Is Hell afraid of the Summit Church?

“The one concern of our enemy is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, he mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.” Samuel Chadwick

“The work of God tarries because there is a lack of urgency of prayer in the church. Hell has nothing to fear but a God anointed prayer powered church.”  Leonard Ravenhill

On Sunday I posed the question of why prayer comes so hard for us... not just as individuals, but as a church. Jesus said that His church was to be known as a "house of prayer." Today, if you were asked to describe most church experiences, you would say they are a "house of preaching" or a "house of music." But would you call them a house of prayer?

If we don't pray, John 15 says that it's because of something that we fail to believe about Jesus. Jesus taught us in that chapter that if we abide in Him (i.e. really understand Him and believe in Him), then prayer will be as natural to us as breathing is to a living body.

Jesus gave some extraordinary promises about prayer in John 14-15. He said that if we would abide in Him, and His words (His Gospel, His mission) would abide in us, we could ask whatever we wanted, and it would be given to us. He told His disciples that (through prayer) they would do even greater works than He had done.

To abide in Jesus and have His word abiding in us means that we understand His mission and believe that He is every bit as willing to pursuit it today as He was back then. That mission, then and now, is to have compassion on people and show that God is God.

As I pointed out on Sunday, Jesus never turned anyone away. Whenever He was confronted with a need, He was moved with compassion and got involved. When people with a need reached out to touch Him, His power and compassion flowed out reflexively, almost as if He had no control over it.

Jesus' compassion for people has not changed. When He "sees" suffering, He acts. You ask, "Doesn't He see everywhere?" Yes, but there is a special type of "seeing" that Jesus does, and when He sees in this way He acts: Exodus says that when he 'saw' the Israelite suffering, He got involved; when He SAW the multitudes He was moved with compassion and healed their diseases  (see Matthew 14:14).

In John 15:7-8 Jesus is literally commissioning us to be His eyes and ears on earth. We will see on His behalf and by our faith release His compassion on the needs that we see. Whatever we ask to that end, He'll give it.

I'm ready for some crazy stuff to start happening around our church. I'm tired of being able to explain our success. I want some God-sized, in your face, "only Jesus could do that" kind of miracles. The book of Acts did not leave us any manuals on preaching or government involvement or church growth techniques… what they did leave us with is the story of people who knew how to pray… a church who knew how to pray until the place was shaken, people were healed, and prison doors flew open.

In Acts they didn't seem to get as concerned about all the stuff we spend our energies on today... like problems in the government... You don't hear them saying, “Oh no, Caligula is a transvestite... what are we going to do?" Because they knew that if God was released in the church, who could stop Him?

Summit Church, hope to see you tonight at a special prayer meeting at the Brier Creek campus at 6:45.