We serve a powerful, present God. We live in a world that does everything it can to keep us from staying fully connected. Jim Cymbala, who for twenty years has pastored the Brooklyn Tabernacle, an inner-city church on Flatbush Ave. in New York, knows what “brown outs” are all about. He, his family, and his church, have seen desperate adversity.
They have also felt the power. When Jim came to Brooklyn Tabernacle, the church had two people attending the midweek prayer meeting. Now, over one thousand people come out each Tuesday evening to pray and wait upon God. A team of members pray from 2:00 P.M. until 6:00 A.M. every day of the week. The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir has its own significant ministry of gospel music under the direction of Jim’s wife, Carol. And the church is starting other churches and reaching out around the world.
How has it happened? According to Jim, it was anything but great planning.
How do you define spiritual power?
One Sunday in our church services, a woman who sings in our choir, a former drug addict with the HIV virus, told the story of how she came to Christ. She described in raw detail the horrors of her former life. A street person named David stood in the back listening closely.
The meeting ended, and I was exhausted. After giving and giving, I had just started to unwind when I saw David coming my way.
I’m so tired, I thought. Now this guy’s going to hit me up for money.
When David got close, the smell took my breath away-a mixture of urine, sweat, garbage, and alcohol. After a few words, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a couple of dollars for him. I’m sure my posture communicated, Here’s some money. Now get out of here.
David looked at me intently, put his finger in my face, and said, “Look, I don’t want your money. I’m going to die out there. I want the Jesus this girl talked about.”
I paused, then looked up, closed my eyes, and said, “God, forgive me.” For a few moments, I stood with my eyes closed, feeling soiled and cheap. Then a change came over me. I began to feel his pain, to see him as someone Christ had brought into the church for that moment.
I spread out my arms, and we embraced. Holding his head to my chest, I talked to him about his life and about Christ. But it wasn’t just words. I felt them. I loved him. That smell-I don’t know how to explain it-it had almost made me sick before, but it became beautiful to me. I reveled in what had been repulsive.
I felt for him what Paul felt for the Thessalonians: “We were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us” (1 Thess. 2:7, 8). God put that kind of love in me.
The secret to Paul’s ministry was what I felt that night. That divine love became supernatural power.
The minute my attitude changed, David knew it. He responded to that love and allowed me to minister to him. The gospel got through to David that night. I was a detriment until God got me back in tune.
So spiritual power, in this case, is the ability to care?
When I think of spiritual power, I often think of a baptism of love. My wife and I have found that unless God gives us new baptisms of compassion and love, we would leave New York City and all its problems in a second.
Paul urged the Ephesians to be filled constantly with the Spirit. I have no desire to argue doctrinally about what that means; all I know is if God doesn’t do that for me, I stop caring. Often, when I hear about one more child molestation case, I want to say, “Why don’t you all get out of my face? I don’t want to deal with this anymore.”
Left to Jim Cymbala, I am not capable of continuing to care.
We deal with stuff that is so overwhelming. A guy said to me, “Pastor what do I do? I killed this guy five months ago, and I don’t know if the cops are looking for me or not.”
“Killed a guy! What do you mean you killed a guy?”
“I shot him. You know, I needed money-the crack thing.”
You hear enough of those stories, and you build a wall and stop reacting. That’s bad. You don’t want to take it home because it will affect your wife and your children, but if you don’t feel the pain your ministry becomes mechanical, just, “Here’s a verse.”
People in pain don’t need “Here’s a verse.” They need what I felt for David.
When I’m looking at people through God’s eyes and I’m feeling how Christ feels, then spiritual power can flow through me to them.
Is spiritual power something that comes and goes? Or is it only our ability to see or feel it that fluctuates?
We need fresh experiences of God’s presence. Revivalist Charles Finney said he would go into the woods and pray until God revealed himself in a fresh way.
You can’t keep a sense of God’s greatness without renewed experiences. Memory and intellect can’t preserve that sense of “God with us.” The Word alone won’t give us that. The Spirit has to give us fresh manifestations. We gain this awareness of God’s presence, not intellectually, but with the eyes of the heart, as Paul prayed for the Ephesians.
There is something about just being with God, waiting on him, and pouring your heart out to him, like Hannah did when she was praying for a son, that makes you effective. It gives you wisdom and new strength to go on. I made it my pilgrimage in life. I fail at it. I haven’t arrived at anything, but the spiritual life is a pilgrimage to seek the next oasis and a greater likeness to Christ.
How do you seek God’s presence and power?
When I came to Brooklyn Tabernacle at age 28, the church numbered under twenty people. The situation at first was so depressing, I didn’t want to come to services. And I was in charge, which was not a good sign. (Laughter)
We struggled to make ends meet. The first Sunday offering was $85. I made $3,800 my first year here and $5,200 the second. I had a second job, and my wife had to find work.
After two years I got a cough in my chest I couldn’t shake. For weeks I was spitting up phlegm, unable to go to a doctor because we didn’t have money or health insurance. Finally I went to my in-laws’ home in Florida to see if the sun and some rest would help me.
One day, sitting in a fishing boat, I prayed, “Lord, one book says buses are the key to building a church. Another book says cell groups meeting in homes is the key. Another, multiple eldership. Another, releasing people from demons.
“Lord, what do I do? I’m in New York City with people dying all around me. You couldn’t have put Carol and me here to do nothing. But God, how can we get their attention? How can we get conviction of sin?”
Then God spoke to me in the closest thing to an audible voice I’ve ever experienced. The Lord told me if my wife and I would lead the people to pray and to wait on him, he would take care of every sermon I needed to preach (which I was very insecure about), he would supply all the money we needed, both personally and as a church, and no building we used would be large enough to contain all the people he would send in.
How did that vision affect your ministry?
When I returned to New York, I told the congregation, “The barometer of our church is now going to be the prayer meeting. The key to our future as a church will be our calling on God to release his miraculous power among us.
“We need continual outpourings of the Spirit. Jesus promises, ‘How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.’
“When God does pour out his Spirit, expect for him to also save souls. Acts 11 says that when a group of Christians went to Antioch and preached the gospel, ‘The Lord’s hand was with them.’ What was the sign that the Lord’s hand was with them? It says, ‘a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.’ That’s what we want to pray for.”
At that time our prayer meeting had maybe fifteen people attending. In that weekly meeting, we began to wait on the Lord, and God gave us the gift of prayer. Worship and praise took hold. We saw that in direct proportion to the liberty God gave us in prayer, things happened: Unsaved loved ones started coming, getting convicted, and getting converted. Other people came in, and we didn’t know where from.
Every Sunday since that day-eighteen years ago-we have made the announcement that on Tuesday evening the doors open for our most important service, the one we look forward to most, the prayer meeting.
What are today’s common misunderstandings about spiritual power?
One misunderstanding is that grace and power comes to people primarily through the sermon or through understanding sound doctrine.
I talk to pastor after pastor who is sound in doctrine and teaches it well but who admits something is missing. Their churches are plagued by rampant divorce, young people slipping off into a “worldly” lifestyle, no spiritual fervor, people watching the clock so they can get out of church and watch sports on TV.
The spiritual power the church needs is not released primarily through the sermon but by coming to “the throne of grace” in prayer. Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” The sermon is supposed to be an arrow that directs the heart to God so he can minister fresh strength at the throne of grace.
How can you have a New Testament meeting without a time for prayer after the sermon? Making the sermon the centerpiece of a service doesn’t seem to fit with Jesus’ words in Matthew 21:13, in which he says, “My house will be called a house of prayer.” R. A. Torrey, the former president of Moody Bible Institute, wrote that the Word of God alone will not break a self-righteous, proud person. You have to get him or her into the presence of God.
Too many church services have become a lecture series. The Christian church was born not in a clever sermon but in a prayer meeting.
Besides prayer, what other sources of spiritual power have you experienced?
I have received tremendous strength from our church.
Up until age 16, my oldest daughter was a model child. But then she got away from the Lord and involved with a godless young man. She eventually moved out of our house and later became pregnant.
We went through a dark tunnel for two and a half years. While wonderful things were happening at the church-we were renting Radio City Music Hall for large outreaches, starting other churches, my wife and our Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir were making albums, many were coming to Christ-no one knew I was hanging on by a thread. I often cried from the minute I left my house till I got to the church door, thinking, God, how can I get through three meetings today? My daughter …
But I didn’t want to make my need the focus. People are coming to the church because of their needs. Many live in ghettos, in violent, non-Christian homes.
After Chrissy had been away for two years, I again spent some time away in Florida. I said to God, “I’ve been battling, crying, screaming, arguing, and maneuvering with Chrissy. No more arguing, no more talking. It’s you and me. I’m just going to intercede for my daughter.”
I told Carol to stay in touch with our daughter, because I was no longer going to talk to Chrissy; I would only pray.
I stayed in Florida until I “prayed through.” God brought me to a new realm of faith so that when I returned to New York I stopped reacting as before to the discouraging things Chrissy did. I found a place in God where I could praise him even though the news from her was getting worse, which is a hard thing to describe. It wasn’t positive thinking; it was faith.
Four months later, in February, we were in our Tuesday night prayer meeting (the choir and the church leadership now knew about Chrissy, but we didn’t spread the news any further in the church). I had not talked to my daughter since November.
An usher passed a note to me from a young woman in the church whom I felt was a spiritual person. “Pastor Cymbala, I feel deeply impressed that we are to stop the meeting and pray for your daughter.”
Lord, is this really you? I prayed within myself. I don’t want to make myself the focus.
At that moment Chrissy was at a friend’s home somewhere in Brooklyn with her baby.
I interrupted the meeting and had everyone stand. “My daughter thinks up is down, white is black, and black is white,” I said. “Someone has sent me a note saying she feels impressed that we are to pray for her, and I take this as being from the Lord.”
Then some of the leaders of the church joined me, and the church began to pray. The room soon felt like the labor room in a hospital. The people called out to God with incredible intensity.
When I got home later that night, I said to my wife (who wasn’t at the prayer meeting), “It’s over.”
“What’s over?” Carol said.
“It’s over with Chrissy,” I replied. “You had to be there tonight. I just know that when we went to the throne of grace, something happened in the heavenly places.”
Thirty-six hours later, I was standing in the bathroom shaving. My wife burst into the room. “Chrissy’s here,” she said. “You better go downstairs.”
“I don’t know. . .” I said, having intentionally kept my distance from Chrissy for four months.
“Trust me. Go downstairs.”
I wiped off the shaving cream. I went to the kitchen, and there was my daughter, 19 years old, on her knees weeping. She grabbed my leg and said, “Daddy, I’ve sinned against God. I’ve sinned against you. I’ve sinned against myself. Daddy, who was praying on Tuesday night?”
“What do you mean? What happened?” I said.
“I was sleeping,” she said. “God woke me up in the middle of the night, and he showed me I was heading toward this pit, this chasm, and Daddy, I got so afraid. I saw myself for what I am. But then God showed me he hadn’t given up on me.”
I looked at my daughter and saw the face of the daughter we raised. Not the hardened face of the last few years. So Chrissy and our granddaughter moved back into our home.
That was three years ago. Today she’s directing the music program at a Bible school and was married this past year to a man from our church.
Most pastors we talk to experience spiritual power intermittently but not constantly. Almost everyone talks about times of “dryness” or “leanness of spirit” or “dark nights of the soul.” Did you experience this?
During those years when Chrissy was away, the verse “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9) became so real to me, though I was weak emotionally.
My wife went through an especially dark time. The enemy attacked her with the thought, So you’re going to stay in New York City and influence a lot of people? Fine, but I’ll have all your children. I’ve got one, and now I’m coming for the other two.
Carol told me, “I can’t take this sitting down. You can leave the church with me or stay, but I’m taking my other two kids. I’ve got to get out of this environment. I’m going to save our children. You can’t do this to them.”
I half agreed with her. But then I thought, If I move unilaterally, not knowing for certain that it’s God’s will, what will my next move be? If you violate God’s will, where does that end? Is that something you can do in just one area without opening up your life to even worse problems?
Carol’s dad, a retired pastor, counseled her to stay put: “Carol, it doesn’t matter where you go. It won’t change Chrissy.” Somehow God held us there and overruled our weakness.
During those days, whenever the phone rang, my stomach tensed. I didn’t approach the situation right with Carol most of the time, which made it worse. Many Sunday mornings I woke up feeling I couldn’t go to church.
It’s scary when I think back, how many times driving up to the church I thought, I’m making a U-turn, and I’m not coming back. I can’t do this anymore.
But when I got into the church building, a peace would hold me, and I could get through the day. Carol and I felt we owed the people our best to minister to them and not get into a pity party. For three services I would pray for people and largely forget my problems.
During that time we saw people helped and converted. We had baptisms of up to 120 people in one night. After a three-week Christmas outreach, we baptized 260 people.
Then Carol had to have a hysterectomy. There in the hospital, at her lowest moment, God ministered to her, and she wrote a song called, “He’s Been Faithful,” which of all of her songs has had the greatest impact on people.
That was a turning point for her.
How do you continue to “be of good courage” when you (or your family members) are in painful or dangerous circumstances?
Paul described himself as “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10).
“Which were you, Paul?” we might say. “You can’t be both.”
But he was. Paul said, “Who doesn’t fall into sin and I don’t inwardly burn? Who’s not weak and I don’t feel weak?” Paul had an umbilical cord of divine empathy. He felt all these things, and yet it didn’t disrupt the faith at the center of his soul.
When we walk in the Spirit, we have a peace from God. But that doesn’t take away our grieving in another part of our being.
What role does our attitude play in staying connected with Christ’s power?
I once preached a message on the mark of the beast. Many came thinking I knew what the number 666 was about, which I am not totally clear about myself. I took the approach that the true “mark of the beast” is the real sin of Satan: his heart was lifted up with pride.
Satan lived in the power and presence of God, but then pride cut him off, and it will do the same to us.
Pride comes before all falls. It’s not the girl in the motel room that brings down a man, but his pride that cuts him off from the grace of God. Scripture doesn’t say God resists an alcoholic; it does say God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble.
Humility is the key to experiencing God’s power. Andrew Murray, whose book Humility I try to read once a year, said humility is the root through which all other graces flow. Only as we go low can love and peace and joy flow.
Such humility comes from being with God, from fresh revelations of God and his Word. We need constant revelations of who God is and who we really are. In God’s presence we see how helpless we really are. In Isaiah 6, Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and he said, “Woe is me.”
Fresh experiences of the presence of God give a true dependence on God that isn’t based on some mental game we are playing.
How do you help people sense the presence of God in your preaching?
I was at a meeting where the preacher gave an outstanding message. I could tell God had dealt with him through this passage. When he finished his sermon, the congregation applauded, and it was quickly announced that a special luncheon would immediately begin in another room.
What! I thought. We’re leaving? After that sermon we’re going to go out and have a meal?
I’m up in the balcony thinking, God, I would almost jump off this balcony in order to have somebody pray for me. Let me call out to God. Let me ask God to forgive me for what I’ve been convicted of. Let me get to the throne of grace.
We truly lift up Jesus when our preaching leads people to call out to Jesus, when we point them to prayer and his personal dealing with their soul.
How can pastors transfer their passion for prayer to their people?
After our Tuesday night prayer meeting became the focus of our ministry, and people around the country heard about its impact, many pastors have come to observe it. Then they’ve gone home to try to start a similar meeting in their churches.
These pastors know that prayer is important, that God will answer any church that prays. They may preach a sermon on prayer and challenge everyone to come out, but their new prayer meeting is dead, cold, hard, and mechanical. Fewer and fewer people come each week, and then it dies.
Now these pastors feel doubly defeated.
That’s why I often recommend to pastors that they shouldn’t start a prayer meeting. Instead, change your Sunday service. Don’t preach so long, and when the sermon is over, invite those who feel touched by the Word to come forward. Get your staff and your most spiritual people around you and pray. What is an “altar service”? It’s a mini prayer meeting.
After you condition people to those mini prayer meetings for a few weeks or months and the spirit of prayer begins to take hold, you might say, “You know what, folks, we have a lot of needs: unsaved family members or wayward sons and daughters, financial difficulties, sickness. On Wednesday nights we’re going to begin meeting so we can pray specifically for these needs.”
You bridge to a prayer meeting from a strong altar service.
Prayer is a gift from the Holy Spirit that you can’t work up. So give God time to work in people’s hearts, and then after they’ve experienced the joy and power of prayer, you can build on it.
What saps the spiritual power and prayer life of a church?
Two scriptural warnings are very important in our church: Don’t quench the Holy Spirit, and don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Christians can do things that hold back the Spirit’s work.
Whenever we receive new members into the church, my final charge to them is “Never slander or gossip about another member. If you ever hear somebody talking about a person not present, if you ever hear a critical word about a pastor of the church or a choir member or an usher, we charge and authorize you to stop that person in their tracks.
“Say to them, ‘Excuse me, has Pastor Cymbala hurt you? An usher hurt you? They’ll apologize. Come with me right now to the pastor’s office, or I’ll make an appointment for you. The pastor will bring whoever hurt you, and if necessary they’ll kneel before you and apologize. But we won’t permit talking behind their backs, slander, or gossip.’ “
We can’t be going to the prayer meeting and calling on God, “Lord, come in power!” and then during the week be grieving the Holy Spirit by gossip and phone calls. Of all the things that kill the Spirit’s power in churches, it’s talking.
In the midst of so much pain and need, how are you seeing the power of Christ help you minister to others?
At the end of one church service, a 50-ear-old, three-decade alcoholic named Victor walked forward to the altar area. I knew him fairly well. He lived in the parks.
His hair was matted, he’d been drinking. He had been in a fight with a cop and gotten hurt. The gauze on his hand was so filthy he would have been better off with none.
It was the end of our third Sunday service, and I was seated on the platform. I didn’t have the energy to get up to go to him, so I waved for him to come and sit beside me. As we were talking, I noticed a bulge in his ankle. I said, “Victor, what in the world . . .”
He pulled his pant leg higher, and his calf was so hideous I couldn’t look at it. It was like elephantitis.
“You’re going to die,” I said. “You’re going to die, Victor. You’re going to die!”
Victor just nodded.
I didn’t know what to do. So I held his hand and silently prayed, God, what do I do? I don’t even know how to pray. As I waited on God, I began to experience what Paul described: “I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
I began to weep, and then so did Victor. After we had sat holding hands and weeping for several minutes, I referred him to one of my associates. I never said a word in prayer.
But minutes later Victor committed his life to Christ, and he has never been the same. Somehow the truth we had told him so many times before about who Jesus was and what God could do finally got through to Victor. For the past three years now, he has worked for the church in the maintenance department.
If a church sincerely calls out to God week after week, “God, come and help us,” is it possible, is it feasible, that God will ignore that plea? I don’t think so. He’s drawn by that. His ear is always open to our cry.
Our prayers are an irresistible force. I’m not what I ought to be, our church isn’t all it should be, but there’s something about calling on God that changes everything.
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
