Prayer for the Church

O Church of my heart, how long will you shut the door to what cannot be seen?  How long will you listen to the many voices instead of the one Voice?  How long will you stand at the crossroads and not look for the ancient path?  How long will you fear the risk that goes with faith in what is yet to be revealed?  How long will it be before signs and wonders once again appear midst your people?  How long will you wait for that which is yours?  O Church, when will you call out with a hunger in your soul for the gift of God's Spirit?

 

How long, O Lord, before there is a fresh anointing of Your Holy Spirit upon Your church?  How long will You hold back Your refining fire?  How long will it be before holy wind comes and drives the church out into the world?  How long will it be before the ordinary days of the church become filled with the extraordinary?  How long will it be until miracles become commonplace?  How long will it be before men and women who desire nothing but You come and stand as leaders, preachers, and prophets among us?  O Lord, how long?  How long will You tarry?

 

Come quickly, Holy Spirit.  Your church needs Your power.  Your church has lost its way.  Show it the ancient ways where good lies and where there is rest for the soul.  Come now, Holy Spirit.  Your church needs to know Your Holy Presence.  May Your shekinah glory be visited upon it once more.  May Your church once again become a spring of love for the unloved, a river of compassion for the suffering, and a deep ocean of passion for the lost.  Come, Holy Spirit, not later but now.  Your church needs You more than its silver and gold.  Come now, come quickly, Holy Spirit.  Your church has become powerless and needs Your power to be poured out once again upon it.  

Our Place is Important

It is interesting that the Biblical story is always told in the context of places.  Abraham's story began in a land known as Ur.  Moses grew up in Egypt.  Isaiah was a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Ezekiel was a prophet who lived by the River Chebar.  Jesus walked the roads of Galilee.  John Wesley birthed Methodism out of England.  E. Stanley Jones is known for his missionary work in India. Deitrich Bonhoeffer served Christ in Germany.  Jesus became flesh among us in a little town of Bethlehem, but His work and presence is known in every corner of this round world.   

To drive across the countryside or across the county is to see one steeple after another on streets and roads that are as different as mountains are from the coastline.  Wherever there are people, there are those who are committed to following Jesus and being about His work in the places where He has put them.  There is no place where Christ cannot be served and His Kingdom advanced by the gifts offered to Him.  Many of the great revival movements began with a few people whose hearts burned so for God to work in their midst that they would not quit praying until He acted.  Many acts of kindness are not offered by some organized group, but by a single individual. 

The place where God put us is important in His story.  We may be the one in the particular place where we are upon whom He is depending.  A recent read put it this way, "Remember: you are your brother's keeper; you are your sister's keeper.  You're a watchman.  And where God has placed you, God has placed you on purpose."  ("Healing Prayer" by Chotka and Dunnam).

Sleeping or Awake

As we move deeper into Holy Week, we find that there are so many Biblical passages devoted to these final days of Jesus here on the earth.  Beginning with Palm Sunday, we move toward Good Friday and beyond to the empty tomb.  There are so many events sandwiched between those two Sundays that we are overwhelmed with possibilities for reading and reflection.  Tomorrow which is known as Maundy Thursday is the day the church remembers the final meal Jesus shared with His disciples, but it is also a day filled with many private and public moments.    

One moment often overlooked in the week's story is the moment of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It was where Judas brought the arresting authorities, but it is also a place of intense prayer for Jesus.  After instructing all the disciples to stay together to pray, He took with Him Peter, James, and John as He went deeper into the Garden, telling them, "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me." (Matthew 26:38). They went to sleep.  Not once did they go to sleep, but three times.  Jesus was praying and agonizing over what was to come and those whom He called to be with Him went to sleep.  He needed them and they went to sleep.  

It is a picture which cuts to the core of our own heart as we ask ourselves about the number of times we were needed by Jesus and went to sleep, or let ourselves become occupied with some personal pursuit which took our attention away from His need for us to be involved with Him in what He was doing.  It is not hard to remember our own moments of waking up while praying, our moments of disappointing Him, or finding something else to instead of doing what we knew Jesus was calling us to do.  Jesus obviously seeks our presence and our help, or He would not have said, "Follow Me."

Thoughts About Prayer

In the past few months I have blessed by the prayers of so many.  I cannot count the individuals, neither can I count the groups of people praying in my behalf.  In many cases I was an unknown person in need, but still they prayed.  It has been a season of being amazed and humbled by those prayers which have been a source of such encouragement and blessing.  Back at the end of February, I was praying and thanking God for all those praying people and asking God to bless them when it came to me that I should ask God for people for whom I could pray.  It was a prayer He answered.  

While I had some people on a personal prayer list which I keep in the back of my journal, I noticed it was growing.  Since that prayer over a month ago, seventeen people have been added to the page which holds that list I view daily.  Some are members of the fellowship of cancer victims, some are struggling with other physical issues, one young man is being deployed to the Middle East, a former choral director asked me to pray for two of her friends in Virginia, and a few are new people not known until a few days ago.  Many of them are like me in that they are in the midst of what seems to be impossible situations.   

Prayer is not something I understand.  Some of our prayers seem as if they are spoken directly to the throne room of God and others seem to bounce back upon us from the roof above our heads.  While prayer remains mostly mystery, I am convinced that God uses our prayers for good.  It may not be the good which we envision, but still, they are used for good.  I also believe no prayer is wasted, or ignored, or forgotten. A friend of mine has suggested that all our prayers which seem unanswered find their way to a great heavenly storeroom where they are stored until it is time for God to use them for His purposes and the good of those who love Him.  

Our Spiritual Struggle

The Christian life is a spiritual struggle.  It is not about learning the The Ten Commandments and doing them.  Nor is it about modeling our life after the life of Jesus.  It is a struggle against the power of evil.  Anyone who thinks differently is going to fall by the wayside.  Anyone who thinks it is about the strength of personal will, or determination and perseverance will end up giving up.  The Apostle Paul,  a veteran of the road of faith in Christ, understood something many modern day believers fail to take seriously,  "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His power. Put on the  whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil...for our struggle is...against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:10-12).   

From the very first, the gospel writer, Mark, portrays Jesus as One who battled against the power of evil.  From the moment Jesus stepped out of the baptismal waters, He fought against Satan.  "He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan."  (Mark 1:13).  In the synagogue of Capernaum, He cast out an unclean spirit who recognized in the moment of confrontation that evil was no match for the power of Jesus. (Mark 1:21-26).  Mark records other moments in which Jesus did battle with Satan by casting out demons.  (Mark 1:27, 34, 39, 3:11, 20-28).  It is foolish and unwise for any modern day believer to think differently about the Christian life.  

Even as Satan contested every foot of Jesus' journey to the cross, so will he do in our own journey.  We cannot live the Christian life in our own strength.  We must not forget those words of the Apostle Paul that we often quote so glibly, "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13)  Neither should we forget the antithesis of those words which is "I cannot do anything in my own strength."  We walk the journey of the Christian faith depending on the power of Christ, or we will stumble and fall until we are finally unable to rise once more.  

Sabbath Rest

When God decided to take a rest on that seventh day, I wonder if He considered the theological debate He was putting on the table.  Surely, by the time His fiery finger etched the words of the fourth commandment on the that tablet of stones up on Mt. Sinai, He was contemplating the confusion which organized religion would create.  Obviously, religious people were heavily into the business of manipulating the meaning of Sabbath rest during the days of Jesus.  The gospel of Mark gives evidence of this as he reports the criticism of the Pharisees when they saw the hungry disciples of Jesus plucking grain on the Sabbath. "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" they asked Jesus.(Mark 2:24).  

As one who grew up in the Blue Law era of the South, I remember those days when the only thing which dared move on Sunday were the leaves on trees.  The Sabbath was for going to church.  It was not for working, or going to stores since they were all closed, or doing anything which might be fun.  My father who was an avid fishermen, but not really a church goer in those days often said no one should fish on Sunday because the fish needed a day of rest. It was certainly a day when the Sabbath was viewed differently than the "anything-thing-goes-on-Sunday" era in which we live.  

The old boundaries of Sabbath rest are now stretched far beyond the boundaries of what used to be.  It is also true that the concept of Sabbath rest means many different things to people.  If we can lay aside all the do's and don't of Sabbath keeping, we might see that at its core it is God's way of calling us to live with some balance in our life between work and rest as well as a way of helping us to understand that it is good to set aside a day in which we look to Him and not just to ourselves for our daily sustenance.   

Patches and Wine Skins

The gospel writer, Mark, presents interesting images in his remembrances of Jesus being confronted by some Pharisees.  On image is about a patch being sewed on old clothes and the other points out the futility of putting new wine in old worn wine skins.  (Mark 2:21-22)  The first one brings to mind a personal remembrance of my mother ironing square denim patches on blue jeans with worn out knees.  Though I have no experience with wine and wine skins, it is an image which even a teetotaler like myself can understand.  New things that speak of life will not fit in old worn out structures.  

It has always seemed that one of the most daunting tasks facing the church is the work of creative thinking, the kind of thinking which can be characterized as outside the box.  When the church starts planning and thinking about the future, it becomes so easy to create new names for new programs that are more like what-we-have-always done than something so new it will not fit into the old structures for ministry. It is hard for the church planners within us to turn loose of what seems to be working.   Our unwillingness to turn loose of what is past really can be a hindrance for the church as it seeks to embrace the not yet seen of tomorrow.  

For the church to turn loose can also be spoken of in terms of letting the Holy Spirit be more of a guiding factor in the equation of going forward.  I have wondered often what would happen if we could close the book on every program we have set in place and prayerfully and expectantly wait on the Spirit to lead us forward.  The bottom line question which continues to be raised is one of wondering what the church's ministry would look like if we were intent on putting new wine in new wine skins instead of those worn out from yesterday.