Prayer Meetings

I just started to read a book entitled, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire by Jim Cymbala, the head pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle and something got my attention while reading it. It's the story of how Brooklyn Tabernacle came to be the Brooklyn Tabernacle we all know it to be today. It really began with Pastor Cymbala emphasizing on the Tuesday Night Prayer Meetings they would have where they would just come to pray and to simply cried out to God. Before this, the church was struggling and Pastor Cymbala was not sure what else to do but God impressed upon him to just cry out to Him and He will take care of the rest. And so they did and God began to work. In the book, Charles Spurgeon is quoted to explain the reason behind this:

The conditions of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.

So this started to make me think of how I viewed our prayer meetings and whether it was something of utmost importance or just of drudgery and routine. Do I see it as the lifeline of our church or just a gathering to feel good after I've done my duty? The way that God moved through this simple act of faith by Pastor Cymbala really challenged the way I viewed prayer meetings because I would fall into the second category a lot of the times because it seemed so hard and I wanted to just get it over with. But to see God so willing to work in those who are obedient to pray, I wanted to see God do that in our church especially when I meet others to pray.