June
2002
Growing prayer meetings
'Enlarge
the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do
not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your
descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate
cities.' (Isaiah 54: 2-3)
It has finally happened! The Tuesday morning Prayer Meeting
has moved out of the Spring and up in to the Church and it
feels like what I imagine a plant must feel like when it has
been transplanted from a smaller to a larger pot. There’s
a new sense of space and we are having to work to get used
to it and to learn how to enjoy it.
Anyway, after 12 years(!), we finally reached the point when
the Tuesday morning meetings grew out of the Spring following
the 'Prayer Sunday' we held here on 12 May. This came after
quite a lengthy period of relative stability in terms of attendance
so it is very exciting to see an increase in the numbers at
this time and to be able to report that there has been a similar
experience at the Thursday evening Prayer Meetings here as
well.
Something we have noticed in the past is that at times of
growth in the life of the Church, we have experienced growth
in the Prayer Meetings and I think we all share a general
feeling of the need for increased prayer at this time.
At the last Pastors’ meeting, I had an impression of
a stone tablet being thrown on to the ground followed by a
further impression of a giant rope stretching across the country
(including Ireland) from West to East with teams at either
end in a tug of war situation. One of the teams was black
and the other was white and it was not clear which side was
going to win. I think the tablet represented the Law/Word
of God and the issue is whether this will flourish in our
nation or be lost to our own and succeeding generations. The
white team seemed to me to symbolise God and His Kingdom coming
and the encouraging thing was the sense that there is still
everything to play for.
That said, now is a time to push harder in the prayer and
other realms with which we are involved as a Church. It was
John Wesley who said that 'God has bound himself to do nothing
save in answer to prayer', but he also rode 250,000 miles
on horseback to preach the gospel to our nation, and the tide
turned in his generation as a result of his and other people’s
hard work at the time. I have no doubt that we can be involved
in a similar turning of the tide in our own generation but
I am also under no illusion that it will take the same sort
of combination of activity (Alpha, church-planting, missions,
etc) with a concerted effort of prayer and worship by us all
if we are to prevail. I know it can be done, and I see the
increasing levels of prayer here and elsewhere as evidence
that God is 'on the move' again.
Jeremy Jennings
This article is an edited version of one first published in
Focus, June 2002. Reproduced here with permission.
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