Prayer Meetings – Reformed Baptist Church

Pastor’s Note: A Humble Confession!

Let me begin this blog by way of humble confession. For years, as I pastored in Germany, we held regular Saturday night prayer meetings. Those prayer meetings, I believe, had a tremendous and indescribable impact upon the entire church and our ministry. It was the source of comfort and hope that we needed as a church after spending Saturday afternoons preaching the Gospel to the homeless and drug addicts on the streets of Heilbronn. It was by those prayer meetings that God granted me the strength and grace to preach His Word the following Lord’s Day. It was truly a “Balm of Gilead” for every believer present after a long week of laboring in the world. To hear the humble prayers of God’s people as they poured their hearts out before God was such a rich blessing and encouragement to us all.

I had almost forgotten how blessed and essential such prayer meetings were for the spiritual well-being and happiness of God’s people. Not to mention, the most important thing, namely, how such prayer meetings glorify our God.

We here at Reformed Baptist Church have returned to conducting Saturday Morning prayer meetings. And I am so very grateful to God for His longsuffering and patience towards me. And for moving in the hearts and lives of those few who worship with us, who encouraged one another to meet together for united and corporate prayer. Unlike many churches who hold “prayer meetings” on Wednesday Nights, which are often more of a “Bible Study”, we will meet every Saturday Morning strictly for a time of “Prayer, and Prayer Only.”

We will begin by singing a few hymns and Psaltery in hopes that out hearts might be moved to pray after glorifying Christ in Psalms and Hymns.
Then we shall read that portion of Scripture the Lord has laid on my heart to preach on the Lord’s Day, so that the whole congregation can join with me in prayer that God would “open our eyes, that we may behold wonderous things out of His law” (Psa 119:18)
This time will be dedicated solely to prayer.

Our first meeting was a tremendous blessing to my soul, as I believe to all present. May God continue to bless us during this special time of united and corporate “Prayer”.

Spurgeon on the necessity of Prayer Meetings

“When he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying.”— Acts xii. 12.

The meeting was convened for praying, and this, I say, was a regular institution of the Christian church, and ought always to be kept up. There should be meetings wholly devoted to prayer, and there is a serious flaw in the arrangements of a church when such gatherings are omitted or placed in a secondary position. These prayer-meetings should be kept to their object, and their great attraction should be prayer itself. An address if you like, a few burning words to stir up prayer if you like, but if you cannot have them, do not look upon speech-making as at all necessary. Let it be a standing ordinance in the church that at certain times and occasions many shall meet together to pray, and supplication shall be their sole object. The private Christian will read, and hear, and meditate, but none of these can be a substitute for prayer: the same truth holds good upon the larger scale, the church should listen to her teachers, and receive edification from gospel ordinances, but she must also pray; nothing can compensate for the neglect of devotion.