“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” This often-used quote by Martin Luther, leader of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, has been cited by ministry leaders of nearly every denominational ilk for the past 500 years.
But in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Christians and non-Christians alike have literally turned to prayer as a matter of life or death.
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It just shows how helpless man is without God,” says Jim Cymbala, pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City.
“When props are knocked away, you feel your need for the Lord more, and that’s what’s happening to us,” Cymbala says. “God is knocking away a lot of props that we’ve had that sometimes take us away from true communion with the Lord.”
Cymbala senses God is using the crisis to cause the church to draw nearer to Him in prayer, resulting in a sifting and purging of “stuff that shouldn’t be in our lives or churches.”
“We’ll come out of this stronger and more fervent, and maybe a little of the chaff will be separated from the wheat, and the Christian church will be purified,” he says.
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