Pride is a lifestyle of
self-sufficiency, an attitude of self-entitlement and motive for self-glorification. We are all
this way most of the time and hardly notice this of ourselves. It isn't our differences that keep Christians
from prayerful fellowship, but our pride in those differences. By the time you have noticed your
own pride, it has long since been an annoyance to everyone else's pride. One author says we can always measure how much
pride we have by how much we hate it in someone else. We'll even tolerate another person's pride, in order to keep
safe our own pride, while telling ourselves we are being gracious; But it really isn't grace born of time with Love:
Prayer. The few times we are actually humble, later become memories we worship with pride. The heart is hopeless and
very deceitful. (Jeremiah 17:9) God wants us
to view each other through the Blood of Christ; A view that can only be maintained by continual prayer. This is one of the major reasons why corporate prayer must return to the center of congregational
life. It is the one place where our pride can be filtered as Love's leadership
is given rule. This is where we can navigate through the pride of our own hearts to His heart. This is where we are "praying
through". This is where leaders are best found. This is the true indicator of a congregation's real maturity.
It is also where we see the present 1% Christ-likeness
of someone's selfish heart as 100%. Faith is seeing the final product in the present. And through consistent corporate
prayer God takes someone's 1%, adds it to another's 3% and someone else's 2% and creates a larger, literal
and legal entrance through which His Spirit pours through to invade the worlds of others. The impact is exponential.
Corporate worship, prayer and intercession are so important. This shared experience has been purchased with Blood.
"Do not forsake..." Hebrews 10:25
It
is Love. Hope, nor the the Faith that gives substance to Hope, could even exist without Love, because it is Love
Who produces both. People who are big on the subject of Faith, but not Love, are fooling themselves. It is not Faith
they are really enthralled with at all; Most likely it is personal power in Jesus name: Religious pride.
Americans see Christianity as being centered
around a sermon which empowers us to proudly wear our doctrinely sound opinions about God in the social
scene. We tell ourselves we are His witnesses, but the truth is we are more like Christian activists than people of
prayer. Yet Love Himself is not on the throne of our hearts. Instead, we promote and embrace a prayerless,
utilitarian Christianism.
The true Christian experience
is actually a Blood-bought prayer-life. May America soon feel (and see) the impact of melted hearts on our
knees en masse before a living Love.
You are
not being invited to join another organization but to help build prayer-based friendships in this community as we all
go after Someone much more sincere than us. When we are in His manifest presence, we are different. God's presence
repeatedly washes us and sets things right. It reminds us of how blessed we are to have one another. It is then that love
begins to flow through our prayers He inspires. Knowing this dethrones a critical spirit and opens the door for Grace,
meaningful friendships and the unity needed to win the lost. But the biggest motivator of all is that prayerful unity
pleases Him greatly.
And we need each other.
Another author puts it this way: "This is not the Gospel of Jesus and me, but the Gospel of Jesus
and us." We are a Body.
Any
affirmation that we internally ingest and do not automatically want to credit our Lord with is a step away from reality, for
our identity is too often found in what we think we do for God and not Whose we undeservedly are; Too many of us
have bowed down for too long before the idol of so-called public ministry intending to make a name for ourselves like Babel
Tower builders. (Genesis 4:11) Many of us will bring our works before the Fire of Love Himself on Judgement Day only to see
them burned up. When the time comes for us to cast our crowns before the Lamb, many will have nothing but golden thimbles
on our pinkies to lay before the Lord. Some of us will be cast into Hell. (Matthew 7:22-23) Today we are much more Christian
activists than praying Christians. A prayerless Christian is an oxymoron. Though we can draw crowds, preach Biblical
principles, raise funds and build buildings, we generally are not producing people of prayer.
We must remember, that we belong to the race of creatures who murdered the Son of God and that only by obedience
to prayer are we in the process of being changed from enemies to His true friends; For in prayer we are taken repeatedly to
the foot of the Cross. No more whining about getting prayer back into schools until it comes back to home and church. Let
corporate prayer return to the center of Church life. Let God back into the way we live. Maybe He will once again save us
from ourselves. Jesus died so we could pray; Because prayer is the channel He continually changes our hearts and also
invades the spheres of the lost. The time has come to get serious about prayer.
