Prayer, preaching and praise at PRMI worship
By Robert P. Mills, The Layman Online, June 14, 2001
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A crowd that began with around 200 people and grew as the evening progressed gathered for Presbyterian-Reformed Ministries International’s annual General Assembly worship service, held Tuesday evening.
A significant number of board and staff members from Presbyterian Renewal Network organizations had come to join in worship. After recognizing their presence, Brad Long, PRMI’s executive director, began the evening with a time of prayer for these individuals and the groups they represented. Throughout the room, clusters of worshipers gathered to uphold these ministries with a time of intensive prayer.
Long then preached on John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” which, he said, answers three significant challenges that Western culture presents to the Church.
First, it reminds us that the gospel is good news for you and for me. Second, it assures us that Jesus is the way. Third, although some declare that a lifestyle characterized by same-gender sex is not a sin, we must live our lives as Jesus taught us to live.
To illustrate these points, Long told three stories “that have convinced me that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life.”
The first challenge is, “Is this for us?” Long answered, “Yes. I can tell you that because the Bible tells me that and because I’ve experienced it.” He then shared the powerful story of his own conversion while a student at Davidson College.
Addressing the second question, “Is Jesus the only savior of all the people of all the world, or is he one of many?” Long said, “I’m convinced he is the only way from the Bible, my own experience, and because I’m a cross-cultural missionary who has seen Jesus bring people of all faiths to himself.”
He told of witnessing to a Buddhist monk in the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas in Taiwan. “I watched that man, a true seeker of the true God, come alive. I ended up giving him my Chinese Bible. He pushed it to his heart and said, ‘Thank you.'”
“If I’d been a Baptist,” Long said, “I’d have closed in and sealed the deal. But I’m a Presbyterian, so I just gave him the Word and left.”
Addressing the third challenge, Long began, “This last story hurts.” At a conference in Orlando, ” a Haitian in a wheelchair, dying of AIDS, asked me to tell him about Jesus.” Long shared Jesus’ love and forgiveness, and “I watched the dawn of salvation in his eyes. It happened in the name of Jesus, not the name of Sophia. It was Jesus loving that man through me.”
“This is the gospel we’ve been given. It’s Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life and the only way to the Father. Jesus says if we profess him, he will acknowledge us to the Father because he is the way to salvation, the only way. If we do that, he will take care of all the rest.”
“How are you going to make the profession to the world?” Long concluded. “There is only one way. That’s by joining the one whose passion is announcing the one way to the Father, the Holy Spirit. The river of life runs only in the kingdom of God. It flows from the throne of God. Only the Holy Spirit takes us into it, through Jesus Christ, crucified, resurrected, alive forevermore.”
Following the sermon, the gathering moved into a time of praise and worship led by Rod and Karen Woods of Troy, Mo.