OUR PRAYERLESS CHURCHES (2)
by John David.
Without the spirit of prayer the pulpit may have the right jargon, fervency, and even ebullient oratory but its clichés and hackneyed phrases become worn. Above all the messages lack the energy and presence of Christ.
Even amid maximum human output, it is to no avail, because without the spirit of prayer God the Father cannot draw men to his Son as presumptuous pulpiteers and administrators think sermons, church evangelism and private prayer bulletins will be enough to feed sheep, reach the lost, and build the kingdom. None of the three goals will be achieved without reinstituting the old fashioned free-prayer mid-week meeting thereby allowing the spirit of prayer to return.
Some narcissistic ministers of the pulpit love the sound of their own voice several times on Sunday. They also feel their vocal cords must predominate, instead of the voices of the saints in prayer, during the mid-week meeting, once set aside for the brethren. This they do, at every possible opportunity, ensuring there is no such room for free prayer of the brethren, even though they resist the very fire they are trying to simulate.
As a side effect of the 19th C. divisive age that still pervades today, many are scared of any freedom that might allow a rebel to exploit free prayer for his own purposes. Yet many good ministers in the 20th C became adept in controlling any such eccentric without either havoc or abandoning the free prayer meeting.
Yet the euphemism of ‘security’ is often used to cover the common fear that administrators have should they permit such a regular prayer meeting. Though this is certainly true in the USA, it has also spread to the other side of the Atlantic.
Beware that today’s lock down on free prayer in the tabernacle does not prevent the incense of saints’ joint prayers from ascending to the gates of heaven.
So phobic have many overseers become that those who would meet together for spoken prayer participation in a home will rarely gain the required official permission. In the unlikely event that is allowed an administrator is delegated to govern such a meeting, which usually means it is dead before it starts. In other words once spoken prayer is controlled, timed, or conducted with selective participants it is not free but stilted, stale, and stymies free prayer.
One thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. Viz: God has limited endowing the spirit of prayer to a church that has a public prayer assembly in its regular schedule. This assembly is unwilling to let busyness or the clock shut the curtain on the window of prayer. Other tabernacles merely go through the motions, to show they are prayerful, but are in reality resist the spirit of fire that will grow an assembly and make men holy.
Did this downgrade start with the new prayer methodology of 19th C. evangelists Moody and Torrey, who discovered the secret of prayer methodology? Their popularity elevated them to the literati as experts on prayer while their writings simultaneously discounted the importance of saint’s oral participation in any midweek prayer meeting. Instead the latter evangelist and teacher promoted a Bible Study in lieu of the traditional prayer meeting. This resulted in the saints’ audible prayer meetings being privatized to the home in the ensuing decades.
1. Two are better than one. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
2. A threefold cord shall not be quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12
3. “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father.”‘Matthew 18:19
4. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”. Matthew 18:20
Article by John David.
Quoted Scripture from King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain)
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3 & 4.
