A while ago,  I was listening to Rev. Billy Kim at this recent Founder’s week and have found one of his statements troubling. Rev. Kim mentioned Paul Yonggi Chou whose church boasts 700,000 members (I sensed a spirit of envy in Rev. Kim’s presentation of Rev. Chou as it sounded like he lamented having only 20,000 members). The speaker was exhorting Christians to have a great prayer life. He said he asked Rev. Chou how he got a church that big and Rev. Chou answered that he prayed many hours of the day. Basically the message is, if you pray more you will get more results.      First, I thank God for the things he has done in his life, bringing him to Christ and giving him his ministry. I want to commend Rev. Kim for his call for the American church to pray. Prayer is an act of reliance upon God and a lack of a prayer life can be a sign of self-reliance. The reality is we are always reliant upon God every second of the day for life, success, everything. Self-reliance is a denial of reality and an attitude that must be repented of. Rev. Kim is right to call the church to prayer. However, his presentation troubled me in two ways.

 1.     To commend Rev. Chou for his prayer life is troubling to me. Rev. Chou, by his response, seems to correlate his success to his praying a lot. Prayer should not be seen as a way to gain but a statement of the heart that says “I am dependent on God about everything, my life- my future, my relationships, everything is in his hands”. To use prayer as a means to manipulate God to make us successful in anything we do is tantamount to using God’s name in vain. Paul warned Timothy about some people using “godliness” as a means towards gain, whatever gain means. It is God who blesses by his grace.   

2.     Prayer flows from a heart attitude. This means that setting up more prayer meetings or even setting up more personal time to pray does not really solve the problem of a lack of a prayer life. Without that proper heart attitude that says “I am dependent on God about everything, my life- my future, my relationships, the life of the world, everything is in his hands” a prayer life is just an outward trapping and should not be commended at all. It should be condemned as legalism and it is draining to the person. I think a better way is to cultivate an attitude of dependence towards God. The person who has completely grasped his and the world’s dependence on God will pray without ceasing. He will be connected to God whether he is spending time alone, with a group, or at work.        

     The western church needs to be more like the third world church with its strong piety, its refusal to back down in the face of persecution, its zeal for proclaiming the gospel, and its strong stance on social issues (homosexuality, abortion). However, the third world church should not judge the western church as somehow wanting as Christians. The whole church has problems, whether it is legalism, antinomianism, consumerism, etc. Until the Lord comes, the weeds will coexist with the wheat.  When the eastern church looks at itself as somehow better than the western church, they are doing what the Donatists of old did, refusing to be in communion with those who succumbed to persecution but were repentant. The church, east and west, must acknowledge sin and welcome in its midst those who are repentant. This is the movement of the kingdom of God- the proclamation of the reality of the Grace of God in the midst of human sin.