Jack Hayford: The Power of Singing

I think that to suggest that there are spirits of oppression that have to do with buildings can sound superstitious and bizarre to some people, but I don’t have any question that such things do occur. I didn’t say anything to anybody about it. One of the people in the congregation mentioned it to me. He acknowledged his sense of a terrible presence that was so oppressive to anything it seemed God would like to do. It wasn’t his saying it to me that brought it to my awareness. The first time I came into the room, I felt it.

The way it manifested in services was that it was almost impossible to see the people brought to any kind of expression of joy or praise. Nothing happened. If you can imagine that building as a womb—there was no new life in it. There wasn’t life in the Word. There wasn’t life of people being born again. It wasn’t alive. People will often tell me that when they come for the first time or two to The Church On The Way, they feel something they can’t identify—it’s the presence of the love of God and the life of His Son. It’s what happens in the midst of the glory of the Lord being manifest among people. That’s not the product of human energy. It’s the product of the grace and power of God which responds to people who live according to His Kingdom ways.

What I did might seem a little strange, but I’ve learned that the strength of our church body life is not in trying to seem sophisticated but in simply teaching principles that the Lord invites us, as His children, to respond to.