Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom.
So many today are worshiping in the mountains, big churches, stone and frame buildings. But Jesus teaches that salvation is not in these stone structures-not in the mountains-not in the hills, but in God.
Prayer has mighty power to move mountains because the Holy Spirit is ready both to encourage our praying and to remove the mountains hindering us.
Oh, for five hundred Elijahs, each one upon his Carmel , crying unto God, and we should soon have the clouds bursting into showers. Oh, for more prayer, more constant, incessant prayer! Then the blessing would rain upon us.
Before practicing meditation, we see that mountains are mountains. When we start to practice, we see that mountains are no longer mountains. After practicing a while, we see that mountains are again mountains. Now the mountains are very free. Our mind is still with the mountains, but it is no longer bound to anything.
So how do you make it as a mainstream entertainer? Who knows? But I think you have to be uncomfortable, right? You have to make yourself uncomfortable. All success stories depend on that. That's why I might start sleeping on hardwood floors and taking cold showers.
What does it say about our churches today that God birthed the church in a prayer meeting, and prayer meetings today are almost extinct?
At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion?
The high mountains are barren, but the low valleys are covered over with corn; and accordingly the showers of God's grace fall into lowly hearts and humble souls.
This much is sure in all churches, forgetting party labels; the smallest meeting numerically is the prayer-meeting. If weak in prayer we are weak everywhere.
For the Indian,dance is a personal form of prayer. When the Eagle Dancer puts on his costume,when he begins to dance to the music,he doesn't simply perform it; he actually becomes the eagle itself. The dancer is virtually inseparable from the dance.
Temples and churches have become social centers. They have lost their original purpose because the minds of the people are more attracted to worldly things than to prayer. The lips repeat the prayer mechanically like a phonograph record, but the mind wanders to other places. (23-24)
Krishna Raj is being made into 17-18 floors, and all the floors will be with Rishi's family; it's not for sale.
The churches that are growing and thriving are churches that I would call evangelical and orthodox for the most part in their beliefs. They are churches that tend to evangelize ... and encourage their people to share their faith. These are the churches that are actually growing. The ones that are shrinking are the ones that are compromising and watering down what the word of God says.
Prayer is like practicing the piano or ballet or writing: you have to bring your body for a very long time, in spite of your body’s frailties and conflicts and general revolt, and then one day your body is not separate any more. You’ve in a sense become the piano or the dance or the word or the prayer. The prayer is in your heart. The prayer is your heart.
All right prayer has good effect, but if you give your whole life to the prayer you multiply its power... No one really knows the full power of prayer. Of course, there is a relationship between prayer and action. Receptive prayer result in an inner receiving, which motivates to right action.