Does your religion lead others to Christ? Do your life and the way in which you treat others influence them for good? One morning a little clock in a shop window in a small town stopped for a half hour. Children on their way to school stopped to play and others talked because they all believed they were early. They were all late because they had been lead astray by the clock they depended on. You and I may think we have little or no influence, but we need to remember “none of us lives to himself.” Any small act we do could possible lead another person astray. The spread of early Christianity was not as
much due to great preaching as it was to the personal testimony of plain ordinary men and women who went out to tell others the story of the difference that personal knowledge of Jesus Christ made in their lives. A school bus driver noticed a child without a coat one frosty morning while she was waiting for the bus. The bus driver asked the child what color coat she would like to have. Then after school that day, the bus driver handed the child the coat of her dreams. That bus driver saw beyond one child. She started a nonprofit organization which provides many school children with school supplies, coats, haircuts and food. That bus driver had to be willing to give up something. We each need to be willing to sacrifice something in order to give a warm hug, a kind word or a compliment to someone. Eric Liddell was the star of the 1924 Olympics. He became a missionary to China and later died in a Japanese prison camp during W. W. II. Eric Liddell doesn’t fit the image of the modern athlete with fame and fortune. He put his medals aside and took on sacrificial service. Dave Thomas died in 2002. He was a hard working man who was respected for his down-to-earth values. Dave Thomas was influenced greatly by his grandmother. Your influence affects many whom you may never know about!
Drop a pebble in the water, and its ripples reach out far; and the sunbeams dancing on them may reflect them to a star. Give a smile to someone passing, thereby making his morning glad; it may greet you in the evening when your own heart may be sad. Do a deed of simple kindness; through its end you may not see, it may reach, like widening ripples, down a long eternity.
There is wonder working power in prayer
Have you given much thought to the power of your prayers? I would like for us to draw from a modern day work of the power of prayer from a church in New York City and then also visit an example of prayer that was mighty in the N. T.
We need to first to look at JN 15:5 “For apart from me you can do nothing. “ Does this verse really mean that we are so spiritually hopeless that nothing can be accomplished lacking God? Can you say “YES?”
I have read about a church that started back in 1971 in New York and it was so small they were having trouble paying the bills. The pastor, Jim, and his wife declared to each other that unless God broke through they were doomed to be a failure. They knew there was no way they could refine, organize market or program their way to being what a church should be. He was so embarrassed that he did not want to show up for the church service. They had a Tuesday night prayer meeting that hardly anyone attended. They told each other that unless they had a visitation of the Holy Spirit they could not continue. His prayer at that time went something like this: “Lord, I have no idea on how to be a successful pastor. I have not received proper training. I and my wife are working in the inner city with people dying on all sides, overdosing from heroin, consumed by materialism. If the Gospel is so powerful………..”
God spoke to him in these words: “If you and your wife will lead my people to pray and call on my name, you will never lack for something to fresh to preach. I will supply all the money that is needed, both for the church and your family and you will never have a building large enough to contain the crowds I will send in response.” There was no vision or sensational touch. God was just focusing on the answer to that situation or anyone else’s. The next Sunday he went to the church and told his small crowd; “I really feel that I’ve heard from God about our church’s future. It is from this day forward that the barometer for our church is going to be in our praying. If we will call on the Lord, He has promised to bring the unsaved to Himself, to pour out His Spirit among us. If we don’t call on the Lord He has promised us nothing. No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend upon our times of prayer.” The church started praying in weeks ahead answers started coming. Unsaved relatives and total strangers began coming to this church. Junkies, prostitutes and homosexuals started coming and there were also lawyers, business people and bus drivers who turned to the Lord. The church became a “Holy Ghost emergency room” where people in spiritual suffering would be rescued. There a lot churches you and I know about who give lip service to the idea that God can do anything. What we need is to have a real faith that anyone who walks into this church will become a reward of God’s amazing grace. This is a true example of how God will use praying believers to draw lost people to Himself. As we grow in Christ we see our need of a deeper prayer life. Yet there are many who attend churches who say they are evangelist or trying to reach the lost who are failing to count on the Holy Spirit to be their source of power. Do you really believe that God can save any one from sin?
The early church believed in prayer so let us look at what happened with relation to what can happen today.
Acts 12:1-14 (6)
The church was in trouble for its chief leader was killed and now one of its best leaders was in prison awaiting execution. There was no way they could appeal or go see Peter for he was deep in prison and had four guard on him day and night. There were 16 guards who took their turn four at a time. Two were chained to Peter and two stood at the door. The church went to prayer. That very night God sent an angel to rescue Peter. It was such a happening that Peter had trouble believing it was happening. What chance would there be of him being set free when he was guarded so well? There were four soldiers and I want to liken it to what many in bondage has today but that there is power in God to set them free. Each soldier will represent bondage and then we will find that God’s power wets people free from them.
Bondage #1 that keeps people from Christ is comfort. Peter was in comfort between two big guards. He was sleeping. So it was that most people thought Bob Adamo had it made. He was in his 30s, managed at IBM and lived a classy life in the affluent Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. As you looked at him you would not think anything was wrong. He knew himself and knew that things were not right inside. Tara was his secretary and she told him that God had placed a burden on her heart for him. She prayed all the time for him and looked for opportunities to talk about God. He was very comfortable with his workaholic ways and light relationships. He says though he Had a big hole in his life and did not know what it was. So he was interested in what tare had to say. Still he turned down the invitations to go to church. One night they had a concert and he agreed to attend. The pastor spoke about creation and Bob had an interest in that for he had a degree in Biology. He does not remember much of what was said that night but when the time came he stood up and gave his heart to Christ. That has been 13 years ago. “Tara and her family prayed form faithfully every day for more than a year and their prayers are the reason I am a Christian today”
Bondage #2 that keeps one from Christ is Competency. Peter was very competent for he knew what he believed. Barbara Marengo was raised in the church and her father served as a deacon. At the age of 21 she headed down a path of rebellion that lasted for ten years. She was abused by one boyfriend after another. “When I talked with my parents or friend from the church, they would remind me that this was not the life God had for me. But I was out to prove them wrong and tried to do it on my own. Her illusion came to an end when one of her boyfriends killed her 3 year old daughter. Because the state said she knew her daughter was in danger she was charged with 2nd degree manslaughter. The first night in prison she prayed, “I’m in trouble, and I need you God.” She spent two years in jail and one year on probation and now is back in the church. “I can truly say that God has healed my broken heart and He is changing and making me into what He wants me to be.” Listen to this, “My parents used to pray for my protection every day and there were times when I think I would have been dead had it not been for their intercession. I know My life wouldn’t have changed if people weren’t praying for me.”
Bondage #3 that keeps one from Christ is being callus. Willie McClean was into drug dealing, drug addiction, Robbing, drive-by-shootings, pimping and other evil acts. While he was in that his wife became active in a prayer group and became a Christian. He told her at that time he would be her worst enemy. Not to long after this Willie’s friends and customers stopped coming by because they did not like to hear the gospel music in his house Elise played. The Holy Spirit was moving because she was praying. The hard years came as Willie was in and out of jail. He was audited to drugs. He was shot and almost died from the wound. He said, “One day he was about to be put back in prison and he wanted to do drugs but had no money. My wife looked at me and said you need Jesus. I did not want to have anything to do with Jesus. She said if I went to church she would give me a few dollars. So I went to church.” He sat in the top of the church balcony. As the pastor spoke it seems he was talking only to Willie. At the close of the service he found himself walking up to the front of the church to let Jesus come into his life. He has kicked all his bad habits and works in the church. “Someone had to stand in the gap for me and my wife stood on God’s promises and prayed. Being around praying people make me realize how good God is.” His wife prayed for 15 years.
Bondage #4 that keeps one from Christ is being a Captive. This will be hard on some of you to even hear this story but it is true. After a service the pastor was walking down the aisle and bumped an attractive woman in a black dress, with blond shoulder length hair, nicely done nails, black stockings and high heels. “Excuse me, Ma’am.” A low pitched voice said, “NO, that’s OK, man.” This person was a troublemaker who introduced kids to crack cocaine and prostitution. He’d done this for 10 years. He kept coming to church and after about a month he came to know Christ. A little later he was introduced to the church as a new Christian. His appearance was no longer as a woman but a man with a changed heart. This shows beyond all else that no one is beyond God’s grace. There is no situation, anywhere on earth that is to hard for God.
There are churches who want to reach their communities for Christ and plan programs or strategy to do so but fail miserably. We need less clever talk and to become dependent on the invisible, convicting power of the Holy Spirit. When the church gets serious bout prayer the presence of God will bless it and will affect believers and unbelievers alike. We are overloaded with organizational tasks, Bible translations, media techniques but lack in what is needed most which is the Holy Spirit’s power and presence that we may proclaim the message of Christ which will set the sinner free.
Are you committed or will be willing to be committed to becoming a house of prayer?
