January 10, 2010

The Church That Prays Together
Matthew 21:12-13

“O God, you are my God.” I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you, my whole body longs for you, in this parched and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory. Your unfailing love is better to me than life itself; how I praise you! I will honor you as long as I live lifting up my hands to you in prayer . You satisfy more than the richest of foods. I will praise you with songs of joy.” Psalm 63:1-3

In 1984 my family was stunned, as we watched our father’s health decline rapidly, after he was diagnosed with ALS – commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It is a devastating disease. Scientists have devoted years, perhaps a whole lifetime in a lab, doing research in their quest to find a cure for ALS. Careful scientific research will be the powerful key to a cure. A scientific breakthrough is what they work for and dream of.

My husband, Elvin’s son, Scott is quite an athlete. Over this Christmas season, I observed him spending several hours a day working out and honing his cycling skills, which he does whether he is at home or away on vacation He is in search of a season or an event that will catapult him way beyond his own cycling record and land him at least in close proximity to Lance Armstrong. Rigorous and consistent training is the powerful key. He hopes to achieve his own personal athletic breakthrough.

Churches week after week, and Sunday after Sunday are looking for their own breakthrough in ministry. It is not a scientific breakthrough, nor an athletic breakthrough. Churches everywhere are looking for some powerful breakthrough in the church, some key to success. They may attempt all sorts of initiatives, choose innovative measures hoping to increase participant satisfaction which will boost attendance and financial contributions, all in the hopes there will be a powerful ministry breakthrough. The big question is: “What is the key? How will congregational breakthrough happen? Will it come about through some specialist making a profound scientific discovery or from an outstanding achievement that follows a rigorous program of training?”

The Brethren in Christ Church has, for a number of years, encouraged local congregations to set aside the first week of January as a week of prayer and fasting, to place greater emphasis on the power of prayer in our church and in our personal lives as we begin the new year.

A church today can be known for many things: outstanding preaching, great music, friendliness, and a high level of volunteer commitment among its members, and, I might add, all important and impressive characteristics for a church. What, on the other hand, is our Lord most concerned about? What does He want His church to be known for? What does He want the Grantham Church to be known for? This is His church. If he were here in person, we could ask him, “Lord, what characteristics are you most concerned about?”
During Jesus’ ministry on earth, he does respond to that question out of an incident which is no doubt familiar to many of you. Some Bible scholars believe there may have been two separate incidents, but this particular event is recorded in all four of the Gospels. The setting is the Temple court of the Gentiles. It is a crowded, busy place. Pilgrims are there from all over the world. Matthew 21:12 and 13 from The Message reads, “Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. It is written, he said to them, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.”

Jesus is visibly upset at those in the temple courtyard who are exploiting worshippers for profit. As one writer concludes, “While it shows Jesus’ anger directed against traders and hucksters, it is particularly directed against those religious leaders who make dishonest profit from their fellowmen in the name of religion. Jesus is disturbed because it is impossible for common everyday people to be able to worship. Jesus reminds these religious leaders that centuries before, Isaiah describes God’s House this way ? it is to be “a house of prayer for all people.”

Can you imagine sincere searching people who likely came long distances with a heartfelt desire to worship, to officer sacrifice, and to pray to be made right with God, only to find, in seeking God’s presence, they were being shut out by the very people in God’s house who should accept them and welcome them.

Jesus indignantly tells the religious leaders, “Get your business out of here. My house shall be called a house of prayer.” That’s what it is to be known for. Instead you have (as Peterson says in The Message) made it a hangout for thieves.” Instead of the security of a place to pray, you have stolen from even the simplest of worshippers.

Is it possible to steal from worshippers today? Could we become so distracted focusing on peripheral things of one sort or another, when we come to God’s house, that in the end, other sincere seeking individuals, including ourselves, cannot find God, cannot worship God in the very atmosphere which was created for that purpose? Jesus said, “My house is to be known as a house of prayer.”

Each of us has come to believe that certain elements should be present to have a satisfying church experience or as an integral part of a worship service. Isn’t it interesting that the scripture doesn’t say my house shall be a house of teaching or a house of preaching, or my house shall be a house of music (as good as all that might be). If our whole service or if our ministry programs are done well but somebody who comes to our church doesn’t touch God, who are we kidding! My house shall be a house of prayer.

After Jesus went back to heaven, the infant church in Jerusalem began along the very same line. It was not born while the disciples were singing or teaching. It was born while people were praying. All those good things were an outgrowth of a praying church. Praying comes first!

All throughout the book of Acts we see illustrations when virtually every meeting the early Christians held was bathed in prayer. In Acts 6:4 the appointed leaders understood that their priority was to give attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.

What would it look like to be known as a house of prayer, as a praying church, where prayer is not an add-on to a busy weekly church schedule, or just a formal beginning of a program, but the very center of the community’s life together. What would be the result? Would we say that kind of church must be fanatic?

About five years ago, I heard about a church that places great emphasis on prayer and I was anxious to visit it. Four of us set out to find this church in the middle of Brooklyn, N.Y. known as a praying church. The story of this church really began in 1971 when Jim Cymbala became the pastor of a struggling group of 20 people. There was hardly enough money coming in to pay the mortgage. His wife started a choir with nine members in it. Jim was so discouraged he was about to quit, when through a series of circumstances, God told him that if he and his wife would lead people to pray and call upon His name, he would never lack something fresh to preach, and God would supply all their financial needs. He told his congregation, “From this day on, the prayer meeting will be the barometer of our church. What happens on Tuesday night will be the gauge by which we will judge success or failure. That will be the measure by which God blesses us. Prayer is the engine that will drive our church.” He said, “If we call upon the Lord, he has promised in his Word to answer.” The first Tuesday, 15-18 people showed up. Jim said, “I felt a new sense of unity and love.”

In the weeks that followed, answers to prayer became noticeable. New people gradually joined. Unsaved relatives and total strangers began to show up. Jim Cymbala says that from those early days as people drew near to the Lord, they began to talk about it on their jobs, in their apartment buildings, at family gatherings. Soon they were bringing new people. From that day to the present, more than three decades later, there has never been a season of decline in the Brooklyn Tabernacle.

Today the Brooklyn Tabernacle ministers to 10,000 people every week with a choir of 240 that ministers in song in N.Y.C. and all around the world. It’s not about numbers. Cymbala credits their total ministry effectiveness to their emphasis on prayer and total reliance on God.

Our visit was on a Tuesday night for their prayer meeting. We arrived about an hour before the service started. As we entered the large auditorium the lights were dimmed, and I would guess there were already about 200 people seated in hushed silence all over the room, numbers of them sitting quietly and praying individually, waiting for the prayer service to begin. No doubt many had come directly from work, foregoing their evening meal. One young woman, who escorted us to our seats, enthusiastically shared that she belongs to one of many Prayer Bands whose major responsibility is to pray at a designated time during the week.

Today what I remember most about that service was a powerful prayer opportunity everyone present was invited to share in during the service. We were each given an index card and asked to write on it a prayer need – any kind of concern. No need to sign your name; just write down anonymously a request, a concern, a heart-wish that you would like prayer for from the church family. (You might want to begin to think about that this morning because I am going to ask you to do that on the little index card at the end of this service). Then they were collected and re-distributed so that everyone in the church was praying for someone else personally and individually within their body of believers. Over the years, this church has witnessed untold hundreds of lives being changed through the power of corporate, united prayer.

Cymbala says, “No matter the society or culture, the city or town, God has never lacked the power to work through available people to glorify his name. When we sincerely turn to God, we will find His church always moves forward, not backward.”

This Brooklyn church has undoubtedly become a powerhouse of effective prayer. The pastor says, “Their breakthrough in that city has come about all because of prayer.”

The message from all this that comes through to me is that before we, or any church, can experience a significant breakthrough, we must first be convinced that prayer is the key. We must eagerly long for our church to be a house of prayer. Do we sense the importance of being a praying church? Do we really have that kind of desire, to be known as people who pray?

The word “desire” means to crave, to long for, to ask earnestly for. It is an inward impulse or motivation. Let’s say you are on a long trip. You haven’t eaten all day and you’re getting very hungry as you are driving along the road. Your desire for food and your ability to visualize a server carrying out steaming bowls of chili or a big pepperoni pizza will motivate you to turn off the road right into your favorite restaurant. Desire motivates. It causes us to seek after something. Desire precedes and influences our choices.

Physically, when a person is never hungry or has no appetite, or cannot eat and appears emaciated, we conclude they must be seriously ill. I observed someone like that in the doctor’s office this past Wednesday. Hunger is a sign of health.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” ”If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” Are you hungry and thirsty for more of God?

Spiritual hunger is a sign of spiritual health. Over the past number of months, I sense a heightening of spiritual hunger and desire for God here in our church. It has been so encouraging to hear how many of you are regularly using the Prayer Connection webpage.

E.M Bounds, the 19th century devotional writer, says, “Desire is an absolute essential of prayer. The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer.” I have found in my own life when I least want to pray, I ask God to rekindle my desire. Pray for desire. Pray for hunger.

As our desire increases we will begin to exercise our faith and come to rely upon God, not upon ourselves and our own expertise, as professional as that might be. As our core values state, we confess our dependence on God for everything as individuals and as a congregation as we seek to deepen our intimacy with him by living prayerfully as a community of faith in this world. We will become a house of prayer. I would encourage all of you to again pull out Focusing Our Faith, and read the wonderful chapter, “Relying on God” written by our own Jay McDermond.

We must depend on God even in this matter of praying. None of us knows how to pray as we should, but the Spirit hears our groaning as we bring our desires to God; he is praying for us, with us, and in us.

In a house of prayer, the total atmosphere will become one of praise and worship to God, of confession when we confront our weaknesses, of petition, of supplication and intercession. We will become hungry to rely upon God and as we do, we will see powerful results, powerful breakthroughs. “Call unto me, and I will answer. I will show you great and might things, more than you can imagine,” says Jeremiah the prophet. We will rejoice regularly over answers to prayer.

This past Friday as I visited Jerry Hess at rehab, he wanted me to thank all of you for praying for him. We are reminded again of a powerful answer to prayer we have witnessed in this congregation with his recovery over the past month, especially when he was able to be at Angie’s wedding. His progress and his presence at her wedding has been a miracle of God’s grace and answered prayer.

We have earnestly prayed for the Pastoral Search Committee. They’ve completed their work, but we must remember this is just the beginning. In the transition, we must totally depend upon God. We need to begin now to pray for Pastor Reitz as he prepares to join us. A prayerful church led by the spirit is a powerful and fruitful church. Don’t we long for our church to be fruitful? That’s the breakthrough we long for, not scientific, not academic, not athletic, but a spiritual breakthrough.

Some of you may remember this little account I told a few years ago about a grapevine in England that is 1,000 years old. This grapevine has one root that is at least two feet thick and some of the branches are 200 feet long. Despite its age, this particular vine amazingly produces several tons of grapes each year. Although some of the branches are 200 feet from the main stem, they still bear the sweet delicious fruit, all because they are connected to the vine. Life flows from the single root and throughout the vine brings nourishment and strength to each of the branches.

Jesus said in John 15, “I am the true vine. No branch can bear fruit unless it stays connected to the vine. You cannot bear fruit unless you stay connected to me. If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you can pray and ask whatever you want, and it will be supplied.” Prayer is the way we stay connected to the vine. It is the secret to fruitfulness.

Don’t we all desire for our church to be more fruitful? Do you desire your spiritual life to be more fruitful? Pray that God will increase your hunger and thirst for him. Pray that a desire for God will increase among all of us, that we will live up to the reputation of being a house of prayer.

I mentioned earlier about a little prayer exercise at the Brooklyn Church. I would like us to do this in these last few minutes together today. Take the index card in your bulletin and write a prayer request on that card. It could be, “I wish I had a greater desire for God….or I want to be free of discouragement…..or my life is a mess……or I don’t feel anything and I wish I did….or I am fearful.” After you write your concern, we will collect them and redistribute so that everyone will receive an anonymous request from someone else to pray for in the days ahead.