayer. We begin hour hour by just greeting the Lord. Everybody just from their heart in the group just says, “Good morning, Lord, or good afternoon, Lord. It’s so good to be here with you, Lord.” And then we read some scripture and then maybe someone is prepped to lead us in a worship song to the Lord. And then we go into a praise time. God, you are.

And then into a time of repentance. The praise time is usually corporate. The repentance time is I just usually encourage people, get alone in the room, get along where you are, and just examine your heart. Search me, oh God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there’d be any wicked way in me and lead me on the path. So there’s time of repentance. There’s a time where we ask God. And of course, this is the teaching on the grocery list. The purpose of prayer isn’t to say, give me, give me, give me. But God says he’s our father. And he invites us to come to him and say, “Oh God, I need these things and I need you. And God, I want these things.” Some of the most hilarious answers to prayer, Jamie, in my life have been times when I’ve just been driving and I just laugh and say, “God, it’d be hilarious if you gave me one of these.

I don’t need it.” And Jamie, he would.

Jamie Mitchell:

He

Mark Gold:

Didn’t have to do it. And a lot of times he doesn’t. But there’s just a time of asking God. And then the final stage of just yielding ourselves to God in obedience. God, whatever you want. So that would be a model where you can keep slicing scripture back in. I love Daniel Henderson’s model. A lot of times now we have prayed through Psalms. I was in a 15 year Thursday morning prayer meeting where we started with Psalms chapter one and we just prayed through all the Psalms.

Jamie Mitchell:

And

Mark Gold:

Whatever the Psalm brought up is what we prayed to God. So those are just examples of concerts.

Jamie Mitchell:

And Mark, part of that is the interaction, isn’t it? Where sometimes the congregation will pray out loud. They’ll just be asking people in the congregation to stand up and pray, but then to get people in smaller groups to pray together. And part of that is the engagement factor. That’s the beauty. That’s the key to those types of experience, isn’t it?

Mark Gold:

Yes. And on the asking part, we don’t ever do that corporately. We always break into groups of three or four. And then I do ask the people, don’t share your prayer request with each other. Share it with God in your group of three or four. Tell God everything you would have told the group. Tell God all the details and let other people hear it and join with you for that.

Jamie Mitchell:

Now, Mark, part of this too is these types of experiences, because the other problem in the church today is evangelism and seeing people come to Christ and seeing people share their faith. But at the concert of prayer becomes an amazing opportunity to get people to verbalize to God and to really enlist the other people that they’re praying with, to start praying for lost people. How dynamic, how vital is that in engaging people in prayer as well as engaging people in the evangelism process?

Mark Gold:

Right. Right. Encouraging the people because they can cry out for their daughter that isn’t seeking Christ, has walked away from Christ or doesn’t know Christ, but they’re doing it corporately with a bunch of other people. I love the evangelism prayer where we just say, call out loud the names of the people in your circle that don’t know Christ. Don’t wait on anybody else. Everybody prays out loud at the same time. And it’s kind of a glorious song that goes up to heaven of these names and names and names and names. And everybody’s encouraged that we’re not alone.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark, one of the unique things that we probably see happening if we do these kinds of things, and some of the complaints that I’ve heard over the years is that prayer is an older man’s game. We have just a couple of minutes left. This is a great opportunity to get young and old to pray together, isn’t it?

Mark Gold:

And I’ve never seen young people not want to pray with old people. And I’ve never seen old people that didn’t want to pray. It’s just our clocks are so different and our calendars are so different. And when they’re given the opportunity, if it melds together, I’ll usually say at the beginning of the meeting, “Is there an old person here that cares if a young person prays?” Everyone laughs. Is there a young person here that objects? If one of the seniors pray, everyone laughs. And then I say, “Please, everybody is here to talk to the Lord together to really be engaged and be part of that.” But it needs to be intentional on the part of the pastor and the youth leader. We invite our children’s ministry to come to our hour of prayer. This might be hard, Jamie. They come for 15 minutes. We’re there for an hour and they come for 15 minutes because that’s really what the wiggle And the handle.

And they get to hear their grandparents and their teenage brother pray out loud.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen.

Mark Gold:

Yeah.

Jamie Mitchell:

When you think about it, Mark, I just sit here saying to myself, what have we been thinking? Why aren’t we doing this on a regular basis of bringing the generations together, allowing the old to teach the young, for the young to inspire the old? I mean, it could be a goldmine of spiritual fruit like we have never seen before. Friends, here’s the truth. If we just take some time and really think about how to make prayer a higher priority in our congregations, we will come up with eight, nine, 10 new ideas. We’ll become intentional. We’ll put it on the calendar and we’ll begin to say, listen, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Let’s try it. Let’s just do it like the old Nike commercial used to say. Listen, don’t go anywhere. We want to finish up on the importance of prayer and how to engage people on praying and how to equip people and pray, how to challenge your pastor to lead a prayer revolution at your church.

Do not go anywhere. Well, our hour is almost up. We’ve been discussing getting prayer back in the church and getting God’s people to pray together. Mark Goldsman, our guest. Mark, here’s a question as you’ve been working with churches and pastors to make prayer more vital in their churches. What has been some of the most fruitful or encouraging reports that you have seen? And not just the idea of praying and seeing answers to prayer. What I’m talking about is what have you heard or seen when pastors and churches really get serious about prayer? How has it affected their churches?

Mark Gold:

Jamie, those are huge. That’s a huge question. And I’m constrained by time. I think of all the stories of revival. I love the revival stories, the Welch revival, the first and second great awakening, even the Jesus movement and the people who prayed for decades for God to breathe again. But when people pray, when the church prays, I’ve seen two things happen. Three things happen. I am the technical director. I don’t have a better word for that. For two different ministries. For our church and then a ministry that I’m part of. And it’s like, “Hey, Mark, will you be the convener? Will you be the prayer convener?” And it felt real mechanical when we first started. We dedicated the time to it. And the ministry you have to attend in our church, it’s voluntary. But two things, this happened in both of them. There was a unity that grew out of the hour or the half hour of praying for each other and praying together that couldn’t be explained by a pickleball court.

That wasn’t a put down on pickleball, just an example, or by a fellowship meal, or by a week of camp. There’s a unity that’s deeply knitted together between a husband and wife when they learn a deeper unity between a family that learns to talk to the Lord together. So what have I seen happen in both of those ministries, a camaraderie because of that happening? And then many times, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God says, God’s in charge of the calendar. I can’t control revival. I can’t control when he’s going to work in a unique way, but I can sure be ready. I can sure have my hands open. And seeing God do a unique thing and answer to corporate, a corporate thing, and answer that prayer. And Jamie,

Jamie Mitchell:

Just

Mark Gold:

One example. We were at an event called Simp that you were at years ago. I was with my youth group. It was the first year they had gone. And I had a young man with me whose name was Jeff. He was an intern. And late one night, I was exhausted. And he and I were brooming together. And at one o’clock in the morning, he said, “Mark, could we pray together?” And I just groaned. I didn’t want to pray, but this young man prayed. And I said, “Sure, because that’s the right answer.” And he came over to my side of the room. We had to leave the door open so that we could know if there was any craziness going on in the hall. And as Jeff prayed, high school boys came into our room so that after an hour, our room was full of prayer.

And that went on all week long. It spilled over into the girls’ dorm. It spilled over into our youth ministry. And I probably would say for the next three years in our youth ministry, it was very easy to point to prayer as a significant driving force for what God was doing everywhere.

Jamie Mitchell:

Teaching

Mark Gold:

Evangelism, loving, caring, social ministries, but prayer was pointed to as the thing that did it. And it didn’t have anything to do with me. It had everything to do with a young man called Jeff who called us to prayer.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark, I mentioned this to you before. I’m doing an interim pastorate right now. And like that, here is a church that’s been hurt, struggling, kind of lost wayward, and there’s a prayerlessness about it. And immediately I said, “We need a night of prayer.” And that’s going to happen in just a couple of days is our monthly night of prayer. And you could see the turn taking place. People dropping their walls down, beginning to love again, beginning to be concerned with each other. And it does change the whole complexion of a church. And you can’t necessarily say, “Well, this one thing did it.” But boy, I’ll tell you, Mark, that time of united concerted prayer where the pastor or the spiritual leader of the church is saying, “This is important and I’m going to guide you through that time,” can make a real impact, a lasting impact in a church, in a group’s life.

Mark, one last thing before we go quickly. What word do you have to the pastor listening today regarding getting your church to get praying? What would you say to him today?

Mark Gold:

Be like Jesus. Obey Jesus. Model like Jesus. Trust Jesus. If this is so important to Jesus, we have to pray. We cannot not pray. Jesus wouldn’t misdirect us. He wouldn’t misguide us. He wouldn’t tell us to waste our time. And Jesus not only commanded us to pray, he invited us to pray, to spend time with him. So that’s what I would tell pastors. Great speakers, great preparers, great leaders, great organizers, pastors, thank you. Teach us to pray.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. The pastor needs to be the chief prayer officer of the church, doesn’t he? I mean, they will look to him for many things, but if a pastor says to his church, “Listen, I need this. Our church needs this. We need to be at the forefront.” And Mark, it really is important that the pastor’s up front leading this thing, isn’t it?

Mark Gold:

Yes, sir.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. Mark, it has been a joy to reconnect with you, brother. We got to do this again. What a blessing you have been to me today and to those listening. This is not just a subject that people go running and listening to. I know there is a small percentage of people who will go running to a program on prayer, but I hope they do. And if they do, and they turn the tide in regarding prayer in their church, we could see a major move for the cause of Christ. Friends, that’s why we did this today. We need churches united and praying. We need pastors stepping up and become the chief prayer officer of your church and to pray as a church. Listen, a praying church will become a courageous church. And so let’s get praying. And as I say at the end of all my programs, live and lead with courage.

And you’re going to have to pray to become that courageous person. So thank you again. We’ll see you tomorrow here for another episode of Stand in the Gap Today.