In 1999, I spoke to a CBMC crowd in St Louis, Missouri, the gateway to the west. (Click here for the 33-minute message). The gathering for men was in the old Union Train Station, converted into a hotel and meeting space. Millions of people in the 1800’s travelled through the St. Louis train station seeking their destiny in the Wild Wild West. Train tracks opened up the world and made possible the USA we know today.
I had just read a simple little book “Let Us Pray”, written by Watchman Nee, the now-famous Chinese preacher who spent his final twenty years in a Communist prison. He died there in 1970.
His profound book compared train tracks to prayer. He said Prayer is to God’s Will what Train Tracks are to a Train. God’s will cannot go anywhere unless tracks of prayer are laid down. He knew it was a mystery, but still, prayer was a necessary ingredient.
I thought about three unique experiences on trains for me.
First, the Chattanooga Choo-Choo in Tennessee. It was made famous by the hit song of The Glenn Miller band in 1941. (Click here for the song). The train no longer exists, but you can visit a fabulous hotel and museum and have dinner there and PRETEND that you are on a train. There are no train tracks to take anyone anywhere. Sound familiar? Sound like some churches today? No tracks of prayer have been laid down.
Second, the Old Kentucky Dinner Train in Bardstown, Kentucky. Same idea. You pay a hundred bucks for a nice steak dinner and the train goes about forty miles, turns around and comes back. It is a pleasant three-hour ride, slightly more authentic than the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. You can feel the train moving. You hear the ‘chug-a-chug’. But still, the train is not really going anywhere. It is just entertainment. Again, sounds like some churches.
But third, the Orient Express. The original train went from London to Istanbul. I had the thrill once of travel from Budapest to Paris on this famous train. Obviously, tracks had been laid. This was a real train with a real purpose that was really going somewhere. It was changing the world, one trip at a time.
IF prayers are the tracks needed for God’s will to run on—- and IF it is God’s will to save each soul, then we have some changes to make. We need to stop pretending.
The best lesson from my days in CBMC was a simple card with room for ten names- our “Ten Most Wanted” card. We vowed to pray daily for ten lost men. For me, they were mostly the people I worked with or played with. That meant they were usually golfers or lawyers or politicians. We learned to “only talk to men about God after we had talked to God about men”, as the old saying goes. We gathered weekly to pray for these lost men.
Two characters from my travels come to mind in trying to illustrate the point. First was a simple man in Ethiopia. I attended an overnight retreat with a few men in the middle of nowhere. These godly men expected me to teach them, but as you might imagine, they were teaching me. I will never forget the soft-spoken Ethiopian man who spoke truth to me that evening as we sat around a fire. His voice was mild, but his words shouted into my heart, “I suspect there will be many preachers in hell.” He paused and looked at me, perhaps even sensing that I was a fairly typical American preacher man. “But there will be no men of prayer in hell.”
Oh boy. He had it pinned. It is easy to stand in front of a crowd and put on a show- whether it is a pastor in a mega-church, an actor in a Hollywood production, or a CEO in a Business meeting. Performers and preachers are a dime a dozen.
But men of Prayer! Wow. That was the moment when I knew what I wanted to be. I was not there.
And then, not much later, I met Bruno. We were at a friend’s house in Paris, France for dinner. Our friend whispered to me not to discuss religion of any kind with him. Such conversation could spoil the evening. He had once upon a time been a Communist, but it was now uncertain exactly what his politics might be. As requested, I stayed away from all religious or political conversation. We just had friendly chat. He seemed to enjoy trying his broken English on this typical mono-linguistic American.
I simply added Bruno to my International “Ten Most Wanted” list- a special card just for people I had met in my travels. This included a Russian businessman living in Estonia, a politician from Kenya, a businessman from Uganda, a governor in Venezuela, a pro golfer in Australia, and more. Bruno quietly joined my list.
About four years later, and honestly, without having given Bruno much thought or prayer, I was back in France. I was picked up at the airport by Fred, a college-aged kid whose family was very dear to Sue and me. He had sincerely met the Lord and even attended a Promise Keeper’s rally in Florida with me. Bruno was a friend of his family. I innocently asked, “How’s Bruno?”
“Oh,” said Fred enthusiastically, “You hadn’t heard? He has become a Christian!” My eyebrows went up. The news seemed too good to be true. He went on to tell me that Bruno would be at dinner that night, so I could see for myself.
That evening, I eased into a private conversation with Bruno, not wanting to put him on the spot. I just said, “Fred tells me you are now a Christian?”
“Yes, I am.”
“What happened?”
He described a particular forest where he often walked near his summer home. He said something like, “I was walking in the woods, and all of a sudden, the Creation and Jesus Christ all made perfect sense to me.”
Immediately, I knew there had to be a back story. He had surely been to a church. Someone must have witnessed to him. His wife’s pastor perhaps led him through some sort of ‘sinner’s prayer’. And so, I made a quick comment and asked a follow-up question, “Wonderful. What led up to that moment? What really happened?”
Bruno looked at me like I was a fool. “I told you. I was walking in the woods, and all of a sudden, the Creator and Jesus Christ all made perfect sense to me.” I shook my head in amazement. I smiled. I was speechless.
A small Voice in my head began to talk to me. “Tim, you prayed for Bruno. So did his wife and a few friends. There was no one to explain all the details to him. So, I just showed up and walked with him. I opened Bruno’s eyes and ears to hear my Voice and sense my Spirit. Prayer was enough.”
Prayer is usually the Beginning. But sometimes it is Everything. Sometimes it is the beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega.
So, the question lingers. Are we laying down tracks of prayer? If so, is it like the Orient Express, travelling the world. Or more like the ‘pretend’ trains in Bardstown and Chattanooga? We get to choose.
