When someone says “prayer meeting” what do you think of?
I think of a group of people sitting in a circle. There is a clear person in charge, designated by being ordained either as a minister or elder, or by being the meeting’s organiser. He or she will welcome everyone, probably read a passage, lead us in a psalm, and then open the floor for prayer points. After enough have been awkwardly shared, he or she will ask for a volunteer to open and another to close (the Bookenders). This last bit will take ages as everyone studiously avoids looking everyone else in the eye. Sometimes the organiser gives up and picks on two solid people, whom they know pray Godly prayers, to be the Bookenders. A really good prayer meeting follows a pattern: thanks and gratitude to God for who he is and what he’s done in redemption; church needs; local needs; national needs; international needs. An amazing prayer meeting allows the same people to pray more than once between the Bookenders (gasp!)
So, I’ve made it to work before sunrise, and am perching on a table, waiting for us to pull chairs into a circle.
The organiser speaks some encouragement, and before I know it we’ve started praying with everyone just where they were, most people standing.
And we started praying aloud.
Together.
Most of them in tongues.
It took me a minute to take this in. This was a bigger shock than the shock of actually making it on time so early in the morning!
I hadn’t heard tongues in about 8 years.
“Crikey. right. um. It’s this kind of meeting. O…K…. hmm… errr… … ! Hm. Oh… well, God does give some people the gift of tongues…”
It took a while, but God set me off on a journey through His wondrous love. Of how he ordains some people to have gifts of tongues, some the gift of understanding, some the gifts of teaching, some of serving, how he hears the tongues and my own very English prayers…
And then the sound became a wondrous sound. My heart started to sing because of it.
Look, I don’t get it.
I don’t understand it.
I have never, to my knowledge, spoken in tongues.
But I have heard enough different people in different places, in different times, to know that this happens to some. I’ve heard the same sounds in Glasgow, Aviemore, Malawi and India.
If I let the bible be the Word of God and if I truly believe God can do what he wants, it logically follows that I have to accept that he chooses to give some people the gift.
Not everyone. One of the biggest mistakes the church can make is to expect everyone with the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues. I believe the bible is clear: it is not the sign of the spirit, but a sign.
Tongues, as far as I understand it (which is only a little) is a heavenly language. To Christ it tastes like nectar because it is the Holy Spirit himself speaking. Just because I can’t wrap my head around tongues, doesn’t mean it’s any less amazing.
It isn’t that people who can speak in tongues are better than the rest of us, or that those who don’t have less faith – it’s just different.
It isn’t that hand raisers have more passion for Christ than those of us who struggle to obey God when he prods us to sit not with closed hands but opened hands.
God in his glory calls different people of different backgrounds and tastes to worship him.
Because – this morning, it felt and sounded wondrous to be praying with other people who come from totally the opposite end of the charismatic spectrum.
We follow the same God: the same Father, same Jesus, the same Holy Spirit.
My idea of a prayer meeting isn’t stale.
They aren’t dull.
I have heard some of the most reverent, honest and faithful prayers at those meetings. I have heard many people pray the most earnest prayers, urgently seeking God’s mercy into situations and for people to turn back to Christ.
I believe that God is at work at both types of meetings. Stirring hearts, to change workplaces, cities, nations.
It’s different ways of praying to the same God.
It’s the same Holy Spirit leading different people to worship Him in different ways.
Honestly, this morning we were united because of that God.
It tasted heavenly.
My culture shock was a good thing. It showed me that I think God should move in ways I understand, like, or think are good. But he’s bigger than that.
I need to trust His ways, not mine.
I need to pray for all the churches speaking the gospel, not just my own denomination.
It got me thinking: maybe some of us need to visit other churches of different styles – with the major caveat that they are preaching the gospel – once in a while, just to remind ourselves that God is bigger than our own ways of doing things.
For me, a part of that is going to see Rend Collective once in a while. I’m just more free there to raise my hands than I am at my own church.
Which is cool.
I mean, it’s just different.
Plod Shuffle Plod 