BOOK REVIEW: Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire: What Happens When God’s Spirit Invades the Heart of His People by Jim Cymbala with Dean Merrill. Grand Rapids. MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997.
This book tells the inside story of the amazing Brooklyn Tabernacle of Brooklyn, NY. When it was published back in 1997, its current lead pastor, Jim Cymbala, had already pastored there for twenty-five years. At that time, the famous Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir led by his wife, Carol, had already won several Grammy Awards. Hours and hours of their singing is found on YouTube and serves as a pattern for other choirs. It must be the most diverse of any choir on earth! Over 160 languages are spoken in the church.
Cymbala tells the secret of the uniqueness of the church: prayer. He tells how he heard God speak to him an incredibly special promise one day:
If you and your wife will lead my people to pray and call upon my name, you will never lack for something fresh to preach. I will supply all the money that’s needed, both for the church and for your family, and you will never have a building large enough to contain the crowds I will send in response. (25)
Tuesday night was selected as the night that the church would hold its prayer meeting.
Here is how he broke the news of this prayer-meeting decision to the church family:
“From this day on, the prayer meeting will be the barometer of our church. What happens on Tuesday night will be the gauge by which we will judge success or failure because that will be the measure by which God blesses us” (27)
Cymbala felt that he was “right on target” when his eyes saw a quote from over a hundred years earlier by Charles Spurgeon, the famous Baptist minister of England. Spurgeon had this to say about a praying church:
The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer. (28)
A second voice that spoke to Cymbala and that lended its support to the prayer effort was that of Andrew Bonar, a Scottish devotional writer who wrote in 1853, “God likes to see His people shut up to this, that there is no hope but in prayer. Herein lies the Church’s power against the world.” (29)
And did the prayer strategy work? Very well. New people began to come. Offerings increased to the point of being able to meet the mortgage payments, buying chairs to replace the antique pews, and paying for building repairs. Visitors felt God’s love for them and sometimes broke down during the singing. The choir grew. The church partnered with David Wilkerson’s Teen Challenge in its early days, and ex-gangster, Nicky Cruz, was a frequent guest. Over the years, Cymbala has also known other well-known ministers, such as Leonard Ravenhill and Ravi Zacharias. There has never been a decline in the church or a church split. People attend from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.
Cymbala articulates the wonderful prayer cycle of Brooklyn Tabernacle like this, “The more we pray, the more we sense our need to pray. And the more we sense a need to pray, the more we want to pray.” (50)
Brooklyn Tabernacle (BT) gained a reputation for its effective prayers. When the famed pastor and radio speaker, David Jeremiah, learned of his cancer diagnosis, he contacted BT for prayer. (54-55) He is still heard on the radio today. Here are his remarks about the trying time which he addressed when he later spoke at BT:
I called here as soon as I learned of my sickness because I knew of your emphasis on prayer. In fact, someone just greeted me in the lobby and remarked, “Pastor Jeremiah, we really cried out to God on your behalf.” That is why I called you. I knew your praying wouldn’t be just some mechanical exercise but a real calling out to God with passion for my need. And God brought me through the ordeal.
Cymbala teaches us God’s willingness to answer prayer with these words:
God is not aloof. He is not disconnected. He says continually through the centuries, “I’ll help you, I really will. When you don’t know where to turn, then turn to me. When you’re ready to throw up hour hands—throw them up to me. Put your voice behind them, too, and I’ll come and help you.”
THE LOST ART OF “CALLING UPON GOD”
Cymbala points to some obscure verses in scripture which quietly admonish us to call upon God:
- Beginning with Genesis 4:25-26 “At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.” (54)
- Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” (55)
- Deut. 4:7 “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?” (56)
- Psalm 4:3 “Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD will hear when I call to him.” (56)
- Psalm 14:4 “Will evildoers never learn—those who devour my people as men eat bread and who do not call on the LORD?” (57)
- For salvation, Acts 2:21 and Romans 1:12-13. (57)
- Psalm 50:15 “Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” (57, - italics mine)
Nothing could change their daughter’s mind. Finally, Jim quit trying to talk to her. But one night someone at the Tuesday night service felt that everyone should stop and pray for her. He agreed and felt the room become a labor room as actual groans went up for Christy. Two days later she appeared at their home in an extremely repentant frame of mind! Since the prayer meeting, she had had a dream of falling into an abyss but felt that God still loved her tremendously. She asked, “Who prayed for me Tuesday night?” (65) It was a miracle!
God’s faithfulness reigned as Carol was spared during this horrendous time from cancer, and she was given her beautiful song, “You’ve Been Faithful.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of_U3iNWUy8)
After chapter 4, Cymbala becomes less testimonial and more pastoral as he addresses different issues that he feels are hindrances to the church today, as well as through the centuries. His entire Part 2 is entitled “Diversions from God’s Best.”
Chapter 5 – Even Jesus got mad because God’s house was NOT being a house of prayer. (67) Mark 11:15-18
Part Two, Chapters 6-9, pp. 89-153.
- Chapter 6 – Watch out for Laodicean lukewarmness.
- Chapter 7 – The Lure of Novelty – Trendy ideas may not produce lasting results.
- Chapter 8 – The Lure of Marketing – Size and attendance are not everything. “The truth is that ‘user friendly’ can be a cover-up word for carnality.” (132)
- Chapter 9 – The Lure of Doctrine without Power – One text box expresses this thought like this: “In too many places where the Bible is being thumped and doctrine is being argued until three in the morning, the Spirit of that doctrine is missing.” (141)
Notice these remarks about the absence of the Holy Spirit:
“Isn’t it remarkable that only two of the seven churches of Revelation (Pergamum and Thyatira) were scolded for false doctrine? Far more common was a lack of spiritual vitality, of fervency, of closeness to the Lord. These are what the glorified Christ wanted to talk about most.”
- Chapter 10 – A good teaching on King Asa, (157-168).
- Chapter 11 – Ordinary Heroes – God uses David’s mighty men in I Chronicles 11 who did exploits for their king. An excellent recent, modern example is Father Nash, the prayer partner of Charles Finney who prayed behind the scenes for the results of the revival. (174-177)
ONE FINAL THOUGHT ON WEAKNESS:
II Corinthians 12:9-10 NIV “… ‘my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Cymbala describes many deficits he and his wife feel about leading a large church and choir. He had been focused on basketball, not preaching. She lacked musical training, and many choir members don’t read music at all. Cymbala adds his thoughts to Paul’s above:
“…I discovered an astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him. Our weakness, in fact, makes room for his power.” (19)
And David, the giant slayer, was a display of human weakness. “David’s weaponry was ridiculous…. God still uses foolish tools in the hands of weak people…we can accomplish the unthinkable.” (98)
ONE FINAL TESTIMONY TOO PRICELESS TO OMIT:
It is the story of a street bum named David. It happened Easter Sunday, 1992. (141-143) It is difficult to replicate this story and is better read word for word. Basically, Cymbala went from being repulsed from the stench of this homeless man to relishing it as he saw the man open up his soul toward the Savior. He [Cymbala] felt God’s gentle rebuke: “Jim, if you and your wife have any value to me, if you have any purpose in my work—it has to do with this odor. This is the smell of the world I died for.” (143)
David had just heard the testimony of a former, female drug addict and wanted the same Jesus that she had experienced. Cymbala looked past the odor, the shabby clothes, matted hair, and missing teeth to see a broken man grasping for his only hope, the new life and the new LOVE he was feeling that was reaching out to him. David plunged his head into Cymbala’s chest and prayed with him for God’s cleansing and healing. He went on to get his teeth fixed and become a husband, father, and overseer of the BT maintenance crew. His testimony carries a lot of weight.
Well, what a prayer challenge this book leaves with us! We should just do it to whatever degree our individual faith can muster!
NOTE: Past Tuesday night prayer meetings can be found online.