Useless Prayer Meetings

By David Hobbs

Last post we looked at clueless church meetings, especially as they pertained to improper protocol in praise and worship. God is so gracious; He overlooks a lot of things. But we should never let that be an excuse to continue in cluelessness. Make no mistake—as much as He loves us—our cluelessness and failure to rightly apply His word do limit what He can do through us. Paul said, “Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant… (1 Cor. 10:1). Cluelessness and ignorance can be pitied and passed over, but they can never be blessed!

The topic this post—The Church Prayer Meeting.

Though God loves prayer, and commands us to “pray always and not lose heart,” I think it’s a close call on whether the average church prayer meeting does more harm than good.

Here’s the bugaboo: in the Kingdom, everything rises or falls on faith. Only prayers prayed in faith accomplish anything. Without faith it’s impossible to please God.

But here’s how the average church prayer meeting operates: The pastor asks for prayer requests. In a small church he might go around the room. And each person probably has two or three requests.

Each request brings up a problem: “My Aunt Bea just learned she has cancer.”

“O No!” thinks the congregation in their hearts.

The next person says, “Pray for our nation.”

(“Yeah, this country’s in a mess!”)

“Pray for my co-worker John, his wife just left him.”

(“Oh No!”)

“Pray for my son Bill, he just got picked up for robbing a liquor store to buy drugs.”

(“Acch that’s terrible!!”)

“Pray for me, I’ve still got stomach ulcers.”

(“Still? Oh no!”)

And so it goes. By the time we get done taking the requests and are ready to pray, the congregation’s heads are filled with these serious problems, many the same as the last prayer meeting. Who still has faith to pray to Jesus and expect it to make a difference? We may have come out of the praise and worship part of the meeting touched by the Holy Spirit, our eyes on Jesus, filled with faith in His power and goodness, believing He can do anything. But now our eyes are focused back on the problems of the world, and all that faith and power of the Holy Spirit has drained right out of us. When we finally go to prayer, it’s more of a wail than a prayer because our hearts are overwhelmed by the problems (that even with our prayers we don't seem to be able to fix).

We actually end up praying prayers of unbelief containing unspoken accusations. While we’re praying,  we're thinking in our hearts, “Lord I’m going to pray for this again even though I’ve already prayed for it umpteen times and you haven’t answered yet. You must not care about me or this problem; either my prayer’s too weak or you’re unable to handle it or maybe you’re just indifferent; but I’ll pray anyway because I’m such a soldier…” And God’s up in heaven holding His nose against the stench of our self-pity and unbelief!

That’s why I said that our prayer meetings can do more harm than good. They can actually foster unbelief, murmuring and doubts in the hearts of the believers. Why should we do satan’s work for him?

In the Bible we are exhorted to examine our ways. That’s what the Book of Malachi is all about: the prophet takes Israel to task through case after case where their worship practices are doing more harm than good. In Malachi 1:10 God cries out for one man who would rise up and “shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar!” (Sounds like many churches" prayer meetings!)

We have to find ways that will foster faith, not unbelief in God’s people. In my monthly, intercessory prayer meeting for the National Governor’s Prayer Team, we start out the hour-long meeting with a tithe of 6 minutes of silence, allowing time for each person to slow down, get in touch with God: examine their own life and repent as needed, and have opportunity to entreat the Holy Spirit to come and pray God’s burdens through us. When it's time to pray out loud we pray as the Holy Spirit leads, without listing all the problems.

I’m using that as an example, not saying that’s what everyone should do. It’s too easy to simply adopt someone else’s practices rather than waiting on God to develop our own.

Those of us responsible need to search our ways with the help of the Holy Spirit, let Him identify the problems and give us strategies to overcome them. Just because churches have always done it one way is no reason to continue, especially when it’s counter-productive! It’s time to take the practices of our church meetings to higher levels so He can manifest Himself in greater ways.

In the Old Testament, they only burned a “memorial portion” of all the grain offerings on the altar (see Lev. 2). I’m convinced this has a spiritual application with our prayers. We don’t need to pray for every single need. God knows them far better than we do and is well able to handle them all. He doesn’t need our prayers, but does want us to pray so we experience the joy of partnering with Him. We pray for the “memorial portion” of our needs as He puts them on our hearts and trust Him with the rest.