Wednesday, June 27, 2001
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Wednesday, June 27, 2001 |
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Forget the frills ... prayer meeting will serve a better purpose By REV JOHN HATCHER Remember Jesus making the judgment that the religious folks in Jerusalem had made God's House "a place of business" (John 2:16) rather than a House of Prayer? His observation was made in lights of massive commerce taking place within the temple compound - currency exchanges, selling and buying of sacrificial animals. Many people were turning a nice little profit within the House of God. Now, bear with me for a little Greek language study. If you trace that word "business" found in John 2:16 to its Greek origin, you'll discover the Greek word transliterated into English, emporion. That Greek word emporion is almost identical with our English word, emporium, which is defined as "a large store with a large variety of things to sell." Our shopping malls across the land feature food courts or food emporiums. You can buy and eat Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Middle-Eastern, and American fast foods. Take your pick. Buy, eat up, and get out. Jesus was not necessarily condemning the sacrificial system, in which his earthly parents participated by offering two doves after the days of Mary's purification. But he was condemning the evolutionary reality that the Temple had become a place of one-stop shopping. By providing for all the religious supplies, the focus had been taken off prayer. Perhaps, the bane of the contemporary church is that we feel we must provide more and more to satisfy the diversity of wants and needs of our people while all the time overlooking the one necessary thing: prayer. You must agree with me that our church models are models of religious emporiums: a little something for everyone, yet little of prayer for anyone. I have good news for all churches, especially the smaller churches. You don't have to have a jogging track to be on track with the purposes of God. You don't have to have a 12-step program to be in step with the heart of God. You don't have to have marriage and parenting classes for the hearts of the fathers to be turned back to their children. But you do have to have a prayer meeting. That's what Pastor Jim Cymbala and his wife Carol of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church discovered several years ago. In spite of the blessings of God and their worldwide reputation, they consistently insist that their most important service throughout the entire week is their Tuesday night prayer meeting. That's where the action is. That's where they see deliverance - deliverance from sinful lifestyles and habits. That's where they pray and love people from lostness to salvation. Every Christian church has that potential. But we must move our prayer meeting from being Bible Studies with a prayer tagged on. I remember so well in my small church in which I grew up, the Wednesday night prayer meeting was a big yawn. We called out people for whom to pray. We had a prayer. Then, we had a Bible Study. It's as if we didn't know how to linger in pray and pray for an hour. I remember my Aunt Willie, half of inside of her head removed because of cancer, and yet we never laid hands on her, we never travailed in prayer over her, it seemed we never touched heaven on her behalf. Yet the Word of God says that we must get serious with this thing of prayer. It is the one thing that God honors, for sure. If prayer is a sure thing, why are we not making it priority in our church week? Why are we doomed to set up religious emporiums and only live to see a bigger and better emporium set up by someone else?
The Rev. Dr. John Hatcher is pastor of River's Edge Community Church in Fayetteville. |
