My heart is overjoyed!

This Sunday we are starting a month prayer meeting at the Church, a time to come together on Sunday evening to meet with our brothers and sisters in Christ and bring our supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving before our God who cares for us. This regular meeting has been a long-standing prayer and desire of mine for the Church, and I am confident that this is the beginning of a new day for our congregation.

Where the church as been easily divided and unity of being in one accord is threatened, where we have lost sight of our great commission, where we have been weak and ineffective – it is because we have neglected this essential means of grace. Spending time together, praying boldly, asking humbly, expressing faithfully our desire for God’s glory in and through His Church, though not a quick fix, will strengthen the Church and enable us to weather the coming storms.

As we embark on this ministry of prayer, I thought I’d share with you a brief portion of an address given by Charles Spurgeon at one of his prayer meetings. Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers,” helped to organize what became a weekly prayer meeting at his church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle (London), which had hundreds of members gathered each week in prayer. He famously called these prayer meetings the “Boiler Room” of the church, Spurgeon saw the prayers of his people seeking the grace and favor of God’s Holy Spirit as the spiritual power behind his preaching and ministry. Here is a portion of Spurgeon’s address: Only a Prayer Meeting!

What a company we have here tonight! It fills my heart with gladness, and my eyes with tears of joy, to see so many hundreds of persons gathered together at what is sometimes called ‘only a prayer meeting.’ It is good for us to draw nigh to God in prayer, and specially good to make up a great congregation for such a purpose. We have attended little prayer meetings of four or five, and we have been glad to be there, for we had the promise of our Lord’s presence; but our minds are grieved to see so little attention given to united prayer by many of our churches. We have longed to see great numbers of God’s people coming up to pray, and we now enjoy this sight. Let us praise God that it is so. How could we expect a blessing if we were too idle to ask for it? How could we look for a Pentecost if we never met with one accord, in one place, to wait upon the Lord? Brethren, we shall never see much change for the better in our churches in general till the prayer meeting occupies a higher place in the esteem of Christians. To mix it up with the weeknight lecture, and really make an end of it, is a sad sign of declension. I wonder some two or three earnest souls in such churches do not band themselves together to restore the meeting for prayer, and bind themselves with a pledge to keep it up whether the minister will come to it or not.

Spurgeon, Charles H. Only A Prayer Meeting (London, 2022; Christian Focus Publications) Page 9.

Brothers and Sisters, let us pledge to join with one another as the body of Christ for prayer. May we pray boldly, humbly seeking God’s grace and favor for His Church, interceding for the lost, making supplication for the needy, and in all things giving thanks to God through Christ Jesus our Lord!

SDG