Meditations by the Lake

This weekend I got away for three days to northern Michigan. Like the disciples I needed to come apart and rest awhile. I'd been working so many long hours I had started to come down sick. The sun, breezes, and lake view renewed my physical strength and provided a quiet sanctuary where I could hear God speak. The message was simple, yet deeply profound: “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.” James 5:16

This last week I became deeply convicted that God will do so much more in my church if our members will unite together in earnest, intense prayer for the lost. I was challenged by a thought shared in a book I am currently reading, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire. Pastor Cymbala's church was small and dying. One day he told the Lord he would rather die than merely tread water throughout his career in the ministry ... always preaching about the power of the Word and the Spirit, but never seeing the results. He hungered for God to break through in the lives of his members and in his ministry. Ironically, it was while on a boat out on a lake while talking to God about this that the answer came: “Lead my people to pray and call upon my name.” He returned to his church and told them, “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, because that will be the measure by which God blesses us.”

Years before Charles Spurgeon said something similar: 

“The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.”

This last week I got a glimpse of the power of a praying church. Each week I meet with 13 church members. It is my “little flock” that I am teaching and mentoring this year to become soul-winners. We have a prayer journal in which we have written the names of individuals we want to reach for Christ this year. Every week when we meet we kneel in a circle around this journal and plead with God to work in their hearts and to use us in some tangible way to reach them. This week God answered several of our prayers. My friend Melinda and I heard our Bible study contact Roswitha ask us after a study on the attempted change of the Sabbath, “Where can we as Protestants go to worship with a group on the Sabbath?” She was so excited when we told her we were Sabbath keepers and worshipped with others at the Seventh-day Adventist church. She can't wait to begin attending church with us. The non-SDA husband of another group member took a big step forward this week when he volunteered on his own to come to church to help our sound guys. Huge step! Another girl written in our book requested baptism. 

Did you ever think that the early Christian church was not launched during a preaching service but during a prayer meeting? What does it say about our churches today when prayer meeting is almost extinct? Someone once said that the popularity of a church or an evangelist can be seen by how many come to hear, but the popularity of Jesus can be gauged by how many come to prayer meeting. 

This weekend I heard God speak to me beside the lake. While I may not be able to effect change in my entire church, I can in the two little flocks He has given me -- my choir and my discipleship small group. I am going to make these meeting places for intense prayer and I know God will begin to work miracles in many lives because the earnest prayer of a righteous person ALWAYS avails much!