On Tuesday evening, Aug. 20th we’re going to host a CONCERT of PRAYER. We’ll close out the summer and launch into the Fall by coming together for an evening of Prayer and Worship in Fitzpatrick Ballroom. I am convinced that the way forward is for us to go backward first: back to prayer! It won’t be easy to grow a culture of Gospel-propelled, Spirit-directed, prayer-energized ministry at COR, but we’re going to try! The key to a new movement of the Spirit of God is not in some new technique, but in the ‘ancient path’ of earnest prayer and yearning for God. This is what the Spirit of God is doing across our land – not a new thing, but the old thing that Christians have always done. Pray.
We’ll have a loose and simple plan for the evening but we’re going to be flexible and allow the Spirit to carry us along in His plan. We’re going to be sailboats, not motorboats! We’ll have the worship team to lead us in song, the Bible in our hands to fill our hearts and prayers on our lips to pour out to God. That’s all we’ll need except maybe at times to sit uncomfortably in silence and “wait on the Lord”.
I have been reading, meeting with other pastors and listening for what God seems to be doing, and across our land churches are rediscovering the priority of the Prayer meeting. Prayer must become our first resolve rather than our last resort. It’s not the only thing we do, but prayer must become again the first thing we do.
I know that it is downright awkward at times to set aside our smart phones and our plans and our control (that’s the point!) and come before the Lord in prayer and worship. I know, and that’s okay. The great theologian, Karl Barth is famously quoted as saying, “I always feel like a newly-renrolled student in Christ’s school of prayer.” So come as you are, we will each have our own reasons for being there. (You can come and never open your mouth!) But I do want to encourage you to come that evening – and not just hear about how amazing it was afterwards and have to say, “Oh, if only I had been there!”