By Kim Butts

Today’s Church is not exactly what God has in mind – she is not pure and spotless...and she is not adorned in white. Amazingly, she is not even making a very good attempt to prepare for the coming of her Bridegroom. She is, instead, filled with good intentions, but busy planning programs to become attractive to people. She is going about her Father’s business with her priorities reversed.

The Church is only going to be attractive to people when she first becomes attractive to Christ... when she is only saying and doing what she sees her Father in Heaven doing and saying...when she is the image of Him upon this earth...when she is about the business of pleasing God. When these things happen – it is then that He will make her lovely in the sight of others.

How does a church move from pleasing people to pleasing God? The answer is not another program...it is prayer. Strategizing, planning, brain-storming….all of these things will only become effective when a foundation of prayer is laid beneath them. If prayer is not driving every movement of every pastor, of every church leader, and of every lay person in a church, the Holy Spirit is being kept from empowering the church to be the House of Prayer for all Nations which Christ has called her to be. Instead, she has become a house of being everything to everyone.

We all have different methods for seeking the lost...but are they God’s methods or man’s? If we look to Christ as our example – we can see him talking to people in parables – stories, to which they could relate. So, we try to do this too; however, we often forget that Christ spent the night on the mountain praying ahead of time…..did we?

We strive to make our churches “safe” and friendly places for the unchurched person to be – but do they become so safe that they do not experience Christ? How long before a lost person sees Jesus in the faces and actions and daily lives of the Christians? Have we earnestly been praying for everyone who walks through our doors? Do we pray God’s blessing upon them and ask Him to do a mighty work in their lives? Do we have active ministries of prayer functioning powerfully in our churches to cover every aspect of ministry? Is the church establishing Lighthouses of Prayer to pray for the people in the neighborhoods it hopes to affect?

Hudson Taylor said, “You can work without praying, but that is a rather bad plan. You will, however, never be able to pray seriously without working.”

Bennie Mostert asks, “Why is the church so powerless? Why does it have so little effect in the world? Why can’t the church succeed in taking the gospel to the unreached nations? Why is there such desolation in many churches? Why do people become converted, but fail to grow to spiritual maturity? One of the single most important reasons for these conditions is the lack of prayer. The work of prayer is not done. People do not pray enough. The number of prayer warriors is too small compared to the amount of prayer work. James 4:2 says: ‘You do not have, because you do not ask God.’ Prayer brings the blessing of God. A revival of prayer will bring about a revival of the blessing of the Lord. More purposeful, intelligent and persistent prayer will bear more spiritual fruit. It is when the church fails to perform the work of prayer persistently and effectively that the church also becomes powerless and ineffective. God has intended that through prayer the church should obtain the power that it needs to do its work.”

God has intended for His people to be actively involved in His plan for reaching the world. One of the main tasks to which we are called is prayer. It is only through prayer that the lost will be won to Christ. They may be attracted to come to a building to hear music, or to hear “about” Christ – but it is only through the prayers of God’s people that they will actually experience Jesus and come to know Him as Savior and Lord.

Think about your own coming to know Christ in a real and personal way. Was someone praying for you? Perhaps a parent, or a friend – or even a neighbor? If our churches would spend less effort planning programs for the lost in our communities, and become instead, Lighthouses of prayer in their midst, we would see growth – both physically and spiritually beyond our wildest imaginations – because the Holy Spirit would be actively working.

At the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, there is a prayer meeting every Tuesday night. This is where the powerful work of God takes place. The preparation for each Tuesday night’s prayer service is straight from the book of Acts: they pray for a Spirit of Prayer. If you read the book of Acts, you see a group of people, completely committed to Christ, who met together – with no other agenda but prayer. And sometimes the buildings they were in shook. We don’t have many shaking buildings today – but God is calling us to wake up! He wants us to take prayer to the highest level – the committed level. It is only then that He will pour out revival in our midst and draw the lost to Himself. “Not by (your) might, not by (your) power...but by MY SPIRIT says the Lord.”