1 = Loony; 3 = Cult

The weekly prayer meetings at my church are impressing me a lot more than the sermons these days. The sermons are generally good, but they are aimed at a fairly weak group of Christians, many of whom will pack up and go home if they don’t hear what they want to hear. The prayer meetings tend to attract people who really want to advance in their relationships with God.

Even the prayer meetings suffer from a Gideon effect. If someone who is highly placed in the church shows up, attendance is higher than it is the rest of the time. On the weekends when a less-prominent person leads the meeting, attendance falls steeply. Someone let me know that this happens because people show up to score political points. I didn’t realize it because I don’t think in terms of butt-kissing. By the time I realize there is a butt-kissing opportunity, the butt has usually left the building with its entourage.

I call it the Gideon effect because it pares the group down to a small but effective group of people, the way God pared Gideon’s army down. I don’t know if the purpose is the same; God sent most of Gideon’s soldiers home because he wanted everyone to know that Gideon and his men were not numerous enough to win without divine help. I don’t think that’s what God is doing with my group. Still, it works out the same. Nine people one week, three the next.

This week we ended up with the only three people in the whole church (that I know of) who pay any attention to me when I say prayer in tongues is extremely powerful and that it is the most important activity in a Christian’s life. I’m one of those people, so you can see how my ministry is growing. Next year there might be five of us! Pardon my foolish pride. I dream big.

One of these guys is an unemployed construction worker who boxes professionally. He’s a wonderful guy, but he does not get a lot of respect at church. He’s eccentric, and he gets excited easily, even by charismatic standards. Quite frankly, some people think he’s nuts. They are not completely without justification, but I think his extraordinary zeal, which is an asset, makes weaker Christians think he’s a little off. It’s funny, we tell each other to BELIEVE, BELIEVE, BELIEVE, but when we run into a guy who takes us seriously, we tell each other, “Keep an eye on that nut.”

I’ve talked to him a lot, and my take is that he is one hundred percent sold out to God. I think he’s the real thing. And it’s wrong to sell him short. He’s not a highly educated person, but sometimes he’ll show up at just the right time and tell you exactly what you need to hear. That quality comes from God. People do not appreciate him. I get a lot more good out of him than I do from a lot of people I know who are successful and stable.

In our prayer meetings, he has caused a certain amount of disruption. Sometimes he would come in and talk more than he should. He has a lot of problems, and earlier this year, he was very discouraged. He would come in and tell us how hard Christianity is, and how you have to struggle and fight. I kept trying to get him to try tongues, to build himself up and change his outlook and his character, and to get God’s power moving in his life.

A few weeks back, he came to the meeting in a bad state, and we tried to help him, and at the end, I told him not to bother me any more unless he had been praying in tongues. At the next meeting, I gave him a kitchen timer I didn’t like. I bought it a long time ago, for things like prayer, music practice, and cooking, and it was aggravating to use. One day it occurred to me that it would work very well for my friend, and I would be rid of it, so I turned it over to him and told him to do what I did: set it to three minutes and pray in tongues. Every day. I told him his life would change.

After that, when I saw him at church, he would tell me it was working. He felt peace. Things were getting better. He was increasing the prayer time.

Yesterday, he got up and spoke at the meeting, and it was one of the weirdest things I had ever seen. We used to teach him. Yesterday, he taught us. We used to try to get him to shut up. Now I wanted to listen. He had been getting revelation from the Holy Spirit. He spoke so wisely, it was almost creepy. And he looked different! You would have to know him to understand. There is a strange radiance and look of well-being you get from praying in tongues a lot. They say my great grandmother’s face used to shine from it. I’ve seen it in the mirror. It makes you look younger.

I know it sounds crazy, but it was as if God had made my friend smarter. And I suppose that’s possible. I’ve always felt that in the Bible, the word “wisdom” usually does not refer to intelligence. But sometimes it does. And the word of wisdom is one of the gifts you get from prayer in tongues. James said God would give us wisdom if we asked for it. Maybe God makes people brighter, not just better informed.

It gets even stranger. I didn’t realize how much impact I had had on the third member of the party, my friend Alonzo. He said he had been hitting the tongues hard, too. This explains all the wise things he has been coming up with. He has been freaking me out for quite some time now.

The three of us started talking about carnality in our church. There are things holding the church back. It amazed me to see how we agreed. In the past, I would sit at prayer meetings and do my best to get a few words in on behalf of the Holy Spirit, while other people talked about hard work and self-improvement, which are relatively worthless things compared to the power of the Holy Spirit. Yesterday, I didn’t really need to talk at all! Both of my friends were saying things I already knew. And we kept confirming each other. We were in “one accord”! Sound familiar?

The Holy Spirit is the nervous system of the body of Christ. I say that all the time. Jesus is the brain. When we are not in harmony with each other, it’s because we’re not praying in tongues and increasing the Holy Spirit’s power in us. Yesterday I got a taste of what it was like to be part of a body in which the nervous system worked properly.

The Holy Spirit is what makes life work. Haven’t you noticed that human effort doesn’t work? Diets don’t work. Exercise plans don’t work. New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Self-help books don’t work. Therapy doesn’t work. Marriage counseling doesn’t work. Christian teaching that doesn’t involve using the power of the Holy Spirit doesn’t work. MOST Christian teaching doesn’t work (because it’s stuff we made up). God designed us to be plugged into his power outlet. Without it, your efforts have about as much impact as an air ratchet that isn’t hooked up to a compressor.

I know people will retort that the things I criticized DO work. Sure, they work. SOMETIMES. With LIMITATIONS. With COSTS. TEMPORARILY. The general rule is that the things we do to change our lingering problems don’t get us very far in the long run. The Holy Spirit works, works, WORKS. No hidden costs. No strings attached. No unforeseen consequences, except for good ones.

I get so tired of soulish “teachers” telling me and my friends how to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Have you ever thought about that expression? It’s intended to be witty; it’s not supposed to be taken seriously. The whole point of the expression is to show us that we can’t lift ourselves up without help. Try pulling your bootstraps and see what happens. It’s a joke, yet people say “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” in complete seriousness. God never intended us to pull ourselves up. He intended us to allow him to pull us up.

If one more preacher tries to sell me a stupid book, DVD, or seminar full of brilliant self-help tips that don’t involve God’s power, I think I may do something that will give me a great chance to start a prison ministry. From inside.

What if Jesus had stood around handing out pamphlets entitled “How to Think Your Way Out of Paralysis and Blindness”? He would have died rich (from running seminars), nobody anywhere would have been healed, and we’d all be going to hell. Yet we pay good money to preachers who tell us that positive thinking and hard work will get us where we want to be. Blind guides. They never got there themselves, but they make money selling other people maps!

I’m not saying that everyone who prays in tongues will have a perfect life. You can always overcome the Holy Spirit’s guidance if you want to. You can remain unimproved. Perry Stone knew a Klansman who prayed in tongues. But it seems pretty clear that if you DON’T pray in tongues, you are not going to develop the way you should.

We’re talking about forming our own prayer group now, so we can focus more on the Holy Spirit.

I have the feeling that I should buy 5 timers and put out a challenge to the people I know: take a timer and pray in the Spirit every day for three minutes, and get back to me after one week. Give me and the rest of us your testimony. I think I’m going to get some timers this week.

Obviously, you don’t need a timer, but it’s a helpful tool.

I think there are certain people who can be reached, and I should be content with them. If that is correct, I would be in the same boat as people like Jesus and Moses, who never succeeded in getting the whole flock to go through the gate.

Fascinating stuff. It amazes me more and more all the time.

Geez, I wanted to write about the guitar. I guess I can cram it in at the end.

Today I took my homemade amp to church and let my young musician friends check it out. What a blast. We have some extraordinary talents in my church, and I am trying to help them in any way I can. I don’t want to see them end up working in grocery stores. My interests in music and electronics are really helping.

My young friend Zach is an incredible blues guitarist and singer. He fired my amp up on the church stage and tried it out, and it sounded wonderful. We’re going to build a Super Reverb clone. The church’s rhythm guitarist is named Joe; he’s also a very talented singer. I tried to get him to try it out, but it can be hard to get a rhythm guitarist to play after a soloist! He says he wants to build an amp, too. Another guy is rebuilding a Strat, so we may end up collaborating.

Yesterday I finished my second amp, a “Powerman.” It doesn’t work yet. I put it together in a blur of flying tools and wires and components. I really amazed myself. And of course, I did something wrong, and now I have to find it.

The guitar is going extremely well. I’m learning to slow the music down in my head and really get my heart behind my fingers. That brings smoothness and speed.

I’ve been trying to play the intro to “I Know a Little” as well as Steve Gaines played it. Actually, that’s wrong. I’ve been trying to play it better than he did. I didn’t realize it until today. I listened to him playing, and I realized that the sound I have in my head–the sound I’m aiming for–is better than what he achieved in the studio. There are some parts he doesn’t play perfectly. That’s amazing, given that I’m so close to conquering them. He had endless takes in a studio, and presumably, he used the best one, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to beat it.

I’ve got a modified pick design that gives me unbelievable speed, control, and tone. I’m getting my amps to do what I want. The Chinese Epiphone has an action that beats any other guitar I’ve tried, and the new pickups and heavy strings make it sound fantastic. I’m going to win. It’s not that far off.

I don’t know where I’m going, but someone else does, and he speaks it through me every day. All of this stuff is going to turn out to be worthwhile and rewarding. You can’t get that from Anthony Robbins in sheep’s clothing. You can’t get that from Tom Cruise.

That’s all I got for now. I hope it will be useful to someone.