Just once around the cornfield..

One of my first memorable experiences at LifeGate church was the ‘Prayer for 100’.  According to the senior pastor, God told him that He wanted 100 people to gather together one Saturday a month to pray for whatever specific thing the senior pastor decided on for that Saturday.  

The particular prayer subject of that day was a piece of property that the church owned and was trying to sell.  After we sang a couple songs, the pastor explained that we were all going to get in our cars and drive to the property (it was a big cornfield at the time) walk around the perimeter like the Israelites walked around the walls of Jericho, and pray for the property to sell.

Yes, really.

I'll remind you that I live in Nebraska.  There are no small cornfields in Nebraska.

**I would like to interject for a moment here to say that at that time I had no idea how incredibly ridiculous this was, nor how badly this pastor had taken the biblical account of Jericho so out of context. I’m also going to confess that I am slightly extremely embarrassed to admit that not only did I participate (Clay did too so he can be embarrassed right along with me) but I actually fell for it.  Hook, line, and sinker.**

Anyway, there we were all standing in this cornfield listening to the pastor recount the story of Jericho when to my left I heard a shuffle and then someone exclaim “Oh!”.  When I looked I saw a woman lying on the ground.  I thought she had fainted at first, but the pastor glanced down at her and said “oh she’s alright” and kept on with what he was saying.  

This was my first experience with seeing someone slain in the Spirit.  *If you don’t know what that is, click here. By the way, this practice is not biblical and is not from God.  Neither is that gibberish they are chanting.  I’ll get into all that at a later date*   

So, he finished recounting the story of Jericho and then told us that someone was going to blow a Shofar and like the Israelites, we were all going to shout really loud.  Then the guy was going to blow the Shofar a second time and we were going to shout again, and then a third time.  Then we were all going to walk around the cornfield praying that God would tear down the walls of whatever it was that was keeping that cornfield from selling.

And that’s what we did.  

*insert facepalm here*

You know, more than once I asked a few of the pastors at LifeGate why they didn’t teach more of the Bible and why they never really went very deep when giving their sermons motivational speeches.  They said it was because there were so many “baby Christians” there that they didn’t want to overwhelm them, that baby Christians need milk and love and tenderness, so it’s not good to weigh them down with too much “heavy stuff”.

But that’s not really why.  Or at the very least, it’s not the only reason why.  The biggest reason is pretty simple; if you start teaching Biblical truth, people might not be so willing to stand in a cornfield blowing Shofars and shouting for the invisible walls of a slow real-estate market to come crashing down so your cornfield will sell for a good price.  And why not?  Because that’s just stupid.  

Oh, and it has NOTHING to do with the biblical account of the Israelites and Jericho.  Absolutely nothing.  It’s just another example of false teachers twisting scripture to fit their own agenda.

“and regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” 2 Peter 3:15-18