Prayer power: Pastor hopes homemade altars encourage good habits for New Year
By
GLENN EVANS
Monday, December 31, 2007
GLADEWATER — An altar call seemed a good way to get ready for 2008 at one local church Sunday, when members of Abundant Life United Pentecostal Church distributed the first of 100 handmade prayer altars.
"What better way to position ourselves but to go into this new year repositioning ourselves to prayer," the Rev. Michael McGuire said, shortly before a Sunday night communion service that concluded with members and visitors invited to take home a gift filled with the mystery and promise of prayer.
Members of the Abundant Life Temple in Gladewater stand behind altars Sunday. The altars will be distributed to families so they can have their own personal place to pray in their homes.
Seventy short benches, or altars, filled nearly every spare aisle space in the Gladewater sanctuary, lighter wooden sides supporting camel-colored seats. The altars were patterned after one that late church member Dan Moody Watson kept in his home for decades.
"He said, 'That's where me and Mama talk to God,' " McGuire recalled Watson, who was buried in overalls with a little, red New Testament tucked into a pocket.
"The altar itself, we recognize, is just a piece of furniture. If we've got a place for our car, if we've got a place for clothes, if we've got a place for food — we don't really have a place in our homes that is set aside exclusively for prayer. If they will see the altar in the home, they will be prompted to prayer. I hope this will catch on and churches in this area will be prompted to do the same thing. Everything we believe in starts with prayer."
McGuire had been inspired by the simple object when he conducted Watson's funeral, where it took a prominent position beside the casket.
Watson's son, John, brought the original with him to church Sunday.
"It was pretty much the center of our home," he said, describing it as the place his father and mother, Mary Jane, would turn for guidance from above.
"Instead of trying to figure out something by himself, he would go to that altar first. This was a man that was very simple, and yet who felt impressed to do this."
McGuire challenged the assembly of about 140 people to start a wave of prayer that could cover the area as more join.
"I believe we can raise up a wall of prayer, like a standard at every home," McGuire said. "It's time that America wake up and realized there's power in prayer. East Texas needs a revival and an outpouring of the blessings of God.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/con...07_altars.html
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