Prayer Meeting

This past weekend Paul and I along with our daughter, Kristina, were blessed to be able to attend the 1st Annual Delaware Valley Prayer Gathering held at the Philadelphia Convention Center.  The main speaker was Jim Cymbala, author of Fresh Wind Fresh Fire and senior pastor at Brooklyn Tabernacle.  The Lord has grown this church from a broken down (literally - one pew fell to the ground as a group sat on it!), shabby building with about 18 members in downtown Brooklyn to what it is today - a church that not only serves thousands of people, but one that serves some of the most downtrodden and desperate.  Pastor Cymbala outlines this transformation in his book and rightly gives all the credit to the Lord.  Cymbala's part?  Faith and prayer.  Trust.  Obedience.  

Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope. 

                                                                                                Psalm 119:49

This is the scripture Jim Cymbala's talk was based on this past weekend.  We can be assured that God will keep all of His promises.  All.  And Cymbala also spoke of how God does almost nothing unless He speaks about it first.  Why?  To secure glory for Himself lest someone think it was a coincidence.  And to see our faith - He loves us to have faith.  It pleases Him.

Pastor Cymbala did not spend a lot of time speaking.  Part of me wished he did as I really enjoyed his book and wanted to hear more from him.  But he reminded us how important prayer really is - that's right, it IS important.  It connects us with our Father.  It grows our faith.  It empowers us.  When we pray, we must believe.  Believe God is holy and righteous.  Believe He answers our prayers.  Believe in His promises.  And so we quickly went from listening to Cymbala to praying.  It was incredible to be praying with thousands of other Christians.  We prayed for many things but I think the thing that gave me goosebumps was when we prayed for all the churches that were represented there that night.  We prayed that each one would be filled with the Holy Spirit, blessed and used by God to further His Kingdom.  How awesome is that?!?  And the churches represented there will continue to be prayed for by Pastor Cymbala's church.  

If you haven't had the opportunity to read Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, I would highly recommend it.  You can also listen to one of Cymbala's talks from Youtube:

  

The bottom line?  Prayer is so important - not just personal prayer, but corporate prayer.  Our churches don't have enough corporate prayer.  We get together on Sunday mornings, say a few prayers, and think we are a praying bunch.  No, we aren't.  We should be gathering, in great numbers, each week, to petition and praise our heavenly Father.  Not because we "should" but because we love Him and want to spend time with Him.  Are you ready?  Are you committed?  Then what's stopping you?