People Share Stories of Prayer

Many powerful stories of prayer — some tragic, some uplifting and all of them reflecting the glory of God — were shared in various ways during the second day of the 2013 Christian Reformed Church Prayer Summit.

On Tuesday, there was a story about a CRC pastor who lost his wife and two children in a tragic car accident and how he used prayer to cope with the grief; the story of another CRC pastor who has been dealing with the debilitating impact of Parkinson's disease as he has helped start a new church, and the story about how prayer has bolstered a Monday-night ministry in inner-city Muskegon, Mich.

There also were calls to pray for certain things—for instance, a call to pray for God to care for those who were impacted by the Boston Marathon bomb attack that happened on Monday,  and to pray for those who are living in desperate poverty and North Korea.

"We have lots to pray for, but All Nations is a Korean church. Can we intercede for North Korea?" asked the Prayer Summit worship leader Charles Kim.

"I’ve visited North Korea and I’ve seen the living conditions,” said Kim who is starting a church in Seoul, South Korea. “I would like to remember people in North Korea who are living in the midst of their terrible suffering. Our prayers that we pray here will make a difference."

Gathered at All Nations Church in Lake View Terrace, Calif., the Summit closes today with presentations and prayer. As part of the Summit, congregations across the CRC have been participating in Watch and Pray events that include downloaded videos from Summit sessions.

Praying for Youth

Besides the prayer stories on Tuesday, there also was prayer aimed at upholding and encouraging young people to join a church. This comes in reaction to studies that show that nearly one in three youth, who had grown up in a church, had left and never returned to church by the time they attended college.

Through prayer and other means, "we need to grow the church among youth. We in the church have responsibility for the next generation," said Mark Hibelink, a CRC pastor and one of the leaders of the CRC’s Young Adult Task Force.

"We need to step down from any thoughts we have about how leadership is supposed to work and open up in order that we can do things differently."

After Hibelink spoke, Summit participants divided into groups to pray for young people.

There were also prayers asking God to help immigrants who are suffering under strict immigration laws in the United States.

Especially, there was an explanation of and actual prayers of lament — prayers that cry out to God, asking God to relieve the suffering that individuals are feeling for various reasons in the world.

Prayers of Lament

In the evening’s plenary talk, Calvin Theological Seminary associate systematic theology professor Mary Vanden Berg spoke about the need for honesty in prayer,  especially in prayers of lament.

Too often, she said, people think that lament means to complain to God about things that are happening or have happened to them or to ones they love. But this is a significant kind prayer. It isn’t really complaining as we  know it.

"Lament is a language we should use. God wants to know when we are hurting," she said.

"God is our heavenly father, the one who called us out of darkness into light. He is not too distant to handle our grief... When we think of such things as bombing attacks (such as at the Boston Marathon) ... we cry out 'how long, O Lord,' and then ask God to come quickly."

Rev. David Sung, a CRC pastor, spoke about losing his wife and two of his children in a car accident in 2000. This tragedy, he said, caused him to undergo a long period of unrelenting grief.

But he spoke about how through discernment in prayer, and through the perseverance that the Christian life provides, he was able to finally move out through that grief and come to a place today in which he is blessed to have a new wife and children and, although the grief will never go away, he has been able to move on.

"During my time of grief, I had to learn to be absolutely bankrupt before God, and that was hard," he said. "But I was able to realize that God is here in our midst and wants to fill us with his presence. But we have to be honest and wait for him to act."

Taking a Prayer Walk

In the afternoon, about 20 people gathered to participate in a prayer walk along the streets of Sunland, a community about two miles from All Nations Nations.

During the prayer walk, participants stopped and prayed with people on the streets or simply stood outside of businesses, homes, a townhouse complex and a trailer park and prayed for the people who lived in and worked in them.

Prior to the walk, the organizer Rev. Tom Swierenga spoke to those who would be walking about the significance of the Holy Spirit in prayer, and not just praying on the streets.

"Prayer is a conversation in which we first ask the Holy Spirit to show us how and what to pray for," he said. "The spirit can help us pray anywhere—in our car, and our work, at home, and even as we wait in the line at the grocery store."

For those attending the Prayer Summit, they were able to take in the stories, rousing praise music, and to learn as much as they could about many aspects of prayer and about whom prayer is for.

"Prayer is for all those who are here as broken people with wounds. And we are all broken people," said Rev. Moses Chung, director of Christian Reformed Home Missions and one of the organizers of the Summit. “In prayer, we need to open our hearts and wounds to the challenges in the church and to whatever else is broken on our world. But we also shouldn’t forget to pray for ourselves.”

Prayers for Peace and Healing

Rev. Jeffrey Hough, pastor of Angel Community Church in Muskegon, Mich., spoke in the morning in the sanctuary of All Nations about his ministry in the inner-city.

After asking for amens and hallelujahs from the crowd, he talked of how there had been the shooting death more than a year ago of a young man, not far from his church, and how he had gone down there the day after the shooting and offered his assistance to friends of the young man who had died.

To his surprise, the young men showed up at his church that very day and asked him to open the door so that they could pray in the aftermath of their friend’s killing.

Hough said he did that and in the process was able to start a Monday night ministry that has met for more than a year, providing the young men a meal and a chance for worship.

In the process, they have learned a little something about prayer.

"Prayer is as viable as the air we breathe," he said. "We can’t pray enough today to take care of tomorrow. Prayer is a constant activity.

Prayer is also an important part of addressing violence — whether on the streets of Muskegon or in Boston, where the two bombs killed at least three people and seriously wounded about 175 others.

As awful as violence can be, he said, "we do not need to  despair, since in Jesus Christ, we have victory... We need to lift up all of the situations of violence before the Lord."

In yet another presentation, Rev. Tom Draayer spoke about his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease, and especially how the illness affected his ministry. Initially, he had to step down from the larger church that he had been serving as a result of his disease.

But then he had the opportunity to serve as the pastor of a small, struggling and, he feared, "dying" church in Denver, Colorado.

Along with his wife, he prayed hard, wondering if he would be able to handle the challenge of the church given the difficulties he was facing with his Parkinson's.

He took the position, however, and did initially think that his congregation—which had an average age of about 65—would have to close its doors.

But then he entered into discussions with the pastor of a Chinese church that rented space in his building and, after lengthy prayer and discussions, the two churches decided to merge last year into one new church.

"One thing led to another and God brought us together in Christ. Clearly, God had something different in mind for Hillcrest," he said.

Prayer played a key role in the merger between the churches, but it has also undergirded his own struggle with his disease. He does not pray, by raising his arms or showing much emotion, but that doesn't mean that prayer is not essential for his life.

"I realize that in Christ all things come together and it is important praying and discerning. We don't know the future," he said.