Rocky Cape Christian Community

The Moravian community at Herrnhut, Oberlausitz, Germany, as seen from the Hutberg where a "Hundred Year Prayer Meeting" began in 1727. 

  
Quite likely, if you are an Evangelical believer, you have heard how refugees from Moravia settled at Herrnhut in Germany in the 1720s, and how a revival among them spread quickly -- all obstacles notwithstanding -- around the world. Perhaps you have also read in Behold the Lamb how those unforgettable events at Herrnhut produced a chain of intercessory prayer that lasted over a century (and that continues in many places around the world today):
 
On July 16, a great young people’s gathering on the Hutberg turned into an all-night prayer meeting. The next week a group of men — including Christian David, Melchior Nitschmann, Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Leonhard Dober (a potter who had come to Herrnhut from southern Germany) and others — gathered at the same place and their prayers turned into a joyful time of praise and commitment. . . .
 
The meeting . . . did not end when the women put the little ones to bed. Fifteen men sat on the lower slopes of the Hutberg discussing Christ and his Gospel until long after the fireflies came out and the day’s heat gave way to a balmy summer night. As at other times, they prayed and sang. But instead of dwindling off into village homes as the night wore on, the group began to grow. More and more brothers, and eventually sisters, appeared. No one had to explain. The Lamb was there. Prayers, confessions, tears and songs continued until nearly the whole settlement, standing at the burial ground on the slopes of the Hutberg greeted the morning sun with David’s words: “He is the sun of righteousness that arises with resplendant grace!"
 
* * * * *
 
Prayer.
 
Has anything good ever come without it?
 
I do not think so. And I do not think that most people reading my book Behold the Lamb have paid enough attention to what made those prayers on the Hutberg so powerful.
 
A number of years ago a strange man and his family walked into our meetinghouse on a Sunday morning. To our surprise he began to pray loudly, soon after the meeting began. Before long he was weeping and howling, crying like a baby at times, pleading with God for revival, repeating himself over and over. It went on for fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour and longer. Finally, when he stopped briefly to catch his breath after close to an hour, one of our older brothers (John D. Martin) slipped a word in edgewise, the congregation got up, and we all went home feeling like we had been at the theatre or at the circus instead of a worship meeting. 
 
Several times here in Australia we have had such wandering men of prayer stop in. Just recently one of them came and within half an hour of his arrival he let me know that he gets up very early to pray. He carried his red hard-covered Bible with him all the time and paused frequently to read it. Even though he worked part of the time he was here (not on what we asked him to do, but whatever he felt like) he frequently slipped off for an hour or two, or half a day or longer, to pray. Finally, when I took him to town to catch a ride to the next place he wanted to stay, he shared his last words of advice to us. "You need to pray more," he told me. "I know you have your daily Gebetsstunden (prayer meetings), but you need to pray oftener, during the day. Just get together for an hour or two, in the kitchen, at work, wherever you are, and cry out to God until he sends you revival."
 
This man gave me a list of things he felt our community needs to plead with God for, but he closed on a positive note. "At least you can do what most of the rest of us cannot," he told me. "You are always together. You can pray anytime. For the rest of us who live scattered around, and who have jobs at different times of the day, it is nearly impossible just to arrange a meeting time. . . ."
 
* * * * *
 
He was right. Christian communities (like Herrnhut) have unique opportunities to give themselves to prayer. But many of them don't. And in the ones that do, taking time out for prayer may cause a lot more harm than good.
 
Two hundred years ago our people, still living in Russia, already ran into diffulties with a prayer champion -- a person who prays better than all the rest and who sets out to bring his gift to the world.  
 
His name was Matthias Hofer (Hiessl Vetter, they called him), and he came as a convert from Kärnten in southern Austria.
 
As soon as the little group of believers, the last remnant of the Hutterites living in what is now western Romania, met Matthias they identified him as far more than your average Christian. "He knew the whole Bible like the rest of us know the Vaterunser (Lord's Prayer)," wrote one of the brothers. He could say by memory every chapter of the Bible in which God was directly addressed. He knew the book of Psalms by memory. Not only did he write many prayers and hymns, in his beautiful handwriting he also made copies of all the old books (Anabaptist books from 200 years earlier) he could find.
 
Many new believers found great encouragement in Matthias's example. He was a loving, spiritually-minded brother, and after his baptism and marriage to Rosina Bichler (his first wife had died), they chose him to be a Zeugbruder (witness brother) of the new community in Russia.
 
Matthias Hofer's spirituality never stood still. Always seeking, always learning new truths, he progressed "from glory to glory." When he meditated on Psalm 119:62, "at midight I will rise to give him thanks," he developed the conviction to get up every night to pray. Not only that, he persuaded the entire community to get up with him. He wanted everyone to gather in the meetinghouse three times a day for prayer, and once at midnight. When that proved too difficult for the families with young children, he settled for having two brothers make a round, waking everyone, and to have one mature believer (like himself) praying loudly enough for all the rest to follow while kneeling in their rooms.
 
The next conviction Matthias developed was not to sing or pray while working. Up to this time many of the brothers and sisters had been praying quietly by themselves, and many loved to sing while hoeing the garden, feeding the livestock, or washing clothes. "That does not fit together," Matthias declared. "When we enter the presence of God we must be reverent. We must stop our work, take a time apart, and sing or pray as is fitting."
 
Then he concluded it was wrong to eat or drink between meals. "Just like we pray together," he reasoned, "we need to eat and drink together in the presence of God." The brothers, especially young boys working in the fields during threshing time, found this impossible. They felt like they would die of thirst if they got nothing to drink. More and more people began to complain and feel unhappy with Matthias's convictions. But he only prayed longer and shared more of what God was revealing to him.
 
At first a few of the older brothers still questioned Matthias and tried to reason with him, but he knew the Bible so well, he could talk so convincingly, and he prayed and fasted so much no-one dared to oppose him. Was he a special messenger from God? Nearly everyone considered that possibility -- nearly everyone, that is, except three brothers, Paul, Veit and Martin Glanzer.
 
The Glanzer brothers, with some support from Johannes Stahl and old Joseph Kuhr, steadfastly refused to accept Matthias's ideas, and a division separated the believers in two camps. The Glanzer group started looking for a new place to live, but in the end, common sense prevailed, and when Matthias insisted it was sinful to say "Good Morning" or "Good Day" to an unbeliever, the entire group saw where the thing was heading.
 
Reunited in the Spirit of Christ and deciding once more to live by historic precedent, they turned from Matthias' unbalanced convictions back to holding one Gebetsstund (prayer hour) a day. Matthias was horrified and angry. He ran away from what he considered the apostate community but the Russian police caught him and brought him back. Then he disappeared into the bush to pray, alone.
 
After several days the brothers went out looking for him. "He must be very hungry," they reasoned, "or if he has died, the least we can do is bury him."
 
They found Matthias in a physically weakened state but still as zealous as ever. Not knowing what to do with him they gave him money and clothes and helped him off in the direction of Brest-Litovsk and Poland.
 
Several months later, after spending a time in gaol, Matthias Hofer came wandering into a Mennonite settlement in West Prussia, near what is now the city of Elbing (Elblag) in Poland. The Mennonite elder, Geert Wiebe, took him into his house, cared for him, and wrote a beautiful letter to the Hutterites in Russia, asking what he should do with the man.
 
He did not have long to decide. While in West Prussia Matthias heard of a wonderful community across the ocean, in a place called Ephrata (in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania), where everyone fasted and prayed many times a day, even at midnight. He set out at once, on foot, for the seaport of Hamburg where he heard of ships departing regularly for America.
 
At Hamburg he tried to board a ship. But he had no money and they would not take him for anything less than fifty Reichsthaler. So he wandered off to the Netherlands instead. He got no further than Groningen. Nobody could understand his German and he knew no Dutch so he turned back and walked over a thousand km toward the east. Praying out loud as he was going, living on handouts and scraps. Carefully avoiding food and drink between set mealtimes, he made his way to Brenkenhofswalde near Driesen. Staggering into a Mennonite home, jabbering incoherently, he died in 1786, at fifty-five years of age.
 
Did any of his prayers get answered?
 
God knows. But as long as Hutterite communities survive on earth, the Matthias Hofer story will get told and retold as a warning to those that make prayer an end in itself.
 
* * * * * 
 
We do not need to pray eloquently or dramatically for God to hear us. It was the prophets of Baal, not God's prophet, who leaped and howled and danced to get his attention.
 
Jesus rebuked the Jews of his day for their long prayers, and when his disciples asked him how to pray he gave them a simple, very brief, prayer to use. The Pharisee in the temple, praying very nicely, got no further than the ceiling. The tax-collector, striking his chest and whispering, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!" got heard.
 
Work is prayer. All of life -- especially all of communal life, where we do nothing but work for the good of one another -- is communion with God. We do not need to stop every so often to run off and pray, while the rest keep on working. We need to live and work with God (in our actions as well as our minds) all the time. "Lord, where's my hammer?" "Thank you, Lord, for that awesome sunset." "Lord, help that sister with her baby." While doing business, "Lord, touch his heart!" At any time and in all times, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us sinners!"
 
Regular meetings for prayer (early in the morning, at odd hours during the day) are not always a good idea. Very quickly they become forced, repetitious or unnatural. Not so much a work of the Spirit as a work of the flesh to gain acceptance with God or the approval of men. Very quickly, if they get started by only a handful within the group they become the haunt of the "most spiritual brothers and sisters," the Christian elite, who begin to see the rest of the group as somewhere beneath them in enlightenment and spiritual gifts.
 
Prayer, for the follower of Jesus, is not a contest to see who can pray the best, with the loudest groans and tears, or in the most advanced of angelic tongues. It is not an endurance test to see who can pray the longest or stay awake the best at four o'clock in the morning.
 
Jesus prayed all night if necessary. He prayed out in the bush and he prayed in the crowd, where the need arose. But he gave no blue ribbons to his disciples that did it most or best.
 
The prayers at Herrnhut brought about a revival because they were down to earth, practical prayers, and they came with a LIFE surrounding them. No wandering "prayer champion," no eccentric doing prayer demos in church, started those meetings on the Hutberg.  They began in a life of work and surrender. A life of taking turns with the laundry, of getting reprimanded where needed, of sharing living space and soup kettles, of following the clothing standard (Moravians dressed uniformly, much like the Amish), of dropping out of sight in ordinary every-day jobs so Christ alone would get exalted and the work move on.
 
Let us pray likewise, without ceasing, until we see his face again!
 
Peter
 
Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au