Expectations. And prayer meetings. If your experience is anything like mine, they rarely go together. Our prayer meetings are almost entirely predictable. To the point of….dare I use so harsh a word…. boredom? Expectations and prayer meetings don’t go together in the same sentence, let alone the same gathering room at church. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest reasons our prayer meetings are attended by handfuls—rather than “room-fulls.”
Sure, we know that Scripture calls us to prayer. But on a chilly winter night, with a warm supper settling in our gut, there’s little motivation to go out to prayer meeting—where we can reliably expect pretty much the same requests every week. Monotony dressed up as ministry. We don’t expect God to show up, so we don’t either.
But what a difference it makes when expectation is in the atmosphere. Twice, it has been my privilege to visit the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York and attend their Tuesday night prayer meeting. If you’ve never been there, you’ll have difficulty believing my assessment. The auditorium is jammed before the prayer meeting begins. And when it does, instead of jumping into requests of the Almighty, it’s an intense time of praise. Songs of praise. Prayers of worship. This is what they do most.
They pray for the world…for missionaries…for persecuted Christians in a specific country. They pray for lost people. And—most refreshingly of all—they pray with expectancy. These people fully expect that when they return the following week, they’ll hear a report on how God intervened in a situation—perhaps supernaturally—to work His will. They expect to hear testimonies from people who’ve just come to faith…and they do!
Who wouldn’t want to be a part of something like that? Who could possibly stay home and turn down a front row seat to the arena of the Almighty, doing what only God can do?
Every church, of course, has its own culture, its own flavor and style. But to the extent that our prayer meetings continue to lack a sense of expectation—great expectations—we will continue to see a lack of participation.
I, however, am hoping for more.