David:     When your congregation comes together for its next service of worship, what are the chances that the risen Christ will be there as well?

Karen:     Well, the chances are, could that the risen Christ will be there. However, not bodily.

David:     Okay.

Karen:     Most Christians affirm that his spirit will be present when they meet together, but he will not take on a bodily form like when he walked on this earth.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains  and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen:     We’re in a series exploring what it would be like if the resurrected Christ were to visit a church, much like he did with his disciples following his crucifixion. According to the Gospel of Luke, when this happened, the disciples saw they saw a ghost. And so, Jesus said to them…

David:     “Why are you troubled and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and feet. A ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

Karen:     So, we’re in an extended series in which we’re discussing what our church services would be like if Jesus bodily made his presence known, like he did for his disciples following the resurrection.

David:     Last time we got together on this podcast, we talked about what people’s first response would be if Jesus suddenly appeared in the flesh in church. And what did we conclude?

Karen:     Well, I think we said for sure one of the things that people would do, they would enter into worship.

David:     Worship means to attribute worth to deity.

Karen:     They would begin to say, “Oh my goodness, can it be? Is it? Oh, look at the hands.”

David:     You know, they fall to their knees.

Karen:     I think that would be one of the first reactions. Not maybe the only one, but one of the first reactions is to say, “Oh, can this really be happening?” You know that overwhelming sense of awe and trying to respond in some sort of human way.

David:     He wouldn’t even have to speak just knowing that he’s there and being convinced of it. Not a ghost.

Karen:     Yeah, not a ghost.

David:     That would be quite a thing, wouldn’t it?

Karen:     Of course, theologically we’re taught that Jesus said, “Where two or three of you are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of you.” But I have this terrible feeling that we do church, we go to church, we’re Christian and our spiritual ideology, and yet we don’t think about Christ very much, His person very much. We’re filled with Scripture and just all of these things, they become routine. They’re good in themselves, but we haven’t made a practice of saying, “Is Christ present? Is He present in my day?”

David:     I think, Karen, is the gulp factor is not there anymore.

Karen:     Yeah, the gulp factor. We’re told that Jesus said that he had to leave because then the Holy Spirit would come. And of course, the Holy Spirit is the inward manifestation that is given to every believer. And that is the presence in the person of Christ in that form. But I think the theology of this is not much examined in our lives.

David:     Well, we’re examining it now and we said that worship would immediately be the response of people. They would be on their knees. I think in the ways they know that would be simple. People would begin to sing. And they wouldn’t sing songs about evangelism butt sing songs of worship.

Karen:     Yeah, the praise music they know.

David:     Yeah, and praise music is a big part of the songs that go on in terms of churches all across the land. And that’s a commendable thing. I’m glad for it. Okay, if Jesus bodily visited your church this Sunday, we also believe many would stand patiently in line waiting for the opportunity of speaking briefly with Him. If I were the minister, I imagine myself saying, obviously, “This is a huge privilege that we have today. I’m not going to preach. We’re just going to stop and let’s line up because a lot of you have wanted the opportunity to speak with His Majesty. And we’re going to allow for that. Those of you who have special needs, you may want to come first, but I think all of us want to have this privilege.” And so, I’m going to picture it in your mind, can’t you?

Karen:     Well, and I think there would be this lovely, no-you-go-first. Because we know often, not always, the things that the people in our congregation are struggling with in their lives. There may be a cancer, for instance, that’s growing and a death sentence for all purposes has been pronounced. And that person needs to go first and ask for Christ’s healing power in their lives. Then as we’re waiting in line behind that and watching those things ahead of us happen, more thoughts come to our mind as far as what we would like to say to Jesus. Some of us just want to nod his feet.

David:     Some people might want to leave, too.

Karen:     There are some people who would leave, I think, because they don’t want to be faced with the things that His truthfulness would face them with.

David:     I’m sure that they’re good people, but where they happen to be at the time, they’re not feeling comfortable being there with Jesus’ presence, being so obvious.

Karen:     I had a moment of truth. I’ve kept a prayer journal for 45 years. They are on three-ring lined notebooks, but I’ve never gone back over them, and so I’ve been kind of ordering our lives, trying not to leave a total mess for our kids in case something would happen to us, and we would die. So, I thought, okay, well, I need to know what to do with these, and I’ll just toss them. I don’t want the kids to worry about this. And I said, “Oh no, I should read through them.” It’s been an extraordinary journey into my past and to the things we were praying about. I mean every journal…

David:     And you called me and said…

Karen:     “Listen to this.” But one of the things I noticed was that in my middle years, I’m 80, I think I was much more passionate about wanting the presence of Christ in my life. I would go out to the little church where we attended that had sacramental services, and I would pray for an hour and a half every week. Kneeling at the railing, they had a cross above the altar, and I would kneel there, and it was just an extraordinary time of being with the Lord. And then I felt like in those journals, there was a record of fasting, and spiritual exercises that have fallen away from me. And of course, I can’t food fast because I have an underweight problem, so that has dropped off. But I think the urgency about the immediacy of His presence, because of my age, and because we walked with the Lord so long, and we’re not pastoring…

David:     …Or the marvelous mystery of it all.

Karen:     I think that I am not as urgent in needing to have those things in my life. So, it was a good reading to go through. And then the question I’m asking myself, “Are you practicing a Christianity without Christ being in it?” We would all say, “Oh no, no, of course not.” But I think a lot of us do that.

We get into the formulas and the formations, but we don’t wake up in the morning saying, “I get to spend this day in your presence. Holy Spirit, activate yourself through me in a way that I can become more righteous, that I can become more loving, that I’m more sensitive to what’s going around me than getting my list all done.”

David:     I would look back on my life. I didn’t keep a journal like you do. I did keep a journal for a long time, but not the details of how I was praying and so on.

Karen:     You wrote in a journal, but you just don’t have stacks of them. I’ve kept mine whereas you tossed yours after you were done with it.

David:     That’s fair. I would say that my prayer life is much stronger now than it was before. I think I was more of an activist. Now I’m able to spend a lot of time with the Lord. I would say two times a day and those usually involve an hour, hour and a half.

Karen:     I think that’s one of the gifts of age in our place in life. I mean, it’s extraordinary. David, I’m not bragging on anyone. I’m just saying that this is the reality. You do spend a couple hours every day in prayer.

David:     It’s a great privilege. And my health is good. I can fast, but I don’t. I think even you making that little mention is a good reminder to me. There’s a whole new level I could take things to. It doesn’t sound attractive to me, but maybe it’s essential to me.  So anyway, let’s go on with other thoughts we had because…

Karen:     If Christ came to our church bodily.

David:     So, we’ve said if people would worship Him, and then the second thing I think we’d say is that they would immediately want to be able to talk to Him. And we say, “talk to Him,” we’re talking about what in the church language would be prayer. I want to be able to open my heart to you, Jesus, if you would put it that way. And we said people lined up. They would be very patient. If you think somebody would eventually say, “You know, we’ve been here now two hours longer than normal, could somebody do a McDonald’s run?” I’d say, “No, forget it. Don’t even bring it up.”

Karen:     Don’t. I think that the opportunity to meet with Him in His presence would be so overwhelming that you don’t want to leave. You don’t want to miss this opportunity. I think that I’m even feeling that now. Why would you walk out because you had something else in your day? You just would be there. You don’t know when this is going to happen again.

David:     Forget the football even if your team is on the top of the world. Yeah, oh my goodness.

Karen:     Can I make one suggestion?  I think this would be an extraordinary exercise for people who go to church and go to church regularly and are faithful to say, “Why am I doing this? Am I going this morning so that I can meet Christ?”

Where two or three are gathered together in His name, with the reality of that promise just blossoming in my soul that, He says He will be in the midst of us. And so, it’s up to us to go with that seeking heart, to go with that reality reminder and then to sit there and say, “Jesus is here even though I can’t see Him. I have to act as I’m sitting here beginning to worship as though He were here. What changes would that make in my practice?”

David:     Let me read from a book and put it in the context of the great need for a moving of God’s Holy Spirit. This is from a book called America’s Great Revivals.

On a bleak and wintry day in 1794, 23 New England ministers sat down together to consider a problem that was pressing heavily upon them. They were disturbed about the spiritual condition of their country.

I think we can identify that.

Here was the situation. The effects of the Great Awakening of 1735 had worn off. So now their meeting is 1794. The seeds of infidelity imported from Revolutionary France and watered by such men as Thomas Paine were yielding their poisonous fruit. Eastern colleges were rife with the skepticism of the age. Lawlessness ruled on the Western frontier. People were floundering in the bog of confusion created by the French and Indian War and Revolution. There were few churches, a few people praying. The established churches, most of whom had sided with England in the struggle for independence, had lost their influence.

These ministers were agreed on one thing. A revival was desperately needed. What shall we do about it? They asked themselves. The only answer, pray.

They issued a circular letter calling on church people to pray for revival. They were specific that there be, “ public prayer and praise accompanied with such instruction from God’s Word as might be judged proper on the first Tuesday of the four quarters of the year, beginning with the first Tuesday of January 1795 at two o’clock in the afternoon.” And so continuing from quarter to quarter and from year to year until the good providence of God prospering our endeavors, we shall obtain the blessing for which we pray.

Apparently, hearts were hungry for there was enthusiastic response. All over the country, little praying bands sprang up. In the West, which would have been Ohio then, Kentucky, Tennessee, covenants were entered into by Christian people to spend a whole day each month in prayer plus a half hour every Saturday night and every Sunday morning.

Seminary students met to study the history of revivals. Church members formed Aaron and Hur Societies to hold up the hands of their ministers through intercession. Groups of young men went to their knees to pray for other young men. Parents prayed for their children’s conversion. And the stage was set for what happened as a result of these concerted prayers has gone down as the most far-reaching revival in American history.

We’re talking about the second great awakening after the turn of the century. This thing just came sweeping in once again like the first great awakening it had been. Reading things like that stirs my heart and it says it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t that organized, it probably made certain people gulp and say, how in the world am I going to do that?

Karen:     They didn’t have the internet.

David:     And I’m sure that a lot of times when they say they prayed all day, they didn’t pray 24 hours straight through, but they were in a prayer mode all the day through. But this was a phenomenal change then that came in the country. And I think we’re coming to that place where this has to happen pretty soon and God’s people are once again brought to their knees and say, “Lord you have to make your presence known in a special way.” And I’m sure that Jesus isn’t going to come bodily and be at a given church and then another church and then another church is going to be that by faith people recognize the presence of God and pray accordingly.

Karen:     Yeah, and it seems to me that in every spiritual, I call them re-genesis, movements of re-genesis, there is that feeling of the Lord is among us. I mean you hear that; we felt the presence of God or the Lord. I think that is part of the reporting that goes on all the time from people who’ve been in those circumstances. And David if there was ever a time when this country needed this kind of prayer effort, I would say this is one of those days. It’s just appalling the collapse of decency, the collapse of morality. I would go on and on. But this is a time to begin doing this kind of prayer.

David:     When you look back on your life, I’ve almost gotten to nine decades down and you have eight. I look back on the church and I see from my own experience anyway that the church was a much more on its knee’s movement.

Karen:     Our Baptist church, where I was raised, they had regular Wednesday night prayer meetings. I think that was common all over the country.

David:     Yes, it was. I was raised in southern Illinois up through high school. And yeah, no question there were times when the pastor called the people to pray. And that was taken seriously. And it wouldn’t be as big as the Sunday morning congregation, but it would be a substantial number of people. When I went away to college, I remember going to the church there and to the prayer times there and I remember some of the lay people and how they prayed that still is a keen memory. Then Karen, I was very fortunate after I got through with my formal schooling I went to work with Youth for Christ and those guys in Youth for Christ prayed all the time. It was amazing. In fact, they had all night prayer meetings. I don’t think I ever made it through a whole night prayer but that wasn’t unusual for them to say we’re at a time we think we need to call them an all-night prayer meeting. I can name the people. I can almost hear their voices as they’re praying, and I think that day is not with us anymore. And yet somehow this is the day like that group of 23 New England ministers saying, “We need to do something special here and we need to make this our focus.”

Karen:     You’ve had a weekly prayer group. And there are people from all over the country. They’ve been praying for a re-genesis in our country.

David:     It’s the highlight of my whole week.

Karen:     Is it really?

David:     Yes, I look forward to it very much. I’ve learned so much. I’m probably the one who has the most formal education in terms of spiritual things, but these people are my teachers in many ways. And I listen to them. And in fact, usually Ron who’s in charge of it, he’ll say, “Who wants to begin praying?” I like to go first. I like to hear the others pray because it puts me in a mood to pray then. Maybe they feel the same way. It’s usually not a problem. And if it is a problem Ron will just call someone up. And there have been times he said, “David why don’t you pray?” And I say, “My mind isn’t it yet. Could somebody else do it please?” Then it’s time to pray but those are wonderful moments for me.

Karen:     Do you feel the spirit of Christ in those prayer times?

David:     Yeah, you know, and it would be easy to miss that when you’re talking on the telephone because you lose the visual and the visual is important but, in some ways, maybe it’s not important.

Karen:     Not as important? Maybe sometimes.

David:     I hear the voices. I know the phrases. Many times, I will stop while they’re doing their prayer. And I will stop and write on them because I said that’s a neat phrase. And I don’t mean it as an acting thing.

Karen:     It’s a moving thing too.

David:     Yeah. It’s moving. That has leverage I think with the Lord. And I want to use that sometime. And I can easily say that was something that so and so said. Mark prays a lot of times in an unusual way in that he identifies with the problems. He feels in his own life and it’s not a superficial thing, it’s very real. Bob when he prays, he doesn’t pray like anybody else prays. But he’s kind of like he’s got caught by the throat. Grabbing his shirt say, “Are you listening to me or not? I don’t understand this. How come?”

It is a very wonderful experience. I can see this without even sermons necessarily. Just bringing a whole new infusion of life to the church. If that could happen all across the country on a regular basis.

Karen:    So, I’d like to emphasize this suggestion that this Sunday or Saturday, whenever you go to church, as people get ready to go to church, they prepare themselves by saying maybe have a car that you pull out, tape to the back door whoever your car if you’re driving over. I am going to church to meet with the real presence of Christ.

David:     Not a ghost.

Karen:     Not a ghost, not an idea, not a thought, but the real presence of Christ. And I’m going to pray that we will know his presence in our church this coming day.

David:     That would be wonderful. I mean when people come to the church, they’re greeting one another and there’s a great sense of love and that’s all very beautiful.

Karen:     And you’ve hustled and bustled to get there and it can be kind of frantic getting off to church in the morning.

David:     Yeah. Okay we’re trying to get a feel for what would happen if Jesus came bodily. We know that’s not going to happen. He will come bodily someday when he returns in power and great glory. But in a given local church this Sunday after Sunday, he’s not going to be there physically but he will be there by his spirit. If it helps us to imagine it in a physical sense, then fine. We will use that as a spiritual aid. There’s nothing wrong. God has given us our imagination. And we’ll talk further next week. I would say specifically where we will take this, but I got three that I’m working with. And I don’t know which one I want to choose to be the emphasis we’re talking about.

Karen:     So, we’re still in process here.

David:     There we are, yes. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your faithfulness as well.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address,  hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2023 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.