Prayer and the Kingdom

Yesterday at the CRC orientation, the new head of the Home Missions department, Moses Chung, spoke on the priority of prayer.  He shared that he had spent the past three years at a large church in South Korea.  This church had over 30,000 people attend each week.  The key to the church was not its size, but its dedication to prayer.  They have three early morning prayer services each day (4:30, 5:15, 6:00), a mid-morning prayer meeting for the older ladies (10:00) who consider their main ministry that of prayer, and an evening service (9:00 PM) for those who cannot make it in the morning.  Wow!  A core group of 3,000 to 4,000 pray each day for the ministry of the church and for revival in their nation and the world.  The result, many new converts and a spirit of revival that is lacking in most other South Korean churches.

What struck me was this prayer ministry flows from the top down.  The senior pastor of this church prays at the 6:00 AM service (he has his own prayer space at the service), and then goes to his office to pray for the next two to three hours.  Once a week of so, he prays until noon.  Again, wow!  When Moses went to this church, he wanted to know what the pastor did for all that time.  He could not believe his dedication to prayer.  What did the pastor say?

“Do not pray hard, but pray as if your life depends upon it.”  Many of us have tried to be more faithful to prayer.  We have mustered up our will power, and worked hard to be more faithful in prayer.  The results are often mixed even in the short-term.  The real question is how many of us really believe that our life depends upon being in communication with God?  How many of us realize that without God’s help we can do nothing of lasting value?  I confess that I might intellectually know it, but I sure forget it often!  I have developed a life of prayer and time with God that might span forty-five minutes to an hour a day, but five hours! 

As a church, I have asked if 25 people will join me in praying for the ministry of Grace.  I would be thrilled if we could get 15 minutes a day per person.  I am sure such prayer would make an eternal difference in our community and around the world.  One of the reasons we as a church have grown so much by conversion and through bringing the unchurched to Grace is because of our bi-annual weeks of prayer and fasting.  Without these, we would have seen no change!  In fact, one of our five new ministry foci for the next five years is developing our prayer ministry.  Please join me in praying that Grace will be a life-changing source of God’s redeeming grace through the gospel.  Pray for conversions, for the unchurched to come to Grace, and for mission-centered believers to join us in the task of taking the gospel to Central Maine and the world.  

Yesterday’s challenge confirmed to me that we will do nothing of lasting value without developing this ministry.  My call as the leader of our church is to lead in prayer.  Please pray for me that I will learn “to pray as if my life depends upon it.”