Deny Yourself and Attend Your Prayer Meeting
Prayer meetings often require a measure of self-denial. Attending prayer meetings is not particularly difficult in most cases. Yet prayer meetings are the worst attended meeting in most local churches. However, they are by no means an optional ministry of the church. Through her prayer meetings, the Church procures the blessings of God’s Spirit on the preaching of the Word as she does in no other setting (John 14.12-14; Acts 4:23-31). In prayer meetings, believers actively pursue the glory of Christ and fervently plead with the Father to bring people from the nations into His family. Many people do not attend prayer meetings even though they are willing to come to hear teaching.
However, in the Bible prayer almost always precedes the blessings of God upon the church (e.g. Acts 4). Are you willing to take the trouble to attend the prayer meeting? Are you willing to forego other conveniences or to make an extra trip to church in order to do so? Are you willing to allow your children to go to bed later one night per week so that you can approach the throne of grace with the congregation and with Christ in her midst? The most common reason for neglecting the prayer meeting is that it is “inconvenient.” But inconvenience is an opportunity for a Christian! It provides an opportunity to honor the Lord when it is inconvenient. Another told me that prayer meetings are boring. Yet what is boring about meeting with the triune God and His church? Should we not find fullness of joy in His presence? We can do this only by faith in Christ and hope that the Spirit will enflame our hearts with zeal for the Father’s glory.
Treat the prayer meeting as an opportunity to deny yourself, to take up your cross, and to follow Christ.
— From Ryan McGraw, Why Should You Deny Yourself? p.23-24
