The Mid-Week Prayer Service
On February 13, 2020 by Mike Jones
Do we really believe the Bible when it says that, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” (James 5:16b)? How about Matthew 7:7 where Jesus urges us to, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”? Jesus assures us of this promise in Mark 11:24 where He said, “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Do we have the same hope as the Apostle John when he declared in 1 John 5:14&15, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”? If we really believe in the power of prayer, we would make it a priority to be at our church’s mid-week prayer meeting!
Although the history of the mid-week prayer meeting isn’t crystal clear, many attribute these prayer meetings to the effects of the spiritual “Awakenings” that were experienced in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. These were times of increased spiritual awareness where God’s people recognized a need to gather more often, as a church body, for prayer.
D.L. Moody was a major proponent of mid-week prayer gatherings during his revival meetings in the middle 1800s. Recognizing the need for such times of prayer was an evidence of God’s Spirit working in His people. We need that working today in our churches. We need to recognize the need right here at Cornerstone Baptist Church.
C. H. Spurgeon gave three reasons for a church to have a weekly prayer meeting: 1) it unifies and encourages God’s people; 2) it generates devotion to God; and 3) it brings God’s promised blessing (Matthew 18:19–20). Spurgeon preached on the value of prayer meetings in a sermon he gave in August of 1868. In that sermon he said, “The prayer-meeting is an institution which ought to be very precious to us, and to be cherished by us as a Church, for to it we owe everything…. It is in the spirit of prayer that our strength lies; and if we lose this, the hair will be cut off from Samson’s head, and God’s Holy Church will become weak as water and though we, as Samson did, go and try to shake ourselves as at other times, we shall hear the cry, ‘The Philistines are upon you,’ and our eyes will be put out, and our glory will depart, unless we continue mightily and earnestly in prayer.”
May the Lord “Awaken” us to the need of gathering together mid-week for an “effectual”, “fervent” season of prayer.