Surviving and Thriving in Corporate Prayer - Part 3

This is part 8 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer” Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

Continuing the list we began in the previous post on the danger of merely surviving in corporate prayer we look today at the second two real risks that we run by not pressing into the discipline that Christ has designed the church to operate under. When we are content to merely survive in corporate prayer we will:

3.     Be found sleeping when Jesus returns without anything to say in our defence.

Hallelujah Jesus is coming back! But when he comes back he’s going to be looking for a church that’s busy at the tasks he’s charged us with; but will he return to find us busy doing the right things? Or will he find us just spinning our wheels? Will he find us sleeping?

Our intentions are good: We have all the right programs, we hire the right leaders, we do the right training, we plan awesome events, we have great music, pretty good preaching, good organisation – but in the end when Jesus comes to check up on us what do we have to show for all our work? This church has not experienced significant sustained growth in a long time. Numbers are not the be all and end all of church ministry – don’t get me wrong – but this church has felt that God has been calling us to grow but we have not been earnestly and corporately seeking the Lord in prayer the way we are supposed to - we’ve been sleeping on the job, and what excuse are we going to offer the Lord for our lack of commitment?

I was too busy to pray.

The time was inconvenient.

I didn’t like the person leading it.

The meeting was too early/too late and I was tired.

I really didn’t think it was that important. That’s the truth of the matter. You see it’s a simple reality that we go to great lengths to disprove and discredit as a society without much success: Whatever is important to you, you will almost miraculously sometimes, find time to do.

What’s so important in your life that you can’t commit to a regular prayer meeting with your fellow believers? Now take that answer and imagine Jesus is physically standing right in front of you and tell him that.

What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue? Now you know how Peter, James and John were feeling when Jesus caught them sleeping for a third time. There is no defence, there is no good excuse grounded in any sort of Biblical truth for a perpetual disregard of the importance of congregational prayer. Which brings us to point number four:

When we are content to merely survive, rather than thrive in corporate prayer we

4.     Deny Jesus by our inaction

Peter’s failure reached its climax several hours after the events in the garden when the rooster crowed the third time. But his downfall was secured in the garden when he couldn’t be bothered to wait, watch and pray for what was going on.

When we are content to just “get by” as a church, to just do the bare minimum I think we cease to be the church. I’m not saying we lose our salvation, or cease to be Christians but we stop functioning as the body of Christ. What we become is a large group of sinners saved by grace who have been shown a glimpse of what the church can be, but are instead content to sit back and just be Christians.

It’s like when you sign up for TV service. My family cut the cord a couple years ago and we don’t currently subscribe to any TV service, but the last time that we did it was with Sasktel MAX. I remember when we switched to them we signed up for the service and got the ultimate package for three months at a heavily discounted rate. For three months we were living large with all the speciality channels, all the movie channels, all the glorious high definition programming that we could possibly watch and then some. But after three months the promotion ended and our television package dropped down to basic MAX which wasn’t so glorious or amazing or life altering as the ultimate package. The ultimate experience was still available to us, but it came at a cost and Jo and I had to make the decision of whether or not the ultimate MAX experience was worth it, or whether instead we could we settle for and get by with an experience that was considerably more basic so that we could spend our money elsewhere.

Many of you having experienced Ultimate Christianity at some point in the past have decided that the cost of maintaining that experience – the full church experience I’ll call it – is too high. You know that you can settle for the basic Christian life and spend your time, money, energy, devotion and worship elsewhere. When we make that decision – to survive rather than thrive – we are saying to Jesus that I’m not interested in being part of your body. I’m interested in the basic service you provide me as saviour, but I’m going to leave all the extras on the table and walk away. We deny our call to be the body of Christ and in so doing deny Jesus himself.

So are you still happy with just surviving?

Is basic Christianity what you’re really interested in?

How many times has the rooster already crowed for us at The Bridge Church? Once? Twice? Are we close to hearing number three? Is that the type of church we want to be? I don’t think so. I don’t think it is. So wake up. Wipe the sleep from your eyes and join us in keeping watch in prayer.

I am going to be starting an early morning prayer meeting this fall for those of you who cannot make it out during the business day and who are willing to commit to something more regular than once a month for Acts 2. I can tell you right now that it will probably be on a Tuesday and that we will meet somewhere more central than the church. The time is still up in the air (I’ve not gotten a ton of feedback from people yet) but it will be early enough for most of you to join us for an hour and still make it to the office on time. Who is willing to join me at our proverbial Gethsemane and stay awake in prayer so that we can learn what it means to thrive?

In our next post we will move into the final section of this series with a discussion of some very practical considerations for making the corporate prayer meeting a better experience for everyone.