May 17 2011, 5:32 pm | Danny Jones
For the past six weeks we have experienced something that has shaken our paradigm and called us into the normal Christian life. God has broken through the façade most define as “church” and transformed us into a life of vulnerable authenticity that seems to answer Christ’s prayer for us in John 17. I often hear of desire to experience what happened in Acts 2 and 4, and I’ve used these passages to challenge toward changes and choices that would bring about something like that moment in Jerusalem. But I admit that often it has seemed an illusive dream that remains out of reach … until… one day God makes something happen and you know it is right. The result here has been that a place of grace and safety has developed and people have been set free to love and forgive and give and dance for joy as never before.
I think we all are asking “Can something like this be sustained and what would that look like?” “Where now, where from here?” I know at The Summit we want to believe that a new normal has been created and the façade is no longer a viable option. When you hear a young man or woman stand before hundreds on a Sunday morning admitting struggles with homosexuality, and then watch as these individuals are immediately surrounded by a loving, praying family, returning to the façade is no longer a viable option. When you hear hundreds on a Sunday morning crying out to God in groups of 3/4 for the salvation of those they know and love, the façade is no longer a viable option. When a college student radically surrenders to giving his life to reach the homeless and during the course of this prayer meeting $12,000 is spontaneously given to help see this happen, the façade is no longer a viable option. This is the new norm we want to live in. But how do we live here?
I believe the answer to this question is actually the journey that will unfold as we continue to walk in step with the Spirit, listening as we turn to the right or the left to a voice behind us saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” This is Paul’s challenge to “pray without ceasing.” What would happen if we prayed without ceasing and our thoughts were transformed into prayers? What would happen if our “talking to ourselves” became a conversation with the Spirit of God? What if we made every conversation with everyone a conversation that included Christ, not in a superficial way that seeks for a blessing or confirmation, but rather one where he is acknowledged and involved in that moment? What if everything became an opportunity for prayer, and we didn’t have to organize it, but rather it was a spontaneous norm in how we live? What if we began to clear the noise of life and hear the things that can only be heard in silence and simplicity? This is the new norm, the normal Christian life. This is where we go from here.
Even as I write this it sounds radical. It unfortunately isn’t the normal Christian life for most of us. We keep Jesus in our pocket, to be brought out at appropriate moments to “bless” our plans and desires. I have heard that Corrie ten Boom in the course of conversation with others would spontaneously involve Christ into the conversation. I am sure that this raised many “normal eyebrows”. But what an amazing “normal Christian life” she lived! And God used her to impact an entire post-WWII generation with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation that possibly changed the course of Christian history. I want to believe that God is calling The Summit to something that will changed Christian history; calling us to a joyful surrender the Spirit through prayer that alters lives and history.
Where is a church in the US that is known as the praying church? It is easy to name churches know for innovative this or cutting-edge that, but what are the churches know for supernatural prayer? That list is sadly small. A Korean missionary came to Slovakia in my early days of ministry there. One of our staff asked her about what God had done in Korea and whether it could happen in Slovakia. Her answer was quick and pointed. “It will never happen in Slovakia,” she answered, “because the Church is Slovakia doesn’t pray.”
So this is where do we go from here? We become that praying church. We become a church who, through the slender nerve of prayer, moves the muscle of omnipotence. R. A. Torey said “The great cry of our day is work, work… organize, organize, give us some new society, tell us some new methods, devise some new machinery: but the great need of our day is prayer, more prayer, better prayer.” We must become the people that others run to when they know that only God can change a situation and prayer is the only answer? We must learn what it means to live our lives in the norm of the supernatural and to anticipate seeing it’s realty at every turn. As F.J. Huegel said, “When a man prays, he is no longer hemmed in within the circle of a merely human sphere of activity.” This is where we go from here. We become a body through which God shapes the future as we pray. “Prayers are deathless,” E.M. Bounds said, “They outlive the lives of those who utter then; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.” This is where we go from here. And together we discover that “the greatest undiscovered area in the resources of God is the place of prayer.” Leonard Ravenhill. God is taking us to there. And through prayer we find the key that opens the door to a whole new world, a world lived in the active, conscious presence of the living God.